David Sedaris: The Land and Its People

I have always had a soft spot for David Sedaris. There is something about the way he pairs razor-sharp wit with plain old common sense that feels both comforting and dangerous. His humor has that perfect bittersweet balance. You laugh, then you wince, then you laugh again because he has told a truth you recognize in yourself.

In The Land and Its People, the collection that follows Happy-Go-Lucky, Sedaris turns his observant eye toward what it means to be a foreigner, a brother, a partner, and a lifelong friend. Reading these essays feels like sitting across from him at a kitchen table while he confesses both his best intentions and his worst instincts. He steps into the role of caretaker after his boyfriend Hugh’s hip replacement surgery and manages to be devoted and exasperated in equal measure. He buys his sister a cape because that is the kind of odd, specific love he trades in. He vents to a jaded Duolingo bot about his brother, as if even artificial intelligence can serve as a sounding board for complicated family dynamics.

Travel, as always, becomes both backdrop and punchline. He proudly adds to his running list of countries visited, riding a horse named Tequila in Guatemala, commissioning a bespoke priest’s cassock in Vatican City, and heading out on safari in Kenya without taking a single photo. Who does that? Sedaris does. He seems less interested in souvenirs than in stories, less concerned with capturing the moment than in living it awkwardly and completely.

There is a quiet ache threaded through these pages. At one point, he scrolls through his address book and realizes how many of the names belong to people who are no longer alive. That moment lands hard. Yet in the very next breath, he delights in an author’s biography, in a malapropism that turns into a decades-long inside joke, or in the simple perfection of a well-made pair of cotton underpants. He gets bitten by a dog. A train passenger vomits in his face. A late-night encounter on the street teeters between harassment and misunderstanding. And through it all, he seems to say, look how hard and absurd it is just to be alive.

What moves me most is how these essays manage to be acerbic and tender at the same time. Sedaris never pretends to be noble. He is petty, impatient, and sometimes ridiculous. But he is also curious, alert, and deeply human. He keeps his head up and his eyes open, and in doing so, he invites us to do the same. He reminds us that this species of ours is strange and often exhausting, yet endlessly fascinating.

With fifteen previous books to his name, including When You Are Engulfed in Flames and Me Talk Pretty One Day, Sedaris has long mastered the art of turning everyday humiliation into literature. A regular contributor to The New Yorker and BBC Radio 4, and a recipient of honors such as the Thurber Prize for American Humor, he has earned his place among the great observers of modern life. Still, when I read him, it feels personal. It feels like he is simply telling us what he noticed on the way through the day and trusting that we will see ourselves somewhere in the telling.