He talked pretty, and then some.
The National Public Radio personality and renowned essayist performed before a packed house Friday night at Governor State University’s Center Stage Theater.
Sedaris read NPR segments, diary entries and samples of new nonfiction, scheduled to run in an upcoming issue of the New Yorker.
The wry speaker, timid in stature and soothing yet adenoidal in voice, spoke alone underneath a sole white light, and gesticulated behind a wooden podium.
Sedaris tempered the gig with typical Sedaris material: his crazy Greek family, cantankerous landlords, language barriers, and personality quirks.
Boring out deep belly laughs from the crowd, Sedaris welcomed us into the wonderful world of first class flying, where the in-flight movies are always funny and just one almond crusted hot fudge Sundays is never enough.
His riffs hopped, skipped and jumped aimlessly from topic to topic as they do in his best essays, from the obscene to the sad and back again, but always easy on the brain, soft on the heart.
He veered from a crying Polish man beaten up over the death of his mother, to his own mother’s funeral, before pivoting back to a well-planted sex joke.
A bit about his professor’s Latino pronunciation of the word “Nicaragua,” and other language foibles had a crowd rolling, the story echoing the honed rhythms of Sedaris‘ fabulous nonfiction collection “Me Talk Pretty One Day.”
Sedaris took questions from the audience afterwards, addressing concerns about his oft-publicized boyfriend, Hugh, and a story he wrote about quadriplegics and toothless chimpanzees, trained as human eye dogs for the disabled — all hilarious.
While some of the Q & A shtick sounded a tad rehearsed, it was cool he was willing to meet us halfway. It was even cooler he stuck around to autograph books after the show.
I was reminded, a little bit of what Woody Allen would be like if the famous Jew comedian did book tours.
David Sedaris: a tiny man with a big soul. Behind his smile, fangs.
A peculiar kind of talent, giant of course, but approachable, strange. A smirking southern pixie, neurotic as all hell, hardwired and ready for the post-Seinfeld brain.