Before the dawn of Facebook there were diaries
Print Edition
LONG before Facebook was a gleam in Mark Zuckerberg’s eye or the president of the United States became the world’s most powerful tweeter, David Sedaris was recording his day-to-day life the old-school way — in diaries.
Randomly open to any page of “Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002)” and you’ll find a gem:
“April 16, 1979, Raleigh: Dad on friendship: ‘Sure, some people are nice. Real nice. Nice like carpets so you can walk all over them.’
“Nov. 4, 1987, Chicago: I saw a bumper sticker the other day that read, ‘I LOVE KILLING COMMUNISTS.’ The word love was replaced by a heart shape I’m guessing they’ll put on the typewriter keyboard any day now, right beside the exclamation point.”
Sedaris has been reading his diary entries aloud for decades now at meet-the-author events, but “Theft by Finding” marks the first time he’s curated his favorites and bound them up for the masses. It’s a little like a memoir, except all the holes aren’t filled in. It helps to know that he has five siblings (Lisa, Gretchen, Amy, Paul and his late sister Tiffany), was raised in a suburb of Raleigh, North Carolina, and has a partner named Hugh. The rest you can piece together from the entries — restless in Raleigh at the age of 21, he sets out each fall to pick fruit in places like Odell, Oregon, and Ithaca, New York, where he lets his eye for the absurd wander and writes it all down. Eventually he ends up at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, envisioning a future in visual and performance art.
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