David Sedaris wants to be better (at everything)
5/26/202646 min
Humorist David Sedaris says the best part of reading his work to an audience is earning the laughs — or the groans. "A collective groan is fine with me," he says. Sedaris reflects on his Duolingo obsession, AI, and why he’ll continue writing and touring as long as he possibly can. His new book of essays is ‘The Land and Its People.’ He spoke with guest interviewer Sam Fragoso, host of the podcast ‘Talk Easy.’
Also, John Powers reviews two new mystery novels: ‘The End of the Sahara,’ by the Algerian writer Saïd Khatibi, and ‘An Enigma by the Sea,’ by Italian authors Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini.
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
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Terry Gross· Host0:14
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. For over three decades, beloved humorist David Sedaris has chronicled the absurdities of modern life, including his own. He got his start writing about his short tenure at Macy's as Crumpet, a Santaland elf, in an essay titled The Santaland Diaries. When he first read the essay on NPR's Morning Edition back in 1992, it generated more tape requests than any other story in the show's history to that point and turned him into an overnight sensation. He since published several best-selling collections of personal essays, been awarded the Thurber Prize for American Yumer, and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019. His latest book of personal essays, The Land and Its People, cast Sedaris in several roles: devout brother, itinerant traveler, grieving friend, and reluctant caretaker. Sedaris, who is now 69, writes, "I'm in the hard part of getting old, the part where everything irritates you. The easy part comes a little later when my short-term memory disappears." David Sedaris spoke with guest interviewer Sam Fragoso, host of the interview podcast Talk Easy.
Sam Fragoso1:28
David Sedaris,