And Here's the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers on Their Craft

by Mike Sacks

  Then it becomes a paragraph about car rates. To me, it was just a throwaway line. And there goes the humor.

  How do some of the crazier situations you write about happen to you? Are you more attuned to certain situations than others might be?

  I wrote a story for The New Yorker that was called “Journey Into Night” [December 17, 2007]. I sat in the “business-elite” section while out on a book tour. This was new to me — sitting there. After we took off, the flight attendant asked, “Do you mind if I move somebody next to you?” The seat was empty. She said something like, “I've got a passenger a few rows up, and people are starting to complain about his crying. He's Polish, and his mother just died; he's on his way to the funeral.”

  So this guy sat next to me, and it really kind of ruins your good time. If you're watching a funny movie on a plane and the person next to you is crying, it sort of brings the whole thing down. If you're thinking in terms of writing, you ask yourself, Can a crying Polish man sit next to me for six hours? The answer is, Sure. But if you're not a writer, and you're not thinking in those terms, then your reaction will probably be, Fuck this! I don't want a crybaby next to me for that amount of time!

  Out of curiosity, what movie was playing?

  A remake of Heaven Can Wait, with Chris Rock. It was called Down to Earth. And, because of the situation, it was the funniest movie I'd ever seen. I mean, I was trying so hard not to laugh that it caused me physical pain. I never included that detail in the story. It almost seemed too perfect. I just left it out.

  But to go back to an earlier example, after I wrote about the French teacher throwing chalk, the school sent a representative to talk with me. The representative asked, “If your teacher was throwing chalk at you, and if she was calling you all these names, why didn't you switch to another class?”

  But why would I have switched? As a writer, this was better than anything I could have prayed for. It was fantastic!

  Is that a major worry for you — that when you experience something that will translate beautifully to the page, you might think, No, I can't write this — no one's going to believe it?

  It is sometimes. I once read a piece to an audience about this woman who babysat for me and my sisters when my parents were out of town [“The Understudy,” The New Yorker, April 10, 2006]. Afterward, a lady in the audience said, “I don't believe that your story is really true, because you would have written about this person already.” And I said, “Well, no. It's something my sisters and I have talked about for years and years.”

  My boyfriend Hugh's little nephew just came to Paris. It just amazed me that he remembered me so well. The last time I saw him was years ago, when he was five. When you're a parent, you can try to create these big moment for your kids, like “Okay, we're going to go on vacation, and you are never going to forget it for the rest of your life!” And then, a year later, the kids have forgotten all about it, but what they do remember are some of the details, such as when your father was talking on the phone and putting fingernail polish on one finger. There are things you just don't forget. Sometimes it takes years to be able to process something and then get it down onto the page.

  A while back, I wrote about a woman who used to live down the hall from me in New York [“The Old Lady Down the Hall,” October 2000]. The piece was published in Esquire after she died. But I was never happy with it, so I rewrote it [as “That's Amore,” published in When You Are Engulged with Flames]. The story became closer to how I felt about her and the situation. I didn't think, Shit, I wish I'd never written about it the first time. There's no rule that says I can't write about something as many times as I want.

  Has your life merely become a precursor for what will eventually end up on the page or the radio? Has your life become a first draft?

  Not really. It's odd how you can write about yourself and give the illusion you're exposing so much when you're really not. It doesn't bother me if the world knows I sat in a waiting room in my underpants like I described in the New Yorker story “In the Waiting Room” [September 18, 2006].

  So the character on the page is different from the real you? Are they two different entities?

  There are similarities, but there has to be separation. In real life, you're a person. Once you're on paper, you're a character — and you have to behave like a character.

  That's how you feel, but how does the rest of your family feel? Even if you consider them “characters,” these stories are still about them.

  It's not as if the rest of my family doesn't have their own version of past events, but for the most part my family doesn't have a problem with it. My version tends to be very similar to theirs. It's okay for most of them to have me controlling the narrative.

  But it has been difficult for them at times. One of my sisters had been having this problem with a neighbor. They weren't getting along at all, and he came over one day and said to her, “Last night, I was reading about you in your brother's book.”

  It never occurred to me that something like that might happen.

  Really? Millions of people read your books and listen to you on the radio and see you perform live.

  People often think that my family doesn't know I'm writing about them. They think I've written a certain story just to hurt them. They think the reader and I are in cahoots against a certain person in my family. That's not the case at all. I've never written anything that would hurt anyone in my family.

  I always ask a family member if it's okay to write about them. They'll say yes. But then the book comes out and readers say to them, “I can't believe what your brother wrote about you!”

  A lot of this is misinterpreted too. There was a story I wrote for The New Yorker called “Let It Snow” [December 22, 2003]. I wrote about a snowstorm and how my mother kicked us all out of the house so she could relax by herself and have a drink. This story was then reprinted in a textbook. In the back of the book there was a study guide. One of the entries read, “Explain why David Sedaris's mother was a bad mother.” Another read: “Have you had any experience with an alcoholic parent?”

