LOGAN – You’d expect a “famous author” event at the Ellen Eccles Theatre to be an elegant, high-brow affair.
But “An Evening with David Sedaris” on Nov. 14 turned out to be pretty down and dirty fun.
Respected not just as an author, Sedaris is also noted as a humorist, an incisive satirist and an all-round raconteur. He played all of those cards, delighting the sell-out crowd in Logan.
Sedaris also had the audience rolling in the aisles when he casually dropped practically every vulgar epithet in the Anglo-Saxon lexicon over the course of the evening.
He started the evening by tearing a page out of social media posts to quote every absurd allegation we’ve heard about outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris in recent months, playing the role of a Trump true-believer gullably swallowing them whole.
“I thought this bit wouldn’t work after the election,” he quipped. “But I guess it still does.”
Then Sedaris moved onto some remarkably off-color limericks, which he insisted had to be vulgar to be funny.
The author’s routine quickly shifted to a short story he penned about Santa Claus’ grandson recounting his final Christmas visit to the not-so jolly old elf.
Sedaris also explained the trials and tribulations of an elderly author attempting to deal with oh-so woke Gen-X fact-checkers at “The New Yorker” magazine.
After a safari in Africa, Sedaris wrote a satire for the famous magazine mentioning witch doctors. For fear of offending someone – presumably any witch doctor practicing medicine in Manhattan — the fact-checkers wanted to change every reference to “traditional herbalists.”
“I won that battle,” he said with pride, “and not a single witch doctor complained.”
Several of Sedaris’ books have earned places on national bestseller lists, including Calypso; Naked; Me Talk Pretty One Day; and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim.
In his most recent work – Happy-Go-Lucky – the author recalls the pandemic years when, like the rest of us, he was stuck in lock-down, unable to tour and read for his beloved audiences.
In Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious and poignant about these recent upheavals, expressing in graphic language both his misanthropy and his desire for connection that drive us all.
In a story from that latest work, Sedaris is brilliantly candid about his own homosexuality and his partner Hugh while recounting a seemingly endless trip from Bangor, Maine to New York City in the rain.
In a question-and-answer session following his formal presentation, Sedaris talked about meeting the late Queen Elizabeth II – who recognized him for roadside clean-up efforts in England – and having an audience with the Pope. But the author confessed that he was really impressed by meeting comic Chris Rock at the Vatican.
“An Evening with David Sedaris” was sponsored by the Cache Valley Center for the Arts, with an assist from Utah Public Radio.
The Cache Valley Center for the Arts is an independent, non-profit organization. Its goal is to facilitate the best use of publicly owned facilities here in Logan, including the Ellen Eccles Theatre, the Thatcher-Young Mansion and the Bullen Center.
The Ellen Eccles Theatre is located at 43 South Main Street in Logan.