David Sedaris on his Australian tour and more than 30 years writing comic essays

The renowned essayist David Sedaris isn't particularly skilled at caring for the sick, which has proven somewhat challenging for him and his partner, Hugh Hamrick. Hamrick, Sedaris's partner of over 30 years and the subject of many of his essays, recently underwent hip replacement surgery. Sedaris, who describes himself as a practitioner of "tough love," is prone to saying things like, "Would it kill you to walk five blocks to get it yourself?"

Sedaris is the author of numerous bestselling essay collections, including the award-winning "Me Talk Pretty One Day" and the beloved "Naked." To ensure Hamrick received better care during his recovery, he even paid for Hamrick's brother to stay at their home. "Worth it. Every penny," Sedaris said. "He’s much more comforting than I am. And also, how many people do you need to comfort you? Your brother’s here, you don’t need me to comfort you too."

Despite this, it’s not exactly the kind of doting one might expect from a partner. Sedaris recalls Hamrick once telling him, "You know, you’re not as good as you think you are?" Sedaris explained, "He didn’t mean I wasn’t a good enough writer, but that I wasn’t a good enough person. And, I mean, maybe it’s true."

Fortunately, Sedaris considers himself a good person while on tour, which is good news for Australia, which he'll be visiting in February. Indeed, as he tells his sister, actress and comedian Amy Sedaris, in an essay called "Affectation" from his latest collection, "Happy-Go-Lucky" (published in 2022), touring is "his source of happiness," as long as he has enough time for a bath in a fancy hotel before a show.

Sedaris spends up to five months of the year touring the world, reading his humorous essays (never reading the same one twice in the same city) and spending up to ten and a half hours before and after shows talking to and signing books for fans. Fans who see Sedaris in Australia will likely hear stories about Hamrick’s hip replacement. Like so much of Sedaris’s life, from the death of his father, Lou, to picking up trash on the side of the road near his former home in West Sussex, England, it becomes material for his work, which blends witty humor and keen observation with love and affection for his subjects, primarily his friends and family.

"Hugh had his hip replaced, and I can’t talk about the pain of it," he says. "I can only talk about living with someone who is recovering in pain and wishing they would shut up. And other people can relate to that." Sedaris adds, laughing, "Every time I walk in the room and see Hugh asleep, I think, 'Oh, if he would just die. Then I’d have a whole story.' Even if he’s alive, I’ll make something up."

Before heading to Australia for his tour, Sedaris's starting point was very different from where he is now. He first began to enjoy reading in a trailer in a small town in Oregon, where he had moved to pick and pack apples and pears. "I didn’t know anybody, I got a library card, and I just started reading," he says. The stories of Raymond Carver, Joy Williams, and Tobias Wolff inspired him. "When I read a really great short story, it would change my mood, and I would look at the world differently."

"I remember wondering what it would be like to be able to do that, to be able to make people feel something." He also tried visual and performing arts but admits, "I knew my stuff was crap." "I would look around and see people who were really passionate and destined to grow, and I wasn’t destined to grow. I was too timid. I just kept doing the same thing over and over." He realized that what he should do was write, and so he started a diary at age 20. "I just kept thinking, 'Well, I’m terrible, but if I write every day, I’ll get better'," he recalls. "So that’s what I did."

He moved to Chicago at 27, where he worked various odd jobs, including mover and cleaner. "I had no problem working," Sedaris says. "I would work, then I would go home and write at night. I just thought that would be the whole rest of my life." He would go to the International House of Pancakes for "cup after cup" of "the worst coffee" and read his library books before going home to write. "I always wonder what the younger version of myself would think of what I’m writing now," Sedaris says. "Would that person be like, 'Oh my god, they published a book!'? Would they read it slowly and think they wanted to savor it, or would they just plow through it? Or would they say, 'Well, it’s not as good as the last one' or 'I’m kind of tired of him'?"

While taking creative writing classes in Chicago, Sedaris was invited to read at a classmate’s “event,” a kind of performance night. This led to more invitations to perform. "I never asked anyone for anything," he says. "I was always invited to do things, and I always said yes." When people laughed while listening to him read his stories, he knew he had found his direction. "There’s nothing that feels better than that," he says.

While reading from his diary at a club in Chicago, he met Ira Glass, the longtime host of the radio program "This American Life." Years later, when Sedaris had moved to New York, Glass called to ask if he had any Christmas-themed material he could read for his show, "The Wild Room." This is where he first read a version of "SantaLand Diaries," which recounts his experiences working as a Christmas elf at a department store in New York, which aired on NPR in 1992. It was included two years later in his first collection of essays, "Barrel Fever," and a longer version aired on "This American Life" in 1996.

"The biggest audience (at the club) was about 600 people. Then I was on the radio, and overnight, the audience was 10 million," he says. But don't expect Sedaris to read "SantaLand Diaries" while touring Australia. "That’s too deliberate, you know?" he says. "I want to say to people: 'The piece I had in The New Yorker two weeks ago is much better than that. How can you not see that?'" "I’ve gotten better. So when they say, 'Oh, read some hour-long thing you wrote when you were 33 and doing drugs and drunk,' I cringe."

**An Evening with David Sedaris** will be at the Canberra Theatre Centre on February 1, before touring to Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Newcastle, Sydney and Brisbane.