Happy-go-lucky
Books | Biography & Autobiography / Literary Figures
4.4
(7.7K)
David Sedaris
David Sedaris, the "champion storyteller," (Los Angeles Times) returns with 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. To cope, he walks for miles through a nearly deserted city, smelling only his own breath. He vacuums his apartment twice a day, fails to hoard anything, and contemplates how sex workers and acupuncturists might be getting by during quarantine. As the world gradually settles into a new reality, Sedaris too finds himself changed. His offer to fix a stranger's teeth rebuffed, he straightens his own, and ventures into the world with new confidence. Newly orphaned, he considers what it means, in his seventh decade, no longer to be someone's son. And back on the road, he discovers a battle-scarred America: people weary, storefronts empty or festooned with Help Wanted signs, walls painted with graffiti reflecting the contradictory messages of our time: Eat the Rich. Trump 2024. Black Lives Matter. 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. If we must live in interesting times, there is no one better to chronicle them than the incomparable David Sedaris.
Comedy
Humor
Memoir
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More Details:
Author
David Sedaris
Pages
400
Publisher
Little Brown
Published Date
2022
ISBN
031644541X 9780316445412
Community ReviewsSee all
"This was a great book. I love the chapters in the beginning because I heard some of these at the tour he did at town hall back in 2019. David’s discussion of Tiffany and their father and how she accused him of sexually abusing her as a child and how their siblings were super weird about believing it because “he’s our dad he’s just creepy,” was very telling. David Sedaris’s words are so important and I really enjoyed this book"
"Duh. It’s David Sedaris. "
G R
Gabrielle Reece
"I just started reading The Only Girl in Town it’s really good so far "
E K
Eydee Kadake
"You welcome "
A J
Akari Jamison