Chapter 18: David Sedaris on holding happiness hostage and healing holes in our hearts

I discovered David Sedaris after asking my college writing mentor how to become a better comedy writer. He handed me a strange looking book with a pair of boxer shorts on the cover …

Naked by David Sedaris.

I'd never heard of David before, but when I went home and started paging through his book, I was completely blown away.

His autobiographical essays were incredibly sardonic, witty, and laugh-out-loud funny, and dealt with his homosexuality and his obsessive compulsive tics and dropping out of school.

Like millions of people around the world, I quickly became obsessed with David Sedaris. I've read all of his books and every article he's written in The New Yorker.

I even went to see him speak, which is how I learned that after every single event he does, he'll stay late (up to 10 hours!) just to talk to anyone who wants to meet him.

So it was with a lot of excitement that I squeezed into the back of his limo on his North American book tour for Calypso. I rode with him all over Toronto from his hotel to his CBC interview to his book signing to uncover and discuss his three most formative books.

What was supposed to be a tight half hour interview turned into a beautiful hour and a half long conversation.

Welcome to Chapter 18 with the generous and beautiful David Sedaris.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:

• What's the "secret to getting old"?

• Why can't you be a writer if you're not a reader?

• How do we remain artistically and ethically pure after commercial success?

• Why do we try to hide our love for money when we generally need it to live?

• How do we transition from mimicking other writers to establishing our own voice?

• Why does David ask random people he meets who he thinks are funny to open for him at huge events?

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