While this had always been a fantasy of mine, I did nothing to nudge it along. What lifted me up was writing for The New Yorker. “You’re not just telling me that because you feel sorry for me?” “Really?” This was my cheap way of getting them to say it again. “Hey,” he or she would say, “this is pretty good.” I have my days, don’t get me wrong, but any confidence I possess, especially in regard to my writing, was planted and nurtured by someone else-first a teacher, then later an agent or editor. I’m not the sort of person who goes around feeling good about himself. No experience, he sees, is quite as he expected-it’s often harder, more fraught, and certainly weirder-but sometimes it is also much richer and more wonderful.įull of joy, generosity, and the incisive humor that has led David Sedaris to be called “the funniest man alive” ( Time Out New York), The Best of Me spans a career spent watching and learning and laughing-quite often at himself-and invites readers deep into the world of one of the most brilliant and original writers of our time. Taken together, the stories in The Best of Me reveal the wonder and delight Sedaris takes in the surprises life brings him. In these pages, Sedaris explores falling in love and staying together, recognizing his own aging not in the mirror but in the faces of his siblings, losing one parent and coming to terms-at long last-with the other. Nowhere is this clearer than in his writing about his loved ones.

He drowns a mouse in a bucket, struggles to say “give it to me” in five languages, and hand-feeds a carnivorous bird.īut if all you expect to find in Sedaris’s work is the deft and sharply observed comedy for which he became renowned, you may be surprised to discover that his words bring more warmth than mockery, more fellow-feeling than derision. In these stories, Sedaris shops for rare taxidermy, hitchhikes with a lady quadriplegic, and spits a lozenge into a fellow traveler’s lap. Now, for the first time collected in one volume, the author brings us his funniest and most memorable work.

And it is almost impossible to read without laughing. It opens our eyes to what is at absurd and moving about our daily existence.

A Sedaris story may seem confessional, but is also highly attuned to the world outside.

“Genius… It is miraculous to read these pieces… You must read The Best of Me.” -Andrew Sean Greer, New York Times Book ReviewĪ New York Times Book Review Editors’ ChoiceĪ CNN and Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Monthįor more than twenty-five years, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space, virtually creating his own genre.

The best of me david sedaris chapters