Sedaris Fix

For those of you, like me, who are wondering about the status of David Sedaris’s forthcoming Untitled Collection (until recently, Amazon.com listed it with a June 2004 pub date, but it’s since vanished), fear not. October will see the release of Live at Carnegie Hall, a live recording of Sedaris reading passages from the rumored book. If you’ve only read his work so far, you owe it to yourself to hear him (as well as the rest of his This American Life cohort) read his own work. His delivery is hilarious, and my only warning is to refrain from operating heavy machinery while listening (as I have in the past, almost crashing as I drove through the tears).

If you need a fix sooner than October, or if you simply prefer to read than to listen, check out “Our Perfect Summer” (I prefer the author’s original title, “The Ship Shape”) and “The Girl Next Door” (both published by The New Yorker), which may or may not appear in the forthcoming (we hope) Untitled Collection. These pieces are a little darker and sadder than you might expect, but they’re still quite good, as you would expect from Sedaris.

Advertisement