IU Auditorium-bound author publishes ninth book

David Sedaris, champion of the narrative essay and the New York Times Bestseller List to boot is back with his ninth book, “Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls.”

As always, Sedaris presents his audience with a touchingly human and comedic view of absolutely ordinary events — his recollection of being a boy on his country club swim team and not meeting his father’s expectations, purchasing a stuffed owl as a Valentine’s Day present for his partner and spending time in the airport.

His prowess and writing ability makes it so that we can relate so deeply to his personal self that we feel like we’re friends with him, and he’s just telling us a story over dinner. Sedaris has a sharp and satirical way of explaining his stories — lightly setting down his feelings rather than overbearing us with them. His tone is bordering on condescending, but in a loving way. He knows his audience is smart enough to roll with just about anything, and he has a way of making even toilet humor seem on-point and not off-colored.

“Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls” is right up there with other greats from the author of titles such as “Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim” and “Me Talk Pretty One Day in Paris.” His essays are fun and incredibly insightful into his true self from his compulsive nature to his underlying judgmental attitude. On a side note, Sedaris is highly enjoyable to listen to in audiobook form. He reads his own essays and it’s a more personal experience to hear the main character of these stories tell them himself.

However, with “Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls,” Sedaris does veer slightly off course with his new direction, and it’s just not pretty when he does. Sedaris chose to include a few, shorter essays in this book that are not personal narratives, just fictional essays written by fictional characters. In these, Sedaris loses so much of what makes his writing beautiful. His satire is clunky and far too overstated, the humor isn’t light, and the contrast from these essays to reality is so dramatic that it’s hard to take the satire seriously at all; thus completely losing its bite.

Overall, Sedaris knocks it out of the park with his personal essays, and his fictional essays are easy to overlook when surrounded by such wonderful work. The humor is rarely laugh-out-loud, but rather a smile-while-reading type of humor. It rarely lets down. Sedaris is an incredible storyteller with a gift to show his life in a way that is so personable and, in the end, such a pleasure to partake in.

David Sedaris will be reading his essays live, including a Q&A session and a book signing at 8 p.m. Nov. 7, 2013, at the IU Auditorium. His performance is part of the IU Auditorium’s 2013-2014 season. The reading is meant for mature audiences, and student tickets, available to purchase now at www.IUauditorium.com, cost $25, $34 and $39.