Humor
David Sedaris, the “champion storyteller,” (Los Angeles Times) returns
with his first new collection of personal essays since the bestselling
Calypso. Back when restaurant menus were still printed on paper, and
wearing a mask—or not—was a decision made mostly on Halloween, David
Sedaris spent his time doing normal things. As Happy-Go-Lucky opens, he is
learning to shoot guns with his sister, visiting muddy flea markets in
Serbia, buying gummy worms to feed to ants, and telling his nonagenarian
father wheelchair jokes. But then the pandemic hits, and like so many
others, he’s stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, the
part of his work he loves most. To cope, he walks for miles through a
nearly deserted city, smelling only his own breath. He vacuums his
apartment twice a day, fails to hoard anything, and contemplates how sex
workers and acupuncturists might be getting by during quarantine. As the
world gradually settles into a new reality, Sedaris too finds himself
changed. His offer to fix a stranger’s teeth rebuffed, he straightens his
own, and ventures into the world with new confidence. Newly orphaned, he
considers what it means, in his seventh decade, no longer to be someone’s
son. And back on the road, he discovers a battle-scarred America: people
weary, storefronts empty or festooned with Help Wanted signs, walls painted
with graffiti reflecting the contradictory messages of our time: Eat the
Rich. Trump 2024. Black Lives Matter. In Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris
once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about
these recent upheavals, personal and public, and expresses in precise
language both the misanthropy and desire for connection that drive us all.
If we must live in interesting times, there is no one better to chronicle
them than the incomparable David Sedaris. Read more

 

Genre Humor & Entertainment