Pushkin. This is talk easy. I'm San Francisco author David Sideris.

Beginning in 1994 with Barrel Fever,

Sedaris has published one celebrated essay collection

after the next.

Some of my favorites include Naked, Me Talk Pretty One Day, and Calypso.

In honor of his nearly 30-year career, he's won the third reprise for American humor and the Jonathan Swift prize for satire and humor.

In 2019 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

His latest book is called Happy Go Lucky and is perhaps his most personal work to date.

While making poignant observations about mass shootings, the pandemic, and life in a post-Trump America a prevailing focus in this book is

his late father Lou Cideris who passed away last year at the age of 98.

Growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina in the 60s and 70s,

the second oldest of six children,

David and his father had a contentious relationship.

For years,

Sedaris has grappled with him on the page through colorful language

and funny stories. Lovable Lou was what many readers came to know him as.

But something happened to David upon his passing, and not just to David, but David's work

itself.

Suddenly, all the uproarious tales of his father's indiscretions, his homophobia, his abuse, and no longer felt so funny.

In fact, it started to feel a little dishonest. And so in many ways, happy go lucky is a corrective to that.

A way for Sedaris to better understand his father and his relationship to him.

You'll hear passages from that book and others throughout this episode. There's actually a lot of reading in this talk and that's because

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