  I thought, Wait a minute, I never said she was a bad mother. I also never said she was an alcoholic. It was just me being stupid enough to think I can control how a reader feels. In the end, a reader didn't experience these events like I experienced them.

  But with that said, not everyone may realize the power of the page. A family member can easily say, “Sure, write about me,” but do they fully understand that this anecdote may soon be read and heard by millions?

  I don't think any of us did. Even now, it's hard to imagine readers sitting down and reading what I write. There's just something about it that's so abstract. When I go out on tour, people will come to the theater and I'll see them in the audience — I can understand that. But mostly, it's almost as if part of me just doesn't believe that what I write will eventually be read.

  I've never written anything that would prevent anyone in my family from getting a job, you know. My brother [“the Rooster”] loves to be written about. On the other hand, my sister Tiff any said to me years ago, “You can't write about me.” So I said, “Okay, fine.” I didn't, and she said to me, “Everyone thinks you don't like me. Would you write a story about me?”

  Didn't Tiffany once tell a newspaper she didn't trust your boundaries?

  She wasn't happy with a story I wrote [“Put a Lid on It,” Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim] about her messy apartment. I showed it to her before publication, and I asked, “Is this okay?” She loved it and thought it was funny. I asked, “Do you want me to change anything?” “No, don't change a thing.”

  Then the story was published, and people came up to her and said, “I can't believe what your brother wrote about you.” And she said, “Me neither.” Then the local newspaper interviewed her, and the article became all about how I had invaded her privacy.

  There are things I'm never going to write about concerning my family. There are stories about my mother I would
just never write. I know it would bother her if she were still alive. I don't necessarily want people knowing it.

  There's been some criticism that you've made your mother out to be too sarcastic and grating.

  I think that's another case of me being too lazy as a writer and too desperate to make a character appear funny. Maybe she wasn't well-rounded enough, and that would be my fault. And yet there were stories that I thought put her in a good light. I wrote a story about my family wanting to buy a beach house on the North Carolina shore, and there was a scene where my mother was coming up with potential names for the house [“The Ship Shape,” Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim]. She said, very excitedly, “How about something with the word ‘sandpiper’ in it? Everybody likes sandpipers, right?”

  It's such a square and naked and hopeful thing for someone to say. You know, “Everybody likes them! We're going to get a beach house and name it after sandpipers!” It just breaks my heart to think of my mother saying that.

  It becomes all the more heartbreaking when it didn't work out in the end — your family never did buy a beach house.

  I'm glad I had the confidence to put that line into the story — I might not have if I had written it earlier in my life. I might have thought, Oh, well. Anyone's mom could have said that.

  How about your own life? Is anything off-limits? One subject I've noticed you rarely write about is your sex life.

  When you're reading out loud to an audience, they're visualizing it. If I wrote about going to the top of the Eiffel Tower, they would picture me getting into an elevator and going to the top. So, if you're reading a story about having sex with someone, well, that's what they're going to picture.

  Yes, but many people enjoy imagining others having sex.

  True, but I'm in my fifties, so I don't think anybody necessarily wants to picture me as the one doing it.

  I recently read a memoir by Edmund White, who's in his late sixties. I went and heard him read from part of this book [My Lives, Ecco, 2006]. At one point in the story he's around 65-years-old, and he describes himself drinking his boyfriend's urine. Later, Edmund gives his boyfriend a blow job while the guy is defecating.

  When I heard this, the only thing I could think of was: My hat is really off to you, Mr. White. I really tip my hat to you for being that honest.

  Do you think he went too far?

  Not too far for him. I mean, it's too far for me. But maybe he feels the way I do when I write about myself sitting in a waiting room in my underpants. That's the same for him. He must not really care if people know that he once gave a guy a blow job while he was defecating. I, on the other hand, don't really care if people know that I once sat in a hospital waiting room wearing only my underpants.

  I feel that nothing I've ever written has really exposed me. Perhaps he felt the same way.

  If that doesn't expose him, I'd like to read the story that does. Or not.

  But as a reader, I'm always impressed when authors write stories like that. I enjoy that very much. I admire an author that would be brave enough to do that. It's the same way I would admire someone who could turn somersaults or build a fire with a rock. “Nice job, very impressive!” But I, personally, couldn't do it.

  It's going to be difficult to find the appropriate transition from the subject of blow jobs to anything else, so I'll just change the subject without even trying to make a connection. Do you write differently for the page, as opposed to writing for radio or for a live event?

  That's one difference between me now and ten or fifteen years ago. I'm just about to go on tour for a month, and I have about fifty new pages to read out loud. After each show, I'll go back to the hotel and rewrite. I'll do this throughout the tour. With Naked, or any of the books or stories before that, I wasn't reading out loud — and I paid the price. When the Naked book tour happened, I read some of those stories out loud, and I remember thinking, Man! When did I expect myself to breathe? Why did I not listen to my editor? Why did I not cut that part out?

