From the queue

Last weekend Rajani and I were talking about David Sedaris, and she seemed almost positive that a while back a photo of me and Sandro (another of my college barkada), standing in line at a book signing, had appeared in the newspaper. I was prepared to call her crazy. But it took me a second, and then I remembered that yes, in the summer of 2000, Sandro and I had indeed gone to see David–listen to me, throwing around his first name with such insouciance–at A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books in San Francisco, and on a morning shortly thereafter, an article about independent bookstores appeared in the Chronicle, accompanied by a photo of people in line waiting for David to sign a copy of his book. It was there that he signed my copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day, on the opening page of the story “Jesus Shaves.” (I asked him to sign there, ’cause it’s my favorite story in the book, and he obliged.)

However, Rajani was only half right. I dug through the archives and found the photo. While Sandro appears about one-third of the photo over from the left (seemingly mid-speech, in a black shirt), I, standing to his left, am completely obscured. Oh, well. Take a look. (The bookstore was so packed during the actual reading that there wasn’t enough space in the open area to accomodate everyone. We, along with many others, stood or sat in nearby aisles among the bookshelves, out of view.)

Related: article on David, now on tour with Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, in Sunday’s Times (“Turning Sour Grapes into a Silk Purse“).

Mr. Sedaris’s success has presented him with a familiar artistic problem: maintaining his credibility as the charming surrogate loser who turns the tables on his oppressors with caustic and sometimes brutal wit. A writer who made his name with tales of skimping by as a housecleaner in Manhattan, he now earns up to $25,000 to appear in large halls (bookstore appearances are free); he has apartments in Paris, New York and the trendy Holland Park section of London; and he owns a house in Normandy.

“I have to make it sound like it’s so hard,” Mr. Sedaris said over breakfast at his hotel in Midtown on Wednesday. “Sometimes you reach for that sweater, and you left it at the Paris apartment. You know, it’s so difficult.”

Sigh.