Allow Me to Introduce Myself, My Name is the Future Mrs. Sedaris

I just saw David Sedaris perform and he was wonderful.  Not as funny as when I first saw him in Lawrence, Kansas a few years ago, but funny nevertheless.  He read a few of his short stories (one recently printed in ‘The New Yorker’) and a several diary entries that covered his recent three-month stay in Tokyo.

            As like many of his books, Sedaris’s performance was raw at some points, but not as bad as when I saw him before and definitely not as detailed as some of his previous works in print.  He did a rift on James Frey (he didn’t mention Frey’s name) and the whole memoir scandal by listing the corrections on his previous works.  He gave examples of when a car was actually blue but he wrote red because it sounded better within the story (he had used the word blue in a previous sentence and for most of us writer’s we totally understood where he was coming from with that).  There was also the time he asked a woman, a minor character, to legally change her name to ‘Brenda’ because her name was ‘Lisa’ which was also the name of his sister who was featured prominently in the storyline.  He said with dry like precision, “She did.”  After satisfying the audience on these points he revealed how an author’s lies caused his wife (get it, he’s in a committed gay relationship) was so upset by the deception that she lost her uterus (complete with blood clot description).

            Part way through his performance he stopped it in order to take a bathroom break, which he said has only happened to him once before.  Along with that and people coming in late and a clueless usher trying to find their seats and interrupting our row so much that we missed out on the first part of a story some of the performance was a bit disjointed. 

            As a writer, it was interesting to see how one story he told a few years ago had morphed into another tale.  Some elements I recognized from before, but some were delightful (well, maybe ‘delightful’ is not the right word) new observations based on New Orleans in the Katrina aftermath and the major earthquake that took place in Pakistan.  With observations about the horrible things that are donated to survivors of these tragedies (t-shirts which say, ‘I survived the Nasco Corporate Challenge 2004’ or sun visors which list a particular riverboat casino) there was a line about tote bags which if it makes it to print will be an instant classic.  BTW, I have observed that the word ‘toting’ is used far less than it should for comedic affect.

            Beyond just the general observations about his performance, the crowd that came to watch him was an interesting mix.  A lot of national public radio fans, a lot of gay couples on dates, and of course my merry band of carousers.  Since my group tended to be made up of people who do enjoy a good uterus joke, a few times it felt (although there was laughing around the theatre) that we were the only ones laughing – hard.  The couple that could have been a mother and daughter or lesbian May-December relationship kept turning their heads and looking back at us.  If we cared a little more that we may have been disturbing them then we might not have laughed so hard…but we didn’t, so we did. 

            Further, the event was sponsored by ‘Rainy Day Books,’ which is an independent bookstore that appears to still be thriving in the era of mega-bookstores.  I feel compelled to give a shout out to them because they have brought many authors to our humble community (Kansas City ) before.  I also feel that some of us owe Mr. Sedaris an apology for allowing people to ask really lame questions, when in the back of our minds (speaking about my little social group only) had brilliant ones. 

            Overall, I would highly recommend seeing David Sedaris if he blows into your town.  There is something about hearing a writer actually read their work aloud (for they, above all others, know where to pause and what words to stress) which just enriches the experience of reading them.  There is no getting around that Sedaris is in his element.  He is by far more funny than any stand up comedian I have ever seen.  Plus, seeing a writer perform puts me back to the days, long before my time, when such notables as Mark Twain, and before him, Charles Dickens took to the stage and performed around the world. 

            On a final note, I write with wishful thinking, it has been written that Mark Twain was once in the audience for one of Charles Dickens performances, although the two were never introduced.  I suppose as I watched Sedaris last night I harbored dreams of my own.

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