David Sedaris, before visiting Ann Arbor, reflects on writing about his sister's suicide, race, and Hugh

Bestselling author David Sedaris will do a reading/signing event at Ann Arbor's Literati Bookstore on Wednesday, June 11.

Everyone's favorite satirist (with a killer Billie Holliday impression), David Sedaris, is coming to Ann Arbor's indie bookstore Literati on Wednesday, June 11.

And while most local fans were probably unable to score tickets to this intimate reading event – those who lined up early at Literati on Tuesday, June 3 to buy the first paperback copies of Sedaris' latest, "Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls" gobbled up the limited supply – Sedaris will stay after the reading to meet with, and sign books for, anyone willing to wait in line.

Plus, Sedaris recently answered a few questions by phone from his home - which he shares with his longtime boyfriend Hugh Hamrick - in West Sussex, England.

Q. My husband hates when I write about him. How does Hugh feel about being a regular character in your essays?

A. He knows that I’m not going to write anything embarrassing about him. I’m not going to describe what he looks like naked or anything. … I told him the other day, “You’re in this story,” and it was one of those moments - he’s such a killjoy sometimes. I’ll be telling a story, and everyone else thinks it’s funny, and then he gets stuck on some ridiculous point, when he’s the only one who would care about that. … When I was finished (writing this recent story), I gave it to him to see if there’s anything I should get rid of, or anything that might embarrass him. … He wants to be perfect, which is so interesting to me, because it never occurred to me that I had a shot at perfection. But he’s pretty close to perfect. And I thought, “Gosh, we’ve been together 23 years, and I did not know that.”

Q. While reading "Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls," I was reminded of the way your essays often start in one experience or memory, but then they end up going someplace completely unexpected. Does that association between seemingly disparate experiences just happen when you sit down to write about a topic?

A. I was listening to “This American Life” over the weekend, and on Ira’s show, they really cut to the chase. The first story was … someone saying, “This guy stabbed me when I was 18.” They get right into it. When I’m sitting down to write a story, it doesn’t occur to me to begin the story like that. For one thing – I like “The Simpsons.” Unlike most sitcoms, where you think, I bet this is the one where wife loses her wedding ring, or the husband loses his job. With “The Simpsons” – you watch the first 4-5 minutes, and you have no idea where the show is going. I like that.

Q. One of that book's essays, "A Friend in the Ghetto," does this, switching from a chatty telemarketer to your memory of trying too hard to befriend a shy black girl in your school. Race is a topic writers often shy away from. Were you particularly careful or nervous about mining that?

A. I wasn’t nervous. One thing I find, though, is in America, it’s really difficult to talk about race. There’s a fake way that it’s done, where everyone plays by these rules; then you can do it. But otherwise, it’s really hard. … One thing about living outside the United States is, talking about race when you go back is like putting on overcoat soaked in water. And the second you go home, you put it on your back. But you’re so used to it when live there. It’s like second nature. It’s not until you live abroad that you notice it. Just how it’s everywhere - the tension, and the way that it’s not talked about. Especially growing up in North Carolina, you get so used to it. So used to the weirdness of it.

Q. You dedicated "Owls" to your sister Amy. Any particular reason for that?

A. No. Just because the little dramatic (high school forensics) monologues are in there.

Q. Did you ever consider touring with Amy, when she's published books?

A. Not a book tour. They’re just so complicated, in terms of - when I’m in a theater, I may sign books for 3 hours, and the most I’ve ever done at a bookstore, my record, is 10 and a half hours. … And I may take 2 planes in the same day. It’s really a punishing schedule. To put that together for one person is one thing, but man, doing that for 2 people – and frankly, I just like being alone on tour.

Q. In the "Owls" essay, "Memory Laps," about your struggles as a young competitive swimmer, your dad constantly praises the swimming talents of another boy, and even when you beat him, he can't praise you. Why do you think that was so impossible for him?

A. That’s just my dad. It’s interesting. My father doesn’t have problem with that story, because to him, it’s like, see what a good job he did (as a dad)? That’s the way that he looks at it. Behind my back, he says good things about me, but not to my face. He’s just not that kind of person. But I do think about that. I think, “Gosh, I was just a young person. Why couldn’t you give me that?” But as I said later in that story, when my book was number one on The New York Times bestseller list, his response was, “Well, you’re not number one on The Wall Street Journal’s list.” At that point, it just became funny to me. It would be tragic if I was still hoping to get that validation from him, but I’m not.

Q. An essay you published in The New Yorker in October, "Now We Are Five," focused on the beach vacation you and your family took together last summer after your youngest sister Tiffany's suicide. Did you worry about not yet having enough distance to write about such a painful event?

