David Sedaris, the “champion storyteller,” (Los Angeles Times) returns with “Happy-Go-Lucky,” his first new collection of personal essays since the bestselling “Calypso.”
Back when restaurant menus were still printed on paper, and wearing a mask—or not—was a decision made mostly on Halloween, David Sedaris spent his time doing normal things. As “Happy-Go-Lucky” opens, he is learning to shoot guns with his sister, visiting muddy flea markets in Serbia, buying gummy worms to feed to ants, and telling his nonagenarian father wheelchair jokes.
But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he’s stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, the part of his work he loves most. As the world gradually settles into a new reality, Sedaris too finds himself changed.
In “Happy-Go-Lucky,” David Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about these recent upheavals, personal and public, and expresses in precise language both the misanthropy and desire for connection that drive us all.