APRIL 23, 2019
AN EVENING WITH
DAVID SEDARIS
7:30 pm
The Best-Selling Author, Humorist and Contributor to This American Life David
Sedaris is the author of the previous bestsellers Naked, Me Talk Pretty One Day,
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, and regular National Public Radio
contributor David Sedaris returns with his most deeply personal and darkly
hilarious book.
If you’ve ever laughed your way through David Sedaris’s cheerfully
misanthropic stories, you might think you know what you’re getting with
Calypso. You’d be wrong.
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 most. And life at the Sea Section, as he names the
vacation home, is exactly as idyllic as he imagined, except for one tiny, vexing
realization: it’s impossible to take a vacation from yourself.
With Calypso, Sedaris sets his formidable powers of observation toward
middle age and mortality. Make no mistake: these stories are very, very
funny–it’s a book that can make you laugh ’til you snort, the way only family
can. Sedaris’s powers of observation have never been sharper, and his ability
to shock readers into laughter unparalleled. But much of the comedy here is
born out of that vertiginous moment when your own body betrays you and
you realize that the story of your life is made up of more past than future.
This is beach reading for people who detest beaches, required reading
for those who loathe small talk and love a good tumor joke. Calypso is
simultaneously Sedaris’s darkest and warmest book yet–and it just might be
his very best.
CHARLESTON GAILLARD CENTER: 2018-2019 SEASON PROGRAM: SPRING | 143