The Sedaris kids in younger days, clockwise from top left: Gretchen, Lisa, David, Tiffany, Paul, and Amy.

A. Sometimes things happen, and I wait years to write about them, but for some reason, after we went to the beach – my sister died while I was on tour. And after I got the news, I kept being on tour. Because there wasn’t a funeral, there was nothing for me to go to, and everything [for the tour] was already in place, so I thought, “Well, what else am I going to do?” So I continued on tour, and I didn’t tell people about it – not the bookstore owners or the people in audience. It’s interesting. Sometimes I’d say to people who asked me to sign books, “Are you going anywhere on vacation? Where are you going to?” But I was a million miles away, thinking about what had happened. So when I was finally able to sit down and just write it – it took me 6 weeks - it was what I wanted to talk about. What it feels like to be part of a large family. How when you’ve always thought of yourself as a family of 6 kids, it’s difficult to suddenly translate being a family of 5 kids. But I was on tour – I do a radio show on the BBC in England, and I was recording things in September when I met 3 women at a pre-show book signing. They were sisters, and I asked, “Are there more of you?” They looked at each other and said, “No.” But after the show, they stood in line and came up and said, “Yeah, we had a sister who died 6 months ago.” … Apparently, the story I had written was exactly what they were going through. And I’ve met so many people since then who’ve had siblings that committed suicide. I’ve never written anything before that’s gotten the kind of reaction that piece has, in terms of the number of letters. … The letters that people write have been so helpful. There’s a whole world of people out there experiencing something like this, and I’d never really thought about it before. Now when I’m at the airport, I wonder how many people are going home to their mother’s funeral. There’s got to be somebody probably on every plane. And how many of these people have had a suicide in their family?

Q. Did you let your family read the essay before you published it?

A. Even though it was against Tiffany’s wishes, my dad had a service for her at his Greek church; 90 days after someone dies, or 60 days or something, you eat this special greek pastry made of barley. My father had that service for Tiffany, and he shared it with someone who’d died of cancer. Only one person asked how (Tiffany) died, and that person was a grown woman with the mind of an 8 year old child. It’s interesting that she’s the only one who asked. And if church knew how she died, they wouldn’t have let it take place – which is so pathetic to me. … Punish the mentally ill. That’s lovely. … But I went to my family [with the essay] and said, is there anything here that shouldn’t be? … My dad - his opinion meant the most to me. Of everyone, I was afraid he’d say “No, I don’t want this story in the world.” But he didn’t, and I was grateful for that.

Q. Do you feel like that essay helped you process the loss and make some sort of sense of what you were feeling?

A. I’ve never thought of writing as cathartic, but I do write to make sense of things. … It’s a heavy thing, and it’s complicated by the fact that I hadn’t talked to her in a long time. If I had hidden that – it would have been really convenient not to mention that, but that would be false. And again, that makes things more complicated, when that’s part of the equation. Like so many of the people who wrote letters to me, who had a sibling or a parent kill themselves, it’s about mental illness, for most part. Otherwise stable people who break up with somebody and commit suicide - generally speaking, you’ve got to be pretty fragile in order to do that. And when Tiffany left that letter to her lawyer, it was just so convoluted. It was like one sentence pulled out of one novel, one sentence pulled out of another - I couldn’t connect the sentences, and I couldn’t begin to understand her reasoning. If that was my mind - I might commit suicide, too, if that’s what was going on in my head. … But if you asked Tiffany, she’d say that there was nothing wrong with her but back pain. But you knew. Like, "Oh, come on. How is it you haven’t had a job in 25 years, and you can’t get into an airplane, and you’re calling people you met once 30 years ago?"

Q. You previously lived in France, and you've been living in England for a while. Any ideas where you might go next?

A. I wouldn’t mind moving to Germany, but I can’t get Hugh there. I don’t garden, and I don’t understand gardening, but apparently, if you’re a gardener, you don’t want to miss your stuff. You put stuff in the ground, and then you don’t want to miss seeing the wisteria. Plus, … where we live now in Sussex, … Hugh should run for mayor. None of those people know my name, but everybody knows Hugh. His dad worked for the foreign service, so he’s lived in the Middle East and Africa and Somalia and the Congo – he moved around so much in his earlier life that I think he feels like he’s found his spot. … And it is very beautiful.

Jenn McKee is an entertainment reporter for The Ann Arbor News. Reach her at jennmckee@mlive.com or 734-623-2546, and follow her on Twitter @jennmckee.

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