David Sedaris, humor-writing superstar

DAVID SEDARIS is the writing equivalent of Bruce Springsteen. While other guys are playing smaller rooms, Sedaris consistently plays the equivalent of arenas. This week he's at the 1,800-seat Merriam Theater, where he will read eight new short stories on Saturday. Sedaris called us from Paris, where he lives with his oft-mentioned partner, Hugh, to chat about what makes him such a rock star of the literary world.

Q. What is it about your writing that lends itself to performance?

A. I wish I could tell you. I don't have any idea why people in the audience are there. I think I always had an unfair advantage being on the radio [he's a regular contributor to NPR] because when you're on the radio people hear your voice. They feel like

you're talking just to them. It's the way I feel when I listen to Garrison Keillor on the radio, like he's just talking to me. It establishes an intimacy.

For a long time I thought that's what people are doing. They heard me on the radio so they're used to my reading out loud to them so that's what they're doing here. But a week ago, I did a big reading in a 1,500-seat theater in Amsterdam. Earlier this summer, I did a reading in Rome and that was like 2,500 people. I'm not on the radio in either of those places, so it felt good. I thought, these people came just because they know my books. I don't have that unfair advantage of radio. That meant a lot to me that they would come anyway.

Q. Do you think that the performing - that constant reading out loud - has affected the way that you write?

A. Yes, definitely. If you're reading something in front of an audience, you need to have dialogue in your story and it has to clip along in a way that if it's just on a page, it doesn't have to. People can just say, "Oh, that's nice that he put that word in front of that one. Oh, I always liked that word. Look! That word has seven syllables in it." But when you're reading a story in front of an audience it has to move along.

I have these eight stories so I'll read them out loud and I'll go back to the hotel room and reread them and reread them and reread them because every time I read it out loud, I'll learn something.