Interview: David Sedaris

David Sedaris has been a dishwasher, an amphetamines addict, a performance artist, a stone-cutter and a maid. Most recently, though, he is one of the funniest writers we’ve ever read. His latest collection of essays, When You Are Engulfed in Flames (Little Brown and Co., $29), details some of his consistently bizarre encounters with humanity. We chatted with him recently about writing, the Japanese, and Marisa Tomei’s breasts.

You were working as a housecleaner when you got your first story published. How did that happen?

You know, I was just so lucky. When I was about 30, I was reading at this place in Chicago, and Ira Glass, who’s on National Public Radio, heard me. And then he called two years later asking if I had anything Christmas-y. I recorded this story about working as an elf at Macy’s, and he put it on his show and he put it on Morning Edition, which 10 million people listen to or something, and it was pretty remarkable. I think the broadcast ended at 7:10, and my phone started ringing off the hook. Two publishing houses called and asked me if I had a book. Movie studios called, the Seinfeld show called and asked if I wanted to write for them, David Letterman’s people called and asked if I would meet with him. I mean, I went from having no opportunities to having so many. And I was lucky, I think, that I knew what I wanted. So I said yes to the book. I don’t feel like I’m a naturally talented writer, I feel like I’m just luckier than most people.

A good part of your latest book concerns your trip to Japan, where you attempted to quit smoking. Was there a lot of stuff from that trip that didn’t make it into the story?

I went to the north, near Nagano, to a forest during a snowstorm. And there were these snow monkeys, and they sit in these natural hot tubs, and they’re just looking ahead and blinking and it’s snowing on them. There’s no cage, there’s no fence, nothing. But you were invisible to the monkeys, I think, because no one feeds them. Because Japanese people follow the rules. In America, if you said “Don’t Feed the Monkeys,” people would be giving them chicken nuggets and the monkeys would be hooligans. And so that was something I wanted to write about, but not in that story, because it was its own thing.

Seen any good movies recently?