I was at a Mother’s Day dinner at my brother’s house last month. I was talking about how hard it is to read aloud your own writing in an interesting voice. In developing my podcast, Live Action Coaching, I had written intros to each coaching demonstration and was horrified to hear the dullness in my own voice as I recorded what I had written.

This led to a discussion of David Sedaris, a popular humorist who reads aloud his writing for National Public Radio and in other venues. One brother mimicked the voice of David Sedaris. My other brother found the SantaLand Diaries on NPR’s website so I could hear the real thing. A niece pulled out his book, Me Talk Pretty One Day, and my sister-in-law recounted having seen Sedaris speak in Denver recently.  Another sister-in-law talked about one of his more famous essays about finding an unexpected and surprisingly large turd in the toilet of a friend’s house, left from a previous occupant. My other nieces and nephew, in their teens and twenties, nodded in agreement that this was truly funny stuff.

Where had I been while David Sedaris was making his mark on my extended family? After listening to SantaLand Diaries (while the rest of my family hovered over the computer and my brother cranked up the volume on his speakers), I vaguely remembered the voice from the morning commute to my engineering job. Oh, yes, this was one of the numerous pleasant NPR interludes that kept me from thinking too much about the politics and frustrations of being an employee in a large company. 

The bigger question is this:  What makes David Sedaris so compelling and engaging–to my brothers with their scientific mind to their wives who are the humanists in the family to my nieces and nephews who are adolescents and young adults with hipness written all over them? 

In reading the essay about the turd and listening to the Diaries, I found my answer.  By no means do I want to one-up the many reviews of his work.  And what I’m noticing is that his writing has the mark of other writers I enjoy–his writing has the authenticity that can only come with first-hand experience and the rawness of our own inner voices, those voices that speak for us when we are too embarrassed to say the truth. People love irreverence, especially when it comes in the form of looking at our own lives more lightly and playfully.

I’m going to read and listen to more of David Sedaris.