Travel Blog

Before heading to The Parker last night to hear David Sedaris, I went through my Best American Travel Writing anthologies to see if there were any in which we both appeared. I found three, but grabbed the 2002 edition, where our pieces appeared back-to-back. My plan was to have him sign the table of contents page, where – I would tell him – we were neighbors. Once at the Miami Book Fair I handed John Updike a quarterly in which he had a poem and I had an essay, and he wrote: “To Thomas Swick from John Updike” – then put a bracket around our two names and wrote “In this issue!”

Sedaris took the stage at The Parker without an introduction and, after a few perfunctory remarks, began reading from a sheaf of loose pages. The longest reading was of a piece I had recently read in The New Yorker, about a visit with friends in Maine, a cancelled flight to New York, and a long drive in a rental car with another stranded traveler, a young Chinese woman. This was disappointing; humor depends on the element of surprise. Yet the way he read it made it funnier than I had originally found it.

Also, there were some things in it that I didn’t remember. I had forgotten that the people gathered at the house in Maine had included a MacArthur fellow and a Pulitzer Prize winner. And I had completely erased from my memory the scene in which one of them expresses his dislike of Greta Thunberg and then does a mocking imitation of her.  

There is a scene, on the drive to New York, in which they pull up to a gas station to use the restrooms only to find the gas station closed. Heading for privacy behind a dumpster, they spot two Orthodox Jews adjusting their flies. Sedaris shouts “Hasidim!” – “the way I might have said ‘Deer!’ or ‘Racoons!’” I didn’t remember the second animal.

When he finished reading, Sedaris revealed that The New Yorker employs a “sensitivity reader.” (He said the term three times, the first two times in a garbled accent that showed his disdain.) This reader, he said, had insisted that he take out mention of the prestigious prizes because they sounded too “elitist.” The reader – I don’t think Sedaris mentioned his or her gender – also took out the bit about Thunberg.

They had fought over his reaction to seeing Orthodox Jews emerging from behind a dumpster; Sedaris had been able to salvage ‘deer’ but he had lost ‘racoons” because, the reader said, they were viewed as furtive and shifty. “But,” he pleaded, now with his audience, “racoons are what you see around dumpsters.” For me – if not for him – this was not a big loss; one example is often better than two.

There is a discussion in the car, with the Chinese woman, about pandas; this was flagged by the reader because it touched on stereotypes. Sedaris defended it – and won – by saying it was the woman who had brought up the subject.

Sedaris said he was grateful to write for The New Yorker and noted that any cuts they make to his stories he will restore when he puts them in books. But his insights into the inner workings of the place explained why the writing is so often bland. (Unlike that in the British Spectator, whose new editor, in his introductory column, said that the best magazines are parties on pages.)

During the Q&A, someone asked how much he had walked that day, and, in answering, he praised the Riverwalk. “I love it – that walkway along the water.” In less than 24 hours, he had found one of the loveliest things in Fort Lauderdale.

The line for autographs stretched through the lobby. A man came around and handed everyone a piece of paper on which we were to write what we wanted his inscription to read. This was an attempt to save time, yet Sedaris is so friendly with fans, so giving of his time, that for five minutes the line didn’t move. I tucked the anthology under my arm and headed for the door.