I was working at a bookstore in Saint Paul when I first heard of David Sedaris. I was surrounded by a number of young people who read extremely esoteric works of fiction and non-fiction, and were some of the most intelligent, and poorest, people I knew. Bookstores are always like that, because they attract those rare intellects that see reading as necessary as food, and will sometimes give the bulk of their paychecks to their library rather than their refrigerators. Like some of my co-workers, I would make angry and embarrassed noises when I was close to the humor section, because it was one of those necessary evils of a bookstore. Occasionally, writers of merit could work their way out of the category humor and into literary non-fiction.
One of the workers, however, had other ideas. He saw this as a chance to get some connections in the publishing field, and would spend his paychecks on New York business hotels, where he would rub elbows with the literati during conventions. We tolerated him the way experimental theatre artists tolerate movie stars. It’s related, but it’s a degradation of the lofty occupation we all had. It took a few months before I started to realize that his tastes were actually pretty extraordinary, and I started to think that maybe I should even have a look at this David Sedaris fellow.
He came to the store once to sign copies of his new book, and to give a reading. I still didn’t know who he was, and hadn’t bothered to skim even the back cover of his books. We had to give out tickets to the signing, which was unusual for our populist bookstore. They were expecting a huge crowd. The tickets were gone in twenty minutes, no mean feat in a city that’s often less than 0 degrees for most of the year. After the event, which was a smashing success, Sedaris sent us a postcard from Amsterdam. He wrote something like, Thank you for letting me smoke in your store. He was a big cigarette smoker at the time, and Minnesota is one of those places where the smoking ban came long after we’d all decided to do the right thing and smoke outside on our own. So this, more than anything, convinced me that he was worth reading. If he can charm a crowd here, and blow smoke in our faces, then he’s got something pretty extraordinary.