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| Interview David Sedaris ‘There’s real life, and there’s real life "the story."’ met: David Sedaris Stacey Knecht boeken: Eekhrn zkt eekhrn
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SK — You’ve done audio versions of all your books, including Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, the book we’re here to talk about today. But with Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, you’re not the only one reading the stories. There are several other readers. How did that come about? DS — I usually do my audio books by myself. But this time I wanted other people to read some of it. Because I don’t like the sound of my own voice, I usually never listen to my own stuff. They have an audible version of some of my stuff on the website of The New Yorker, and it’s like they just go to some guy and say, here, read this. So he’s not an actor and he’s not prepared. Someone said to me: Oh, the guy who reads your stuff in The New Yorker - he’s awful! And I thought, well I can listen to it, because it’s not me. And I think it’s great! Because he’s not an actor and because he’s not prepared, you can really pay attention to the words. Because actors can cover the words up. I listened to Judy Dench recently read a novel by Muriel Spark and I was just stunned. I had to stop at one point to copy down a particular passage, because the way it flowed… but Judy Dench made it flow, it’s not there on the page, it was Judy Dench being magnificent that did it. So for this book, I got some other people to read. I read four of the stories and then four of them were read by an actor named Dylan Baker and four were read by Elaine Stritch. And then ‘The Squirrel and the Chipmunk’ and three others were read by Sian Phillips, who is a British stage actress. I was in the studio when she recorded it, and she read from beginning to end, no mistakes, she had obviously put a lot of thought into it. I listened to her version of ‘The Squirrel and the Chipmunk’ - I probably listened to it five times - and now I can’t read it my way anymore, because I thought her choices were so good, I just want to do what she did. SK — You hear her voice in your head while you’re reading. DS — Now I do. I didn’t hear it when I was writing. SK — Do you write to be listened to, or to be read, or both? Or neither? DS — I always think about… I read out loud a lot. SK — While you’re working? DS — Nono. Like, two weeks from today, I start a tour of the United States. I’m going to thirty-five cities, on a lecture tour, in thirty-five days. SK — One a day! DS — Yes. I read for an hour. And that’s in theaters. Theaters anywhere from one to three thousand seats. I have four new stories that I’m reading, and I haven’t read any of them out loud, but I definitely wrote them with the intention of reading them out loud. But sometimes somebody can write something and it’s meant to be read out loud and then you realize it doesn’t really work on the page. So that’s the thing, is to get them to work on the page, and to work out loud, too. SK — Have you ever written a story and found that you couldn’t actually read it out loud? That it just didn’t work? DS — Yes. It was before I started going on tours like that - SK — When did you start? DS — Oh, I probably started in about 1998. Naked, I didn’t read out loud. I was just in a room writing, and I wrote that book. If I’d had to read from it… I was in Germany a while ago and I thought, oh please don’t make me read it, because there’s no place to breathe! It wasn’t written with the thought of a reader trying to stay alive and read a story at the same time (laughs). So that changed it a lot for me. The rhythm. Or when I look at things that I wrote, twenty-five, thirty years ago, trying to read those out loud - it’s awful, because it’s so choppy and the sentences are short. So it was going on tour and reading out loud that really sort of changed the way that I put stories together. SK — What was it you liked so much about Sian Phillips’ interpretation? DS — Well I guess, as an actress, what I liked about her was that she wasn’t ‘huge.’ She wasn’t like, when you listen to things that she’s done out loud, it’s not like she thinks that she’s got to make every character sound different - so one talks (in a deep voice) like this and another (in a high voice) like this. Or: I’ll give this one a Scottish accent, and I’ll make that one sound Jamaican. She could just shift the rhythm of her speech a bit. When I go on tour in Europe, often people will say, ‘You and Woody Allen!’ And it’s like, ‘Me and Woody Allen what?’ But they don’t really know of any other Americans who write humor, and then to them, he and I sound exactly alike. But I think it’s because they don’t speak English that it sounds alike to them. I don’t see the similarity at all. In the United States no one ever says anything to me about Woody Allen, ever. But I guess what I mean is, the way you and I speak, because we’re speaking the same language, I mean there’s a difference between rhythms of our speech and the way that we pause, but our voices still have something in common. Although your voice is deeper than mine. SK — It’s true! But (in very high voice) I can talk like this, too. DS — (Laughs) I listen to a lot of audio books. A lot of ‘em. I love ‘em. SK — Did you like being read to as a kid? Were you read to as a kid? DS — Not too often. SK — Would you have liked to have been read to as a kid? DS — Well, I don’t… like, I remember my mother reading to us from The Wizard of