“Are you a writer because things happen to you – or do things happen to you because you’re a writer?”

It was the question I most wanted to sling at David Sedaris when I got him on the phone recently. Long considered one of the world’s finest memoirists, he weaves together stories that cover the business of life, both the absurdities and indignities – and it really does seem like a lot is always happening to him.

Or does he just notice more, ingest more? Stammering for a second, he agrees: “I think things happen to me because I’m a writer. Often, people will say, ‘How come those things don’t happen to me?’ And I think, ‘You likely don’t say yes as often as I do. You’re looking at your phone all the time, and I have my eyes open.’” Also, he adds: “I don’t have an ’off’ switch.” 

Fifteen books in – including modern classics such as Me Talk Pretty One Day, Happy-Go-Lucky and Holidays on Ice – Sedaris, 69, returned this spring with his latest, The Land and Its People, filled with more trials, tribulations and trivialities all rendered with a bespoke pithiness. In it, he covers everything from an epic trip he made through Kenya – while bringing along his safari book of choice, The Andy Warhol Diaries – to an audience with Pope Francis alongside 106 other comedy giants. While in Rome, Sedaris visits Gammarelli, the official tailor of the papacy – with Julia Louis-Dreyfus in tow! – with the express purpose of buying an ankle-length black cassock. The book includes a story about his language-learning adventures with Duolingo and his reluctant job as a caretaker to his long-time love, Hugh Hamrick. Sedaris describes “the puffy, foot-tall toilet seat” Hugh needed after a hip replacement operation as “a specter of death, no less chilling than the Grim Reaper himself.”

Speaking of Hugh – surprise! – they got married, as he reveals in the book. But Sedaris still refuses to use the dreaded H-word. “I just don’t like the word husband. I don’t want to hear it,” he says, telling me he “identifies” as boyfriend. 

That said, he will forever be married to books! Along the way in our zigzaggy conversation, he gave Zoomer the official Sedaris reading list. 

What’s the best book you’ve read this year?
Rejection [by Thai-American writer Tony Tulathimutte]. His characters are all in their 20s, so the book explained a lot to me. It’s desperately sad and terribly funny at the same time. But also: Flesh by David Szalay.  

What book can’t you wait to dive into?
I cannot wait for Ann Patchett’s new one, Whistler. I just love Ann. She and I met maybe eight years ago. It’s nice when your friend has a book coming out, and you are not going to have to lie about how good the book is – because it’s Ann Patchett!  

What is your favourite book of all time?
I always loved The Easter Parade by Richard Yates. I mean, I love all his books, but that one in particular. I can always read Flannery O’Connor, too. Any time. Any day.

What book completely changed your perspective?
Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. 

If you could have dinner with any author, living or dead, who would it be?
I love people who would have hated me. Richard Yates would have hated me. So, him!