...is a weblog about the liberal arts 2.0 edited by Jason Kottke since March 1998 (archives). You can read about me and kottke.org here. If you've got questions, concerns, or interesting links, send them along.
David Sedaris finds lust, love, and laughter on long train trips.
Not that Johnny was bad company-it's just that the things we had in common were all so depressing. Unemployment, for instance. My last job had been as an elf at Macy's.
"Personal assistant" was how I phrased it, hoping he wouldn't ask for whom.
"Uh-Santa?"
If you've been following his work/life at all, the last paragraph will probably make you smile.
David Sedaris, plagued as usual by language problems, has a taxing time at a French doctor's office. "It's funny the things that run through your mind when you're sitting in your underpants in front of a pair of strangers."
Who knew David Sedaris' family was so full of art experts? "I don't know if you realize it, but it seems that Picasso is actually Spanish."
Paul Schmelzer's project to collect autographs of his (Paul's) name from famous people. So far, he's got scrawls from David Sedaris, Yoko Ono, Frank Gehry, and Pat Buchanan, but has been turned down by Mikhail Baryshnikov.
On the plane on the way back from Vietnam, I was reading this article about how bookstores are preferable to shopping for books online[1] when I ran across this quote from David Sedaris:
One thing about English-language bookstores in the age of Amazon is that it assumes that everybody has the Internet. I don't. I've never seen the Internet. I've never ordered a book on it, and I wouldn't really want to"
This seems almost impossible and might even be a joke, but it would go a long way in explaining how he gets so much work done. He's got continuous complete attention while the rest of us have only partial.
[1] Which article was not very convincing since it included this passage:
[Odile Hellier, owner of the Village Voice bookstore in Paris] said that she thinks the act of buying books in a store rather than online is essential to the health of our culture.
"My fear is that while the machine society that we live in is very functional, very practical, and allows for a certain communication, it is a linear communication that closes the mind," she said.
She said that although Internet sites perform many of the functions of a bookstore - recommending similar books or passing on personal impressions of a book - nothing equals the kind of discovery possible when visiting a store and scanning tables covered with a professional staff's latest hand-picked selection.
I always chuckle when someone (usually grinding an axe) describes the web as so flat and with little social aspect. I love bookstores, but in many ways, shopping for books online is superior.
Latest David Sedaris in the New Yorker. What do you care what it's about? It's David Sedaris. Just go read.
Some additional questions and answers from the previously linked David Sedaris interview.
David Sedaris deals with a sticky situation on the airplane. "I pulled a Times crossword puzzle from the bag beneath my seat. That always makes you look reasonable, especially on a Saturday, when the words are long and the clues are exceptionally tough."
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