Oz, and I actually think that only happened once. But I loved it so much, just being read out loud to. But then, I grew up in North Carolina, and there was a radio station that played old radio programs, ‘Our Miss Brooks’ and the ‘Lux Mystery Theater,’ so I would schedule my bathtime so I could get in the bathtub and listen to these things on the radio. SK — Just to have someone else reading and to be able to absorb it. DS — Um-hm. Well, plus - and some people think it’s cheating, or some people think, that’s not the same as reading a book... Maybe not. But when you read a book, you enter the world of the book. When you listen to a book, it comes into your world. So you’re in the supermarket and Jonathan Franzen’s novel is going on, and you’re listening to it, completely listening to it, and you’re buying what you need in the grocery store. So his book has entered your world instead of the other way round. Sometimes people are very apologetic, like, Oh, I’m so sorry, I bought your book, but it’s the audio version… SK — And you think, great! DS — Yeah! I don’t differentiate. SK — It’s a whole different kind of concentration. The fact that you’re listening, and you might be doing something else at the same time, you might not… DS — Um-hm. But sometimes, you know, you get a book and you like it for a chapter, and then you’re like, hmmm, why did I get this book… Sometimes, when it’s audio, you will listen to the whole thing, and you’ll think, OK, well, instead of just doing the grocery shopping, I’m also going to think about what I might have for dinner tomorrow (laughs). But you can find a way to get all through it. But with a regular book, it you don’t like the first chapter you might just say: Life’s too short. SK — Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk has as its subtitle ‘a Modest Bestiary.’ Where did that come from? DS — Well, the publisher wanted some kind of subtitle, so first they said Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk and Other Fables. But fables have a moral, and most of these don’t have one. Some of them do, but I didn’t want to impose morals on other ones. Because that just seems queer, when it’s forced and imposed. Like, the story about the setter? There’s no moral there. If there’s three stages in the disintegration of a marriage, this is ‘Late Stage 2.’ But there’s not a moral, necessarily. And I just started, I was reading this collection of African folktales about seven years ago, and - I know this sounds bad, but… SK — Come on… DS — I got to the second or the third one and I thought, I can do better than that! (laughs) SK — Shocking! DS — And so, I just sat down and I wrote that story about ‘The Cat and the Baboon.’ SK — Was it that long ago? Seven years ago? DS — Yeah. SK — And that was the first of this collection? Or, you didn’t know it was going to be a collection yet? DS — Right. Then I brought it with me on my tour and I went on a tour six months later and I wrote a new one, so I just started, and I thought, well, eventually I’ll have enough for a book. I think I wound up with twenty-five of them and I picked out fifteen for the book. The other ten weren’t so great (laughs). And I guess… I’m not an animal person necessarily, I mean I like reading about animals, I like reading a book about a parasite, or, I mean, I had a cat, and it died ten years ago, and I was happy to have it, but I mean I’m not… But if for some reason… Sometimes you can just say things and you can have animals in the place of people and it’s just a different… SK — Are there advantages or disadvantages to using animals as characters? DS — Well, like the story about the setter. It would be a bit different. Those couldn’t be people, really, because people can leave the house whenever they want, and dogs can’t. So it would have to be about slaves. But for some reason it was more satisfactory to me to write that story with dogs in it than with people. Part of it, too, is that with people you have to describe them, and everyone knows what a squirrel looks like. And they all look alike, squirrels. SK — Maybe that’s what squirrels say about us. DS — (Laughs) And I knew it was going to be illustrated. SK — You did know that, from the beginning? That was the idea? DS — I always felt like it would be. SK — Did you already know Ian Falconer, the illustrator? DS — I knew Ian. I met Ian, he did the sets for a play that I wrote before I ever left New York, thirteen years ago maybe? And I knew him from The New Yorker, and we’d just always wanted to work with each other again. But I didn’t ask him until about eight months ago. SK — How did it go from there? Did you send him a pile of stories and then - DS — I didn’t want to tell him what to do, because I figured you either choose the right person or you don’t. But then, if you’re going to pick somebody, then you treat them like an artist. You don’t say, ‘Can we be a little more playful here?’ You don’t treat an artist that way. And he’s an artist. And it’s weird, isn’t it, how you don’t want to be… I mean, he’s an easy guy to get along with, and he said ‘Is there anything that bothers you, anything you don’t like?’ So he made it really easy. But I can imagine… Some people, when I said, oh, I’m going to be doing this book, and it’s going to be illustrated, a lot of people sent me their stuff. But what made a difference with Ian is that because he does children’s books, his own children’s books, he knows that when you have an illustration, you’re going to turn back to it, and it’s going to need something when you do turn back to it, it’s going to need another illustration you can compare it to, a kind of continuity. SK — They’re not really the kind of drawings one would normally include in a children’s book. Although, maybe you would. Some children’s bedtime stories are pretty gruesome. DS — Well one thing that the English were worried about, they were worried that people were going to think this was a children’s book. And then, I just found out, in Publisher’s Weekly, in the United States, they listed this book under ‘Children’s Book News.’ I was interviewed by someone recently, and he said, ‘I see this book as bedtime stories for children who drink.’ SK — (Laughs) I like that! DS — I do too! SK — It’s a whole new category! It’s unusual for a book for adults to be illustrated, but it’s wonderful. Why not? DS — Well I was surprised in America at the size of the book. It’s smaller than this. It’s about that thick. It’s hardcover and it’s smaller than this. So the pictures really seem to work. SK — Oh, yeah! Well I think they’re… you know, what I like about the pictures is what I also like about the stories. They’re not cute. And the animals are not cute. They’re pretty crude and they’re funny and they’re raunchy and they’re silly, but they’re not… well, except for that one lamb. He’s pretty adorable… DS — But not for long! SK — (Laughs) That’s exactly what I mean. A few pages on we see him with his eyes gouged out by a crow. Nasty. But I like it. DS — The book comes out in two weeks in the United States. I haven’t read a review in ten years. I have absolutely no idea, no idea whatsoever how it will be received. SK — Do you care? DS — Hm… Well, I’ve read them out loud, so I don’t, you can feel an audience drifting away from you, and most of these are too short to allow for drifting. But it’s not like I saw the door open and people leaving. When I read them in front of an audience I think, OK, I feel good about this, but that can be different too, reading them out loud as opposed to reading them on the page. So I have no earthly idea how it will be received. Do I care? I (long silence) … sure. Sure. I mean, if I have a choice of being trashed in The New York Times and having something good said about me in The New York Times, I’ll go with the good, but the bad one usually won’t stick with me for more than a couple of days. What’s interesting is the people who so need to tell you about it. They so need to tell you about it, ‘I saw that review, my God,’ and I’ll say, ‘Actually, it’s fine,’ ‘But to go that far…’ But I always figure that’s something for my enemies. It’s like a little gift for them. SK — Feed ‘em every once in a while. DS — Yeah. But I have no idea. Is there going to be a feeding frenzy for this? (laughs) SK — They’re licking their chops! By the way I discovered something interesting in one of your earlier books, When You Are Engulfed in Flames. When I read it I thought, that sounds familiar: ‘I’d been keeping my ear to the ground and had learned that birds are not as carefree as they’re cracked up to be. Take the crows that descend each winter on the surrounding fields and pluck the eyes out of newborn lambs.’ There are those lambs! And there’s another quote, later in the book, ‘I’ve often heard that anthropomorphizing an animal is the worst injustice you can do it. That said, I’m as guilty as anyone.’ DS — Oh! Oh! As guilty as anyone! SK — What’s your response to that? DS — Well, our neighbor in Normandy - where we used to have a house - was a sheep farmer. He told me that you want your lambs to be born in the shed, because when they’re born in the field, crows will come and pluck out the eyes of the babies. Actually, the story about the crow and the lamb was written before I wrote those lines in When You Are Engulfed in Flames. SK — And how about the anthropomorphizing thing? DS — Yeah. I’m horrible about that. I’m really bad. Like in Normandy, I always used to find a lot of animals in Normandy. I’d go for a walk and come home with a shrew, or a mouse, or a toad, and I’d give them names and invent lives for them, and, oh yeah, I’m bad. But there were certain things, like, our neighbor told me that about the lambs, but a couple years ago I also read an article about leeches in The New York Times. It said there’s a certain kind of leech that can only live in the anus of a hippopotamus. So in an earlier version of my own Hippopotamus story, I started with the Times quote, because I needed people to know about leeches. And then I thought, no, The New York Times doesn’t have any place in this book. So I’ll just have the rat say it to the owl, and most people won’t believe that it’s true, but that’s what they get for not reading such interesting articles (laughs). SK — It’s interesting that you felt the need to somehow insert proof of the truth of this thing, whereas the rest of it… But I guess, as you yourself write at the end of the book, it’s so farfetched it had to be true. DS — Well, it’s like with the crows. Someone said when they read that story, ‘That is so mean!’ I said, ‘It’s not me! It’s crows!’ One thing you learn, and are reminded of constantly, if you spend time in the country, is how cruel animals can be. Not gratuitously cruel - the crow’s not taking the eyes out of the lamb just so there can be another blind being in the world, but it’s a bloodbath, you know, and everybody wants to eat a mouse, don’t they? I mean, mice have so many enemies! They have so many enemies. Did you know that bullfrogs eat mice? SK — I’ve heard that. DS — Like, the tail will be hanging out and they’ll use their hands to push it all in. If you go on Youtube you can see loads of videos of snapping turtles eating mice and anacondas eating mice… It’s snuff, basically, animal snuff. You know, like the asshole at the street fair with a big snake around his neck? (singsong) Someone wants at-ten-tion… Well, those people love making videos of their asshole snake eating something. They love it. SK — I remember the first time I ever saw a spider catching a fly, in its web, and I thought, I shouldn’t actually be watching this. It felt like some secret ritual I wasn’t supposed to witness. But I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It was animals being animals. Creatures being creatures. DS — Well see, that’s the thing, too, when I see them feeding bunny rabbits to snakes, I think, hey, aren’t I the guy who catches flies and throws them to spiders? But on the other hand, flies! I mean, death to flies (laughs). Death to flies! Actually I wrote a story about flies, but it’s not in the book. It’s a bonus on the audio, because my editor felt like, if the story went in the book, then people were just going to focus on that one story. I’d read it out loud in Chicago once and there’s always a Q&A and this woman said, ‘Why did you do that?’ She said, ‘I just came from dinner and I felt like throwing up.’ Because the flies in the story are eating shit and vomit, but it’s like the world turned upside-down: they’re talking about how good it is. So I said, ‘You know, if it was a story about children eating shit and vomit, you might have a point. But flies - that’s what they do!’ So it didn’t seem disgusting to me in any way. But my editor said, ‘I feel like if it’s in the book then people are going to go right to it.’ So I put it as a bonus on the audio. SK — The anus of a hippopotamus, flies feasting on shit and vomit, those are some really earthy moments. DS — (Laughs) SK — But if you left them out, the animals wouldn’t be animals, I suppose. DS — Well plus they’re not self-conscious about this like we are. SK — How did you actually choose the animals you used as your characters, and how did you create their personalities, the way they speak? The way they act? And why do you use certain animals and not others? DS — Well, I once wrote a story about an ant and an aphid. SK — A what? DS — An aphid. At first, I had them as enemies. And then I did some reading, and ants and aphids are actually like best friends. Aphids have this life-giving juice in their asses and ants pump it out with their mouths, like milking a cow with your mouth, like suckling off a cow. And the aphids are like, ooohhh, it feels so good to get that out of there! And the ants are like, that was delicious! So there went that story, right? So a lot of times just by reading, like with the story about the migrating warblers. It was a different kind of bird before, and then I realized, oh, they don’t go to Guatemala. So who does go to Guatemala? Because I had to rewrite it. And then, okay, I found this other bird, but it doesn’t go cheep cheep, so the ending wouldn’t work… SK — So you’re very specific about the biological details? DS — The first letters you get when a book comes out are from grammarians. ‘I don’t know what you were thinking when you used that comma on page 14, but whoever you’re dealing with…’ - first letters you get. And the second ones are, ‘Did no one tell you that warblers don’t go via Brownsville when they migrate?’ So that’s inevitable, that you’re going to get those letters. SK — But what do you care? You’re the writer. DS — Um… Well, I met a woman, a zoologist, and I don’t remember what we were talking about… oh, I think I’d started that owl story, and I just had the first couple of pages, and I made the mistake of reading the first three pages to an audience - I usually never read something before it’s finished - but I just, I don’t know, I thought, well if I get a reaction it’ll help me finish it. So this zoologist said, tell me you’re not going to have the wise, old owl. She said, that is just such a cliché. She said, owls are smart enough, they’re smart enough and they’re good at their jobs. But if you want a really smart bird, take a crow. And I guess I thought, I liked this woman, and I thought, I don’t know, I guess I just thought of it as another… I mean, I thought, well why be wrong? So I thought the ant-aphid thing was a good catch. And I… why did I choose certain animals? SK — You did use the owl in the end. DS — Yes. Yes, I used the owl, but he’s smart, but everyone in his family is an idiot, so he’s just rare, he’s a rarity. Why did I use certain animals? I wrote a story about groundhogs and my editor - my editor’s fantastic - she said I think one of the reasons the story doesn’t work is that we don’t have any expectations of groundhogs. When you write about a cat, we expect a cat to be vain, or we expect a crow to be smart. But we don’t know what to think of groundhogs, so we don’t know if they’re acting the way they’re supposed to or not. I mean, the story had bigger problems, but I thought that was a good observation on her part. I was in the airport in a small town, in Wausau, Wisconsin, and I bought a vest and I’d been wearing this vest, I don’t know what I was thinking with this vest, but anyway, I was on one of my tours and so I’d been in twenty cities and this is number twenty-one and I’m going through security and this grandmother who works at security says, ‘I need you to take that vest off.’ And I said, ‘Well, could you tell me why?’ I said ‘I’ve worn it for twenty-one days in twenty different cities and no one’s ever hassled me -’ ‘I want it off now.’ And I looked at her a while and I thought, what animal are you, exactly? And then I thought, I’m gonna turn you into a rabbit. |
