There’s nothing too special about an essay read aloud. A comedy essay? Well, that’s a little different. For the past few years, I’ve been obsessed with a writer named David Sedaris. A Raleigh native, Sedaris’s stories are personal, inventive, and vindictive. Through humor, his writing transports you into the nagging brain of someone taking offense at what others may find trivial—a “cutter” in a Starbucks line, a “nagging” parent scolding their child, a faulty light switch. It’s the little things that annoy Sedaris, so I found it funny when, during his “best of” audiobook, one of the stories switches from a smooth, sound-booth recording to audio captured at a live event. This is the audio featured in the above Youtube video and it just sounds kind of…meh. You get lots of echoes, a few misread lines, and plenty of (at times, distracting) laughter from the audience.
With all that said, there are some interesting things that happen when you go from listening to a clean, recorded version of a story to a live take. My laughter felt louder, especially during the moments when the audience chimed in too. The story felt more alive, almost malleable, as I listened to mistakes or quick changes of tone. At first, I found myself annoyed by the quality, but eventually, I began to prefer this messier telling.
I once heard that David Sedaris likes to read his stories on tour before adding them to his books. This, he explains, allows him to workshop with the audience. To see which parts of his stories get the most laughter, silence, etc—then use this information when he goes back to edit. Maybe it’s the fluidness of this recording at the root of my enjoyment. Its imperfection made me feel like I was right above Sedaris’s shoulder, not just listening to the story, but the audience: “Did that line land,” I would think, “or did it go in one ear and out the other?”