Writers Archive

Saw David Sedaris last night at the War Memorial in the city. It was really fun although it didn't get off to the best start. The guy who introduced him, the general manager from SF public radio station KALW, said Sedaris would be reading from all previously unpublished works. When Sedaris came out, the first story he read was his recently published essay Undecided from the New Yorker.

Nothing compares to Mr. Sedaris reading his own material. His nasally high-pitched voice is tinged with equal measures sadness and sarcasm. So even hearing him read a story I had previously read was a pleasure. Sedaris is a rare breed in the US, a master story teller, along the lines of the late Spalding Gray. His observations are pithy and interesting, filled with horrific insights into our oddly idiosyncratic country.

During the evening, Sedaris read several stories, read some entries from his diary, talking about this and other book tours, and at the took questions from the audience and signed books (there was a huge line). There were lots of juicy tidbits, but my favorite was in the part where he was talking about book tours. He said he loved them. Loved getting out on the road and meeting people. Just recently he was in a hotel room listening to local conservative talk radio. One of the callers said to the host that if Obama wins the election, he's going to leave the country. Sedaris says he's thinking to himself, "AND GO WHERE? THE RIGHT WING PARTS OF EUROPE?".

Here are some past gems for the uninitiated:

STORIES FROM THIS AMERICAN LIFE

47: Christmas and Commerce
Santaland Diaries (at 5:25)

173: Three Kinds of Deception
Accidental Deception (at 44:10)

Many more stories on the This American Life website.

I'm exhausted. I'm dying to go home and put my ass in bed and my head on a feather pillow. This is only partially because of the slow death march alcohol fueled spring forward shortened debauchery of Saturday night. It's mostly because I could never catch up on sleep on Sunday. I'm guessing I slept about 3 hours on Saturday night. That's a generous estimate. I tried to sleep in, but I was sleeping on a futon on the floor of the living room. So when anyone else in the house is up and light is streaming through the picture window, you're up. I tried to get out of Tahoe in the early afternoon so I could go home and sleep, but traffic sent me back to house. I tried to nap back at the house, but a few others were turned back by the traffic and I couldn't get to sleep. When I finally did go home, all I wanted to do was sleep, but I made a huge mistake and turned on the TV. That's when I saw Robert Kaplan being interviewed on CSPAN's Book TV. I had to watch.

Kaplan is one of my heroes, a god in the extremely exclusive pantheon of travel writers that includes Paul Theroux, Bill Bryson, Eric Newby, Bruce Chatwin, Jan Morris and Robert Byron. I first discovered him when I was staying at small guesthouse in southern Cambodia just after 9/11. They had a copy of The Ends of the Earth and I ate it up. Good travel writing always has a context. It's not simple reporting of place. For Jan Morris, it's language. For Bill Bryson, it's humor. For Paul Theroux, it's literature. And for Robert Kaplan, it's history. If you are at all interested in the history of the world around us, and appreciate great travel literature, you will love Robert Kaplan. That is, you will love his words. If you see an interview with him, you will understand quickly.

The Book TV In-Depth series is excellent. They sit down with an author for a 3 hour interview. So when they say in-depth, they mean it. I caught only the last hour or so. I was mesmerized. Kaplan was brilliant. He seemed to have his finger on the pulse of any place any of the callers asked about. But, and this was really disappointing, he came off as a humorless, know it all dick. I lost a lot of respect for him after seeing him take questions. People would call up with really complicated questions and before they could get to the end, Kaplan would interrupt them by saying, "I can answer that". Then he would go off and pontificate about this country or that region. His information was fascinating, but the style left a lot to be desired. He was like that kid who sits in the front row of class, and shoots his hand in the air the second the teacher asks a question. Sort of like Tracy Flick from Election. The man is obviously brilliant. No one is going to deny that, but where's the damn humility? It's not like this guy is in his 20s. He's almost 50. It was strange. I hope that it was his relative inexperience being interviewed like that, the guy travels constantly, that lead to nervousness, that lead to hyperagressive responses. Anyway, I was tired. I probably should have just put my ass to sleep.

Ok. First piece of news. Ralph "Sonny" Barger, legendary founder of the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club is not a functional illiterate. In fact, get this, he actually wrote a book about his life. Well, to be honest, Sonny probably didn't do much of the writing. He had two ghost writers Keith & Kent Zimmerman help him with Hell's Angels: The Life & Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club. Sort of rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it? And a clever, too.

Well, for most of the book, Sonny exlpains his draw to the open road, his love for bikes and his brotherhood with his club members. The whole book, which runs 255 pages, could be probably be condensed into a few paragraphs. Let me give it a try right here.

Hi, I'm Sonny Barger. I founded the Hell's Angels. We know you don't like us. We don't like you. We fucking kill pencil necks like you for even looking at us. People are afraid of us. We fight with anyone who wants to fight and many who don't. We deal drugs. Why won't the cops forget that we deal heroin and leave us the fuck alone? We'll do time in prision, because freedom ain't cheap.

Sonny gives a plug to his website a few times in the book, but when I tried it was down, but have fear, if you sprechen sie deutsch, you're in luck because the German version is up and running.

"Flying from one capital city to another is not travel to me. Travel, especially in Africa, must be overland and must involve the crossing of borders — negotiating on land, usually on foot, the national frontier. That experience teaches a great deal about the state of the country."

This is an excerpt from an interview with former PCV and travel writer extroadinaire Paul Theroux. You can find the whole interview on the Peace Corps Writers site.