SK — Did it make you feel better? DS — Yeah it did. SK — And did you take the vest off? DS — Yes, I took the vest off, because you learn not to say anything to these people, so you just go like this (nods pleasantly) and you don’t say anything and you take the vest off, and then you go through security and then you go like this (taking out a little notebook) and you look at her and it’s not against the law to make notes (starts scribbling in notebook with deadpan expression on his face). SK — I wish I could film this… DS — But see, it makes me feel better, because I was really angry and what I was angry about was she was just being a bully and it was a small town airport and there were some small town airports. So what. You can either have a fit and get in trouble, you can tell people about it and they can think, God, we all go through this, so shut up about it - or you can make money off of it. So you make money off of it then you feel good about it. SK — Is this sort of your general approach to life? DS — Um-hm! Somebody was telling me, an American friend in Paris, a Southerner, so she has very good manners, and her French is excellent, and even after all this time a lot of stuff goes over my head, a lot of stuff. But nothing goes over her head. So she gets every slight, every… like people are just rude to her constantly, and she’s been having a really hard time of it. But that’s what it’s like for people who don’t write. See, if you write, if someone’s rude to me, if someone gives me a hard time, it’s like they just gave me money. I can’t do anything with people being nice to me. I can’t get anything out of it. But spit on me, deny me entrance, humiliate me in a public place, make me wait two hours for my lunch and you are doing me a favor. But I wonder, for people who don’t have that outlet, I mean it’s always a good story around the dinner table, but not to everyone, you know? I kind of think my boyfriend would consider that a good story to tell at the table. SK — What would he do in a situation like that? DS — What would he do? He would’ve acted badly if he had been in my situation in the airport. And I’ve seen what happens to those people. He’s got much more of a temper than I do. But again…I wrote a story years ago, I was on the train in Paris and these people decided I was French, and a pickpocket. They were American, and they started talking about me, saying all kinds of degrading things about me - SK — Oh yes, I remember that story! And they didn’t know you could understand every word they were saying. DS — Right. People have often asked me, why didn’t you say something to those people? And I was like, why would I? I didn’t want the story to end. The more shit they said about me, I thought: 6 pages, 7 pages, 7 ½ pages…It’s like when you stick a gasoline nozzle into a car and you see the numbers going (laughs). SK — I suppose that could work. It’s a kind of objectifying. There you are, experiencing it, but if you take a step back, as a writer, you can take it in. DS — Right. Well plus, again, if you say something to stop it, it’ll change immediately. SK — And they’ll be apologetic, or maybe not. But not very interesting material for a story. DS — I was in a situation in London, I went to this taxidermy store there, and I didn’t know, I found out later, that this guy who owned this shop had been imprisoned for selling endangered species, but he recognized something in me. He’s only open by appointment. And he recognized something in me. It was like he saw into my soul, and he said, ‘I’ve got something. You interested in human stuff?’ And then he pulled out some human parts that he had. SK — How did he know? DS — Oh, we can recognize each other. And at that point I had to play myself, because I thought, if I pull out my notebook, if I ask a kind of a question that a writer would ask, it’s gonna end. So I really had to be very conscious and kind of back down so I wouldn’t spoil it. SK — And it continued? DS — It continued. SK — Did you write about it? DS — I have to explain something first. The fact-checking department at The New Yorkeris exhausting. They would find out this guy had been in prison, and if they’re gonna call this guy and ask him these questions, there’s absolutely no way that the guy would go along with it, he’s gotten in so much trouble before. Even if I didn’t mention the name of the taxidermy store. So that doesn’t mean I can’t write about it, but I couldn’t write about it in the New Yorker. Or it could wind up being one of those situations where I think, I’ll save it for fiction, because I don’t want to have to get into that whole thing, I don’t want to get anybody in trouble. But again, that day, I didn’t want to end it. I didn’t want to ruin it. Because sometimes something happens and you’re, you know, sometimes your life feels like a story, and you think… and those are like the best times, when your life is like a story, and it doesn’t happen to me very often, but I always know when it’s happening and I would never do anything to cut it short. SK — The stories in your earlier books are ‘story-stories,’ fiction - presumably. And then there are the ‘essays,’ which may or may not be true. I always assume, because you call them essays and use the names of the people in your family, that they are basically true, but I can never know for sure. DS — There’s a story in this book called ‘The Toad, the Turtle and the Dog.’ It’s these animals that are waiting on a line, I never say what the line is for, but they’re all complaining. I had a flight once that got canceled, I was in the Denver Airport, and I was in a long line of people and the guy behind me said, ‘The gal at the counter said she’d call my name when it was my turn, but hell, she didn’t call me, I should’ve taken her name is what I should’ve done, hell I should’ve punched her!’ Which is a line that turned into a story. I wrote about that in The New Yorker, right? And I wrote about it in the book, but in a fictional way, and with animals instead of people. In the New Yorker version I said my flight got canceled due to thunder storms, right? I’d written that I’d been in South Dakota and my plane was delayed due to thunderstorms over Colorado. The fact-checker called. ‘I can’t find any record of thunderstorms over Colorado in Spring of 2009.’ I’d written it down in my diary, so I told her June 10th, 2009, and then they were like, okay, found ‘em. But I mean they check every, e-ve-ry aspect of it. In the New Yorker version, I had this line ‘Would Adolf Hitler please meet his party in Baggage Claim 1.’ Fact-checker calls: ‘It’s Baggage Claim A, B, and C, they don’t have Baggage Claim 1.’ SK — The fact that Adolf Hitler was no longer alive didn’t bother them? DS — No, they left that in for some reason. But the rest had to be factual. But no, I make no real distinction between what’s real and what’s not. I mean, if I was writing about… I often feel like when you’re writing an essay, it’s what you leave out of it, I think, that often makes it a story. It’s what turns it and helps you shape it into a story. Because sometimes, like a child will tell you, a child will go to the movies and they’ll say, oh, in the movie, and then there’s this scene where the whale comes out of the water and it looks at a crab and it says hi and the crab says hi and the crab walks away and then the whale walks a little bit further on the beach and it sees a shell and it doesn’t do anything and it keeps walking…know what I mean? And as an adult you’re thinking, fuuuuuck! But as a grown-up, you think, okay, the shell doesn’t really do anything in the story, the crab just says hello to it, so I’m going to cut this moment. So even when you’re editing, you’re fucking with the truth of it, because maybe the whale would’ve learned some slight lesson from the crab… so when you’re cutting to the chase later, the whale’s personality is a bit mysterious because you’ve left out the lesson it learned from the crab. But another thing you learn as an adult is you can’t put everything in there. Your first draft - you put everything into the first draft. And then it’s like you’re chiseling the story away. So there’s real life and then there’s real life ‘the story.’ Real life is what I live, and real life ‘the story’ is what I write. SK — Why are the essays called ‘essays?’ DS — I don’t know what else to call them. Usually I think of an essay as being about a thing, instead of about a person. But I don’t know if there’s another term I’m comfortable with, really. I don’t like the word ‘piece,’ because it’s just begging to have ‘of shit’ on the end of it (laughs). But the first thing I wrote when I finished this book was another piece of fiction, because I’m going on tour and for every tour I include a piece of social satire. Which is tricky. With these animal stories, I could write them and then I could think, OK, I want to make a book out of them. With social satire it’s a little harder, because by the time you make a book out of it few people remember what it is anymore, so it’s got more of a timer on it. And it’s usually completely over the top. If people are going to walk out of my show, that’s what’s gonna do it. They initiated this program in Paris, called Velib, where they have these bikes all over the city, and there are these parking spaces you can use, and you get a bike and it costs you like a euro to use the bike for an hour. So they initiated the program and a lot of people were getting hit, because they weren’t really bike riders. So some people got killed, but they were the right people. And I kind of feel like, those people who walk out during the social satire section - I didn’t want them there anyway. It’s getting rid of the right people (laughs). I was reading a couple of years ago at the University of Los Angeles, UCLA. And I like to have fun when I can, you know, with what little power I have. So I offered priority signing to smokers, because I said you don’t have as long to live, so your time is more valuable. And this man initiated a lawsuit against me, that I was discriminating against non-smokers in the State of California, on California State property. And it’s like, what were you doing in my audience? And I got this very angry letter from this woman: ‘I waited with my daughter to get a book signed and David Sedaris gave my daughter, she’s fifteen years old, and he gave her a condom, and he told her it was only for anal sex, because he didn’t want to be responsible for her losing her virginity. How dare he?’ SK — Was it true? DS — Yeah it was true! But what was she doing in my audience? What did she think…? SK — She had obviously never read anything you had ever written, never seen you on TV, never heard you speak. DS — But like Proposition 8 in California… People in California voted that homosexuals couldn’t get married, and then it was overturned. So when it was overturned I wrote this piece about this man who thinks, now that homosexuals can get married I don’t know who I am anymore and my marriage doesn’t mean anything, and he goes and kills a lot of people. And he uses this as an excuse, so it’s really bloody, but to me it’s just cartoon violence. It made me laugh when I was writing it, but that doesn’t mean the audience will laugh. SK — Is there anything you wouldn’t write about? DS — Non-fiction wise, I don’t write about sex. I don’t write about my sex life, because I don’t want anyone I’ve ever had sex with writing about me. Plus I’m on stage in front of people, and so people are picturing you doing whatever it is you’re writing about. So if you’re writing about riding home with a mouse wrapped in a handkerchief in your basket then people are going to imagine you doing that. I don’t need for them to imagine me having sex. Plus, it’s just not my topic. So I don’t write about that. I don’t expose anyone’s secrets. Like everyone in my family has something they don’t… People don’t know anything about my family that my family doesn’t want them to know. So it’s always interesting to me when people think that that’s not the case, because, like I read a book recently and the author talked about going to his parents’ bedside table and finding a dildo and a copy of Shaved Asian magazine. And I thought, he’s not talking to his parents anymore, and it turned out I was right. Because if you’re talking to your parents, it’s one thing for you to say you’ve got that in your own bedside table, but… I mean, I’d love to know people who are like, write about my copy of Shaved Asian! Always happy to meet someone like that. SK — I remember in one of your earlier essays you talked about this process of writing about your family. You said they felt that anything they told you, they knew they couldn’t trust you, because you’d use it anyway. DS — Well like my sister, my oldest sister, will say, ‘You can’t write about this.’ But - and I’ve often said this to her, ‘The stuff you tell me I can’t write about, it’s really not that interesting to me. But meanwhile you’ve got all this other stuff that’s gold…’ But I’m careful. My sister’s in-laws are dead now. But before they died, there were a couple of instances when they said some stuff to my sister that was unbelievable, really kind of mean. Funny. I mean, ‘funny,’ because you couldn’t believe anyone could be so mean. But Lisa didn’t want me to write about that because she didn’t want them to know she’d told me about it. And that kind of thing I understand perfectly, because nobody wants somebody to come and say, ‘You fucking told him that…’ SK — But now that they’re dead? DS — No, I still wouldn’t do it, because she’s still got her husband, and her husband’s brothers and sisters, so there are still enough people who might be hurt by it. And it’s important to Lisa. So I do listen to the people in my life, and if something’s important to them I don’t say, well, I’ll pay you, or, what’ll it take? I don’t try to talk them out of it. It’s hard sometimes, because it’s really juicy stuff. People have said, doesn’t it bother you that people know everything about you? I say, no, it’s just the illusion, it’s just the illusion of exposing myself. You don’t know… again, it’s just stuff that I don’t think is, I don’t mean that I don’t think it’s valuable, but it’s not costing me anything for you to know that I had that shrew in my bicycle basket. It’s not costing me anything for you to know that I took the wrong door at the doctor’s office and was sitting there in my underpants. That’s very different than me telling you who I’m jealous of, who I hate, that I hate, you know. I sort of admire people like Edmund White, he had a book out and I was in Paris and I wanted to go hear him read. And someone in the audience said, ‘I got that book, and I got to the third story in that book, and I just slammed it shut and I couldn’t believe that anyone would ever write such garbage.’ And I thought: Sold! So I bought the book and I couldn’t believe it. He’d write about giving this guy a blow job while the guy was defecating. I have such admiration for people who can do that, who can write like that, and still be a very good writer. He’s a wonderful writer. So it was the best writing about giving someone a blow job while they’re defecating that there is. But I don’t know what it would take… but maybe, with him, maybe he thought, well, I’m not giving away anything important, people don’t know who I’m jealous of, for instance - it’s just sex. I think if you’ve had as much sex as he has, with different people, then it would just be throwaway and it wouldn’t matter. SK — Let me ask you this: when you use the word ‘I,’ in your essays, am I supposed to think it’s you? The person sitting here in front of me? DS — Well, it’s like the character of me. There’s me - in my diary, there’s me, and he is… oh boy… oh my God, he is so like… One day I’ll look back in my diary and I’ll think, oh, I didn’t mention September 11, but I did mention that shoe sale… I mean, I mentioned September 11, but I mean, political turmoil and stuff and it’s more like, damn, I really should’ve gotten two pairs of those things while I was down there… So there’s that person, and then there’s a character. The character is for public consumption. The character is… Did you see that movie, Greenberg, with Ben Stiller? The guy he played just wasn’t very likeable. