David Sedaris's Blog

It Must Be Christmastime. David Sedaris Reads 'Santaland Diaries'

Think you're stressed out during the holidays? Try being one of Santa's little helpers.

Way before social distancing was a thing, writer and humorist David Sedaris worked as a department store elf. And it turns out, being surrounded by tinsel and merriment isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Sedaris wrote about the downside of joy in Santaland Diaries, a collection of stories based on his experiences. In 1992, Sedaris — then a struggling writer -- read from Santaland Diaries on Morning Edition — and it's been a holiday tradition ever since.

Click the play button to hear Sedaris read as Crumpet the elf. Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Guests Bearing Holiday Gifts

Maricel Presilla, PhD, culinary historian, chef, restaurateur and the author of Gran Cocina Latina: The Food of Latin America (W. W. Norton & Company, 2012), offers a recipe and talks about the holidays and the closing her Hoboken restaurant due to the pandemic.

David Sedaris, author and humorist, shares a story from his new collection of stories, The Best of Me (Little, Brown and Company, 2020).

Maeve Higgins, comedian and contributing writer for The New York Times, tries to stump us with questions from the new citizenship exam.

John McWhorter, Columbia University linguistics professor, host of the Lexicon Valley podcast at Slate and contributing editor at The Atlantic, brings his holiday gift of some tricky language questions for listeners to try to answer.

 

 

 

David Sedaris Takes a Vacation, Today's Classical Music Picks, 'The Broadcast 41'

David Sedaris joins us to discuss his new book, Calypso. When he buys a beach house on the Carolina coast, Sedaris envisions long, relaxing vacations spent playing board games and lounging in the sun with those he loves. Instead, he realizes that it's impossible to take a vacation from yourself.

 

Clemency Burton-Hill joins us to offer her thoughts on the best classical music for the day.

 

Carol A. Stabile joins us to discuss her book, The Broadcast 41: Women and the Anti-Communist Blacklist. At the dawn of the Cold War era, 41 women working in American radio and television were placed on a media blacklist and forced from their industry. These women―among them Dorothy Parker, Lena Horne, and Gypsy Rose Lee―were, by nature of their diversity and ambition, a threat to the traditional portrayal of the American family on the airwaves. This book describes what American media lost when these women were blacklisted, documenting their aspirations and achievements.

The 25th Anniversary Of David Sedaris Reading 'Santaland Diaries'

Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

A Holiday Tradition: David Sedaris Reads 'Santaland Diaries'

Think you're stressed out during the holidays? Try being one of Santa's helpers.

Turns out being surrounded by children, tinsel and merriment isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Humorist David Sedaris wrote about the downside of holiday joy in a collection of fanciful stories based on his experiences called the Santaland Diaries. Once again, here's Sedaris reading from his essay as a somewhat-flawed Macy's department store elf named Crumpet.

Click the play button to hear this holiday tradition.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

A Holiday Favorite: David Sedaris' 'Santaland Diaries'

You might not expect "Santa's helper" to be a career-altering gig, but for David Sedaris, it changed everything. The writer and humorist spent a season working at Macy's as a department store elf. He described his short tenure as Crumpet the Elf in "The Santaland Diaries," an essay that he first read on Morning Edition in 1992. He was brought to NPR by an up-and-coming producer named Ira Glass.

Instantly, a classic was born. Sedaris' reading has become an NPR holiday tradition. Click the "Listen" link above to hear Sedaris read his tale.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Strong Feelings

I grew up with the cemetery, and didn’t mind it. It could be beautiful. A single stone angel, small-breasted and determined, rose amid the more conservative markers close to our house. —Michael Cunningham, “White Angel.”

Guest host David Sedaris presents two stories about feelings that are almost too strong to contain. In “White Angel” Michael Cunningham tells the story of two brothers, and the tragedy that separates them, with heartbreaking simplicity. It’s a coming-of-age story gone wrong, and the narrator is trying to recall the moment when it happened. The story was first published in The New Yorker. Cunningham was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Hours. Other works include Specimen Days, By Nightfall, and The Snow Queen.  Reader James Naughton has received several Tony Awards for his work on Broadway in shows such as City of Angels and Chicago.

In a more light-hearted approach to strong emotions, Bernard Cooper pays tribute to the act of sighing, and how it seems to express the whole personality. Bernard Cooper’s most recent work is the memoir My Avant-Garde Education. SELECTED SHORTS’ late host and founder Isaiah Sheffer is the reader of “The Fine Art of Sighing.”

“White Angel,” by Michael Cunningham, performed by James Naughton

“The Fine Art of Sighing,” by Bernard Cooper, performed by Isaiah Sheffer

The SELECTED SHORTS theme is David Peterson's “That's the Deal,” performed by the Deardorf/Peterson Group.

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit http://www.symphonyspace.org/events/series/71/selected-shorts

We’re interested in your response to these programs. Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org

Private Lives

I ran down the street to play with Tim almost every day…all day long we dodged bullets in rank suburban tangles of elderberry and ailanthus and day-lilies run wild, running doubled over, darting in breathless zigzags from point to point, cover to cover…Donna Tartt, “The Ambush”

Guest host David Sedaris presents two stories about important relationships, and one playful spoof about the lives of celebrity chefs.  

