Sedaris brings big laughs to Wharton

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His story about the fat Jesus really got us laughing. Can you imagine Jesus with a beer belly instead of a six-pack, sporting a comb-over because of a receding hairline?

Or what about the farting flight attendant? You know, when the flight attendant walks down the aisle of the plane passing gas. It’s called crop dusting.

Both of these stories, coming directly from David Sedaris’ diary, were read aloud Sunday to almost 2,500 people filling the seats of Wharton Center’s Cobb Great Hall.

Sedaris, a New York Times bestselling author specializing in humorous memoirs, is so funny people were willing to pay up to $45 a ticket to hear him read them.

That was it. One man. In a great hall. With the audience holding its breath just long enough to explode with laughter again.

Sedaris’ stories are easy to follow and refrain from any run-on sentences or difficult vocabulary. He focuses his efforts on getting his story across — and always in the most humorous way.

This often is done by his use of unpredictable, yet understandable metaphors. People quickly relate to the metaphors, and despite the fact that some catch you off guard, the end result will leave you content with laughter.

Sedaris admits to keeping his diary with him wherever he goes, taking notes of the funny or interesting situations he gets into.

For instance, when he was in Italy piling on a bus, one of his friends got his head smashed between the bus doors when they closed.

He spent the next couple of minutes describing this incident amid pervasive laughter then finally explaining that his friend really only had his face in the door for about five seconds.

The story leaves me imagining how helpless his friend in the bus door must have felt: stuck in pain, looking up at your friend David who is making notes in his diary about your misfortune.

Some scenes Sedaris describes are done with so much detail you find yourself wondering if they are
factually sound — to get all of these details correct you’d almost have to take a picture.

This begs the question whether or not to consider his memoirs as works of fiction or nonfiction.

In response to a Time Magazine question about this, Sedaris responded, “I’ve always been a huge exaggerator, but when I write something, I put it on a scale. And if it’s 97 percent true, I think that’s true enough. I’m not going to call it fiction because 3 percent of it isn’t true.”

As far as I’m concerned, I’ll pick up his books in either section of the bookstore, assured to enjoy simple, relatable and hilarious stories.

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