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t interesting, but he wasn’t terribly likeable, not the sort of character that Stiller normally plays. So it’s two hours with somebody you don’t really like, and that made it a hard sell, more than anything else, so I think that’s partly it, trying to make yourself maybe more likeable, or leaving out certain aspects of your personality, or I guess just cutting out all the stupid bullshit that you say and just trying to think of the ‘you’ that might be of interest to people. SK — The ‘you’ that comes across in the books is a very complete you. I know there’s stuff left out, because that’s inevitable, but it doesn’t feel like there’s anything left out. It’s a complete character, and then of course the reader - I, whoever - you add to it, the way readers do when you read something or listen to it, you round it out even more. DS — Did you read Freedom, the new Jonathan Franzen novel? SK — Not yet. Why do you bring it up? DS — I was just really amazed at how complete the characters in that book are. It’s a wonder, how he did it. I mean, I don’t mean it’s a wonder that - I mean, I wonder at it, it’s a marvel, it’s marvelous how full he made those characters. What I like about him, too, is I like that he’s thought of as a serious person, and he’s gotten criticized by these people who say his books aren’t experimental enough. But that’s what I like about him: he’s good with a story, it’s a story, it’s a good story, the people are real, they seem incredibly real, and you empathize with them and you feel for them and you’re embarrassed for them and... I love that book. SK — I can’t wait to read it! David, I think we have to stop. Don’t you have to meet someone? DS — Oh, that’s OK, I have time. SK — I was about to tell you a little about our website, The Ledge, but I seem to remember reading in one of your essays that you don’t like Internet. Is that a fact of real life, or real life ‘the story?’ DS — Things have changed a little. I went on a book tour in 2008, I think, when my last book came out. I went on an American book tour and in the middle of it I had to go to Brazil. The Brazilians were - it was really hard to make plans with them and to call them and I swore to get even. So then I started e-mailing and using the internet. I’ve been online for a couple of years. SK — So what do you think? DS — What’s very interesting to me about it is how quickly any discussion - let’s say you go on a political website or you go to any website, and then there’s comments - how quickly the comments degenerate to ‘Faggot!’ ‘You’re a faggot, not me!’ ‘Oh yeah? Well then why did you call me one? You wouldn’t have called me one if you weren’t one, fat faggot!’ And then people offering their opinions on this stuff and I can’t believe you’d really have an opinion on this. Then you’ve got the haters, people who just - like, what’s that kid’s name, Justin… the Canadian…. Bieber. Justin Bieber. He’s a kid, he’s sixteen and can you imagine being sixteen and… OK, maybe he’s not the best example, but anyway, I think that’s what was interesting, and also how quickly one could learn to disregard stuff like that, to think to yourself, aw, that’s a lonely person, that’s a lonely person in his basement, that’s a bitter person who says they’re going to do a lot of stuff and never does anything and lives in the basement… I’ve never approached myself in any way, I’ve never Google-ed myself, I’ve never looked myself up on Amazon, I’ve never… because that, I think, would be just, you’d really go crazy if you did that. SK — Internet is vast. DS — Do you know ‘Smigly?’ SK — What’s that? DS — (sings) It’s SMIG-lyyy! It’s on Youtube, this little cartoon called Smigly. It’s about this guy named Smigly. Someone compared him to Charlie Brown for adults. SK — How did you find it? DS — I think I read about it in The Daily Beast. I looked it up and I liked it. SK — I just had a vision of the drawings in this book being animated. DS — Well somebody… you know, an earlier book of mine was supposed to be turned into a movie, but I got out of it, because it involved my family, and I thought, oh, someone’s going to have to play my sister and my dad, and I thought, nonononono. So now somebody’s making a movie about one of the stories in Naked, but it just involves me. SK — A whole movie? DS — A whole movie. But I really loved this guy’s other work. His name is Kyle Alvarez, he’s this young guy and he made this feature-length movie and showed it to me, and I thought it was fantastic, so I said OK, if you want to do this movie, go ahead. Somebody has expressed an interest in filming Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, but I don’t know how they would possibly tie it together. Remember the Robert Altman movie Short Cuts? Maybe like that, but with Claymation animals (laughs). SK — Hey, here’s something that might interest you, with your Greek background. Did you know that the very first bestiary was a Greek one? DS — Oh, really? I didn’t know that! I was afraid to read De La Fontaine or Aesop or anyone like that while I was working on the book, because I didn’t want to wind up re-writing them. Because really, the sins haven’t changed, just the tools with which we commit them. It’s like, don’t be an asshole - on a cell phone. But the main thing is: don’t be an asshole. |
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| The Ledge Redactie: Stacey Knecht, info@the-ledge.com Dank aan: De digitale pioniers en Het Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Ontwerp: Maurits de Bruijn |
Copyright: Pieter Steinz, Stacey Knecht Reproduktie en/of hergebruik uitsluitend in overeenstemming met de auteurs. |
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