The first story is by Donna Tartt, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Goldfinch. Her other works include the novels The Secret History and The Little Friend.   Her story “The Ambush” was featured in The Best American Short Stories in 2006. In it, Tartt makes a sweet tale out of a sad subject —the death of a dad in Vietnam. His son copes by recruiting the narrator, an 8-year-old girl, for a series of escalating war games. “The Ambush” is also gently satirical, as a rural Southern community meets a brash Brooklyn widow. The reader is SHORTS’ regular Patricia Kalember.

We’ve often featured the fiction of Leonard Michaels—a writers’ writer whose tales frequently include bewildered narrators—like his anti-hero Nachman—who don’t seem to know where they are in their lives. But in “My Father’s Life” Michaels himself is the bewildered narrator, as he pays tribute to a parent who seemed filled with certainties, even as his son struggles with confusion. “My Father’s Life” is read by SELECTED SHORTS’ late founder and host Isaiah Sheffer.

From The Secret Lives of Chefs
(Lisa Hanawalt/Courtesy Lisa Hanawalt)

 

To complete this program, a bit of fun: for an evening Symphony Space created with the food magazine Lucky Peach, a playful series of drawings called “The Secret Lives of Chefs,” by graphic artist Lisa Hanawalt, were projected on the screen. The narrative captions were read with gusto by chef Mario Batali. And Hanawalt’s playful imaginings are featured on this page.

From The Secret Lives of Chefs
(Lisa Hanawalt/Courtesy Lisa Hanawalt)

 

From The Secret Lives of Chefs
(Lisa Hanawalt/Courtesy Lisa Hanawalt)

 

From The Secret Lives of Chefs
(Lisa Hanawalt/Courtesy Lisa Hanawalt)

 

From The Secret Lives of Chefs
(Lisa Hanawalt/Courtesy Lisa Hanawalt)

  

 “The Ambush” by Donna Tartt performed by Patricia Kalember

“My Father's Life” by Leonard Michaels performed by Isaiah Sheffer

“The Secret Lives of Chefs,” graphics by Lisa Hanawalt, performed by Mario Batali

The SELECTED SHORTS theme is David Peterson's “That's the Deal,” performed by the Deardorf/Peterson Group.

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit http://www.symphonyspace.org/events/series/71/selected-shorts

We’re interested in your response to these programs. Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org

David Rakoff Remembered

Guest host David Sedaris presents a program celebrating the late writer and actor David Rakoff. Rakoff read often for SELECTED SHORTS, and in this special tribute show, featuring two of his performances, we hear his exceptional ability to pull emotion and meaning out of a text, without getting in its way. David Sedaris, who was a friend of Rakoff’s, praises him as a “lover of language” who “could read anything.” Here, Rakoff reads Leonard Michaels’ “Cryptology,” in which a neurotic mathematician has a strange encounter, and Roberto Bolano’s “Gomez Palacio,” which is the name a dead-end town where a young man’s life nevertheless takes a turn for the better. Both stories feature bemused narrators with poetic turns of mind, and somewhat strange women.

This program is a re-broadcast.

“Cryptology,” by Leonard Michaels, performed by David Rakoff

“Gomez Palacio,” by Roberto Bolano, performed by David Rakoff

 

The SELECTED SHORTS theme is David Peterson's “That's the Deal,” performed by the Deardorf/Peterson Group.

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit http://www.symphonyspace.org/events/series/71/selected-shorts

We’re interested in your response to these programs. Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org

 

Lost and Found

The distinguished writer Joyce Carol Oates is the queen of American gothic fiction. A quiet dread permeates many of her stories, from collections such as Where is Here?, I Am No One You Know, and her most recent, Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories. She is a winner of The National Book Award, and the Rea Award for the Short Story among other honors.   In “Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?”, which was a Best American Short Stories pick, a flirtatious girl with an innocent awareness of her own attractions is menaced, and you know the stakes are high. The gripping read is by two-time Tony winner Christine Baranski, whose many stage and television roles include “The Real Thing,” “Rumors,” “House of Blue Leaves,” and featured roles on “The Big Bang Theory” and “The Good Wife.” On film she has appeared most recently in “Into the Woods.”  

 In Belle Boggs’ “Havahart,” a SELECTED SHORTS original commission, there is loss of another kind: a tender-hearted librarian parts company with her feral cats. Boggs is the author of the collection Mattaponi Queen: Stories. Her work has been featured in The Paris Review, Orion, Harper’s, and Glimmer Train.  Reader Merritt Wever has a featured role on the television series “Nurse Jackie.”

The final story on this program is by George Saunders. Saunders is the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" grant and the author of the short story collections In Persuasion Nation, Pastoralia, and CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. His most recent work is Tenth of December. He teaches at Syracuse University’s MFA program and is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker.

There’s a streak of wildness in even the shortest Saunders tale, and “Sticks” manages to convey the character of an eccentric father and his problematic relationships with his children in less than a page. It’s read by “Rent” star Anthony Rapp.

“Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?”, by Joyce Carol Oates, performed by Christine Baranski

“Havahart,” by Belle Boggs, performed by Merritt Wever

“Sticks,” by George Saunders, performed by Anthony Rapp

The SELECTED SHORTS theme is David Peterson's “That's the Deal,” performed by the Deardorf/Peterson Group.

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit http://www.symphonyspace.org/events/series/71/selected-shorts

We’re interested in your response to these programs. Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org