Book Review: Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002

(Bought at the Strand book stall on Central Park West for $10) I had read Sedaris' later volume of diary entries, A Carnival of Snackery, while I was recovering from a car accident. This book covers his days struggling at odd jobs in his hometown of Raleigh, NC, then moving to Chicago to teach and finally the big move to New York where he eventually finds his niche as a best-selling humorist. These entries were more coherent than the later book where he jumped from anecdotes about living in France and England to going on book tours. Here we get the sense of Sedaris' career progressing. I remember seeing a play he wrote with his sister Amy at LaMaMa when they collaborated under the name The Talent Family. It was called One Woman Shoe and I reviewed it for BackStage. It was fascinating to see behind the scenes what was going on in his life as he emerged as a major writer in the 1990s. The diaries have lots of funny diversions about farting and animal's assholes. 500 pages went very fast. Though I think sometimes he does weird stuff in order to write about it. Like feeding spiders.