The stand-up of American writing

Although he used to reject it, David Sedaris has grown comfortable with the 'humorist' tag, and he even road-tests new material in front of an audience in the manner of a comedian, he tells Alan O'Riordan

MEETING A writer in person, it is often difficult to reconcile him or her with the work. With David Sedaris, however, the man is very much the writer. He is alert and inquisitive, not at all introverted and asks as many questions of his interviewer as vice versa ("If a writer's an asshole, do you call him prickly?"). Points of interest - a local word or pronunciation, the engineering feat that is the wafer-thin toast he's eating - are jotted down in a notebook pulled from his shirt pocket.

Turning the flux of reality into a funny story is, it seems, his way of looking at the world. Invariably, he will respond to a question with an illustrative anecdote rather than a generality: hiding from his neighbours in Normandy; the woman who complained to him for asking her daughter if she knew many disabled people; buying a gross of condoms to give to teenagers at a reading ("I needed something light and individually wrapped, so . . . ").

"It happens every so often, everything lines up and I think: 'This is my life, but it also feels like a story.' I'm not good at going out and making things happen, but if it happens three or four times a year, then I'm set," says Sedaris, who was in Dublin to read from his new collection of biographical essays, When You Are Engulfed in Flames.

Good at it or not, Sedaris certainly used to make things happen more often that he does now. His earlier work - whether growing up with his now notorious family in North Carolina, hitching around the US, or working a succession of dead-end jobs - showed Sedaris the outsider was never short on material. But, with success, that has changed.

We are talking in what has become his home environment: a five-star hotel in a city he'll barely have time to see during yet another tour (he does two 30-city tours of the US a year, as well as appearances around the world). He spends more time on an aircraft that in a car, and the rest of the time writing. Little surprise then that a good deal of When You Are Engulfed in Flamesis set in aircraft and hotels. He once said he'd never write about that side of his life, yet here he is writing about it.

"I was reading in Australia last week and someone said: 'I like those stories about your mother, but now we have stories about you riding in the pointy end of the airplane.' I said: 'But I really like those stories.' It's not to say I don't have more things about that side of my life, but I reserve the right to move around in what I write about, and travelling has become a big part of my life."

When You Are Engulfed in Flamesends with an 80-page "Smoking Section", about when Sedaris moved to Japan to give up smoking (the title comes from there too, a fine example of "Engrish" from a hotel's emergency instruction booklet). You can't help but think that this was a case of the writer's needs coming before those of the man who wants to quit smoking. But to Sedaris, it felt like a normal thing to do. Who knows, maybe when you are rich and mobile it is a normal thing to do.

"The best advice for giving up smoking, I was told, was to move," he says. "So I did. I'd been to Japan for three days and I wanted to go there to see if I liked it enough to spend the rest of my life there. And sure, I felt certain I could write about it, but I think others could maybe go to Japan for three months and get a lot more out of it."

ANOTHER, MORE long-term move has helped Sedaris to prolong his productive status as observer-outsider: living in France. "I didn't go there to make that happen, but it's worked out like that," he says. "I've been there nine years and the second I land in the airport, I feel that I'm in hostile territory. I get uptight, and I stay that way. I want to say it ends when we go to the country - but it doesn't."

If his lifestyle has led to somewhat truncated material and artificial moves such as moving to Japan to kick cigarettes, it remains crucial to Sedaris's art. He does not hide away behind a keyboard for a couple of years before doing an obligatory book tour. His creative process is more like that of a stand-up: he road-tests his material before an audience, noting what works and what doesn't in the margins of what he's reading aloud. He's not precious about his prose, polished and all as it is; he just looks for what gets the laughs. And if that turns out to be a pause or a raised eyebrow rather than a turn of phrase, so be it: Sedaris sees himself as a live act first and foremost.

"It's the best way to hear my essays, I think," he says. "The biggest audience on this tour will be about 4,000. I have no idea what they are doing there, and there's no point asking them because all they'll say is 'I love your book'. But if someone cut my tongue out, I guess I'd still write, but I'd have to find an alter ego to read it."

"If only one reviewer would say the book was funny," James Joyce used to moan about the reception of Ulysses. It is a rare complaint among writers, most of whom dread the faint praise of "humorous". Sedaris, with his acute observations of modern life, flawless rhythm and often melancholic mood, could easily complain that much of his talent is overlooked, but he has grown comfortable with the "humorist" tag:

"I used to reject it, but look at me, I've got a cardigan sweater on," he says. "All I need is the patches on the elbow. Because my world is sort of small, I need to be funny. How else could I write essays about trying to make coffee or birds throwing themselves at my window? I used to reject it because I thought a humorist was someone who wrote about rearranging his sock drawer. But now I look at that sock drawer and think . . . hmmm."

In this age when writers are expected to sell themselves to sell their books, Sedaris has one up on the competition: he is his own main subject. But how real is the Woody Allen-esque, somewhat inept David Sedaris of his books: the guy who can't drive, pay a gas bill, or conjugate French verbs?

"It's me, that guy, but it's a question of editing out parts of myself," he says. "I wouldn't write about doing something decent. I think the real me is in my diary and that's under lock and key. I play up the bad stuff. If you make fun of others, it works better if you make fun of yourself. But I genuinely don't think that much of myself. My friend is writing a book for young people called All the Wrong People Have Self-Esteem. It's a good title, and it's true."

TRUTH IS A vexed question for Sedaris these days. Alex Heard, in the New Republic, famously wrote an exposé of his stories, pointing out their inaccuracies. These included that a sanitarium he wrote about was not Gothic, but - shock - Tuscan Revival. That Sedaris, who so obviously exaggerates for effect, should be gone over with a fine-tooth comb seems faintly ridiculous, but it has affected him. The new volume even contains his counter-blast: a story, Of Mice and Men, about the less than accurate way we remember and transmit stories.

"There's an epidemic in the US right now," he says. "It all started with James Frey, I think [the author of sham memoir A Million Little Pieces]. The story is kept alive because journalists like it: 'Sure, he might sell millions of books, but you come to me for the truth. If I didn't have such scruples, I could be rich like him, but, you know what, crucify me! I'm a principled, honest person and the truth means something to me.' "

Sedaris laughs, pleased at once again putting words into someone else's mouth. Serious again, he adds: "Non-fiction sells so much more in the US, so people think that's why I call it biography, but I don't think what I write is fiction, I really don't. But there's a reason I'm not a reporter - I couldn't trust myself with facts."

• When You Are Engulfed in Flamesis published by Little Brown, £11.99