David sedaris autobiography essay full text

My first expo­sure to the writ­ing of David Sedaris came fif­teen years ago, at a read­ing he gave in Seat­tle.

David sedaris autobiography essay full text

I could­n’t remem­ber laugh­ing at any­thing before quite so hard as I laughed at the sto­ries of the author and his fel­low French-learn­ers strug­gling for a grasp on the lan­guage. I fought hard­est for oxy­gen when he got to the part about his class­mates, a ver­i­ta­ble Unit­ed Nations of a group, strain­ing in this non-native lan­guage of theirs to dis­cuss var­i­ous hol­i­days.

One par­tic­u­lar line has always stuck with me, after a Moroc­can stu­dent demands an expla­na­tion of East­er:

The Poles led the charge to the best of their abil­i­ty. “It is,” said one, “a par­ty for the lit­tle boy of God who call his self Jesus and… oh, shit.”

She fal­tered, and her fel­low coun­try­man came to her aid.

“He call his self Jesus, and then he be die o