  I suppose I was terrified that I wouldn't have enough pages for the book.

  You now edit your stories in a live setting?

  Sometimes the biggest laugh can come from saying nothing — from just a pause. You can learn a lot by reading your stories to a live audience. When I hear myself reading out loud, I hear things I don't hear when I read to myself.

  When I read aloud, I always have a pencil in hand. If I feel I'm trying too hard or I'm being repetitive, I make a mark. An editor can tell you those same things, but you don't necessarily believe the editor. So it's good to just learn those things on your own, and then to fix them as much as you can before you turn in the piece to the editor.

  Did you know there's now a version of The New Yorker for blind people? The person who reads the magazine isn't an actor. He's not a professional. He just gets a copy of The New Yorker and reads it from cover to cover. And that's a great thing. I can hear my piece perfectly when I listen to that. It's as if someone comes to my home and reads it out loud. I can hear the piece again in a fresh way.

  You wrote something interesting in your foreword to Jenny & the Jaws of Life, a collection of stories by one of your favorite fiction writers, Jincy Willett. You said that when you read a story out loud it can easily be made to be funny. But the very same story, when read alone, can be very sad and bleak and more complex.

  Right, and that's part of having a good editor like I have with Jeff Frank, at The New Yorker. He never hears me read a new story out loud; he just sees the piece on the page. If he can believe the story and if he can understand all of the things I'm trying to communicate on the page, then I feel I have that end covered.

  Writing humor for the page is such a solitary activity, usually without any reaction or response from another person. I always wonder if it makes a difference for a humor writer, who — either out of shyness or for other reasons — never reads their work in a live setting. Does that affect the final product?

  Most probably. It's like reading a story on the radio. Your only audience is the sound engineer, and you often can't even hear them; you can only see them. If I can see them laughing, I think, Okay, maybe this'll work. But other times, there will be engineers who are talking on the phone, and I don't have a clue as to whether it works or not. I don't know whether to pause and give people a chance to laugh, or to just keep on reading. I never really know for sure.

  How long does it generally take for you to write a story?

  It can take years. With the first draft, I just write everything. With the second draft, it becomes so depressing for me, because I realize that I was fooled into thinking I'd written the story. I hadn't — I had just typed for a long time. So I then have to carve out a story from the twenty-five or so pages. It's in there somewhere — but I have to find it. I'll then write a third, fourth, and fifth draft, and so on.

  Beyond that, I have this file I call “Attempts,” which contains bits and pieces of stories that aren't fully formed.

  I was stuck a few weeks ago, so I went back to a story I had started six years ago. The problem was that the setup was promising but nothing really dramatic happened. To me, it was a hoodoo story — I had to take this story and either connect it to another story or fashion an ending out of thin air. Sometimes you're in the mood to do that, and sometimes you're not. And when I'm not, that's how things end up in the Attempt file.

  Can you give me a specific example of a story that took years to write?

  I had a story in The New Yorker about going with my brother to buy drugs in a North Carolina trailer [“The Way We Are,” February 19, 2007]. I had started the story years ago, but it was just a vignette. A dope dealer and his wife lived in this trailer. So that was all I had. Years later, the water in my house in France had been turned off, and I was forced to make coffee out of the water in the flower vase. I thought, I can connect this story to that other story about buying drugs in the trailer. Those two stories fit nicely — the couple in the trailer and their re
lationship, and the relationship Hugh and I have.

  It's like a jigsaw. When something doesn't work, I hold on to that little piece — maybe I'll find another piece for it in a few years.

  What do you attempt to achieve with your endings? When I re-read your work — even going back to Barrel Fever — there seems to be a consistent, almost melancholy tone with the endings. The stories wrap up beautifully.

  When you reach the end, you just know. You think, I don't have to write any more. That's how I felt recently with a story. I kind of looked up and thought, Oh my god, that's finished. There's nothing more to be written. It just felt right.

  Every now and then when I'm reading a story to an audience, I'll reach the end and the audience will make a little noise. I always want that noise.

  What's the noise?

  It's as if something was suddenly pulled out from under them — but they landed well. It's like showing someone a puppy, and they say, “Aaaaaaaah.” The puppy is cute, but there's also another layer. It's as if to say, “Where did the fuck did that puppy come from?”

  Is that the type of reaction you want your readers, not just your listeners, to have?

  I've received letters from readers who tell me they feel a certain way when a certain story ends. There's one story I wrote about how my family deals with me writing about them; it's called “Repeat After Me” [from Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim]. Obviously I'm not hearing the reaction of the readers to it, but I'd like to think that everything that needs to be in an ending is in that ending — shame and pride and a big cocktail of uncomfortableness.

  My main concern is to not be too corny. I don't want to produce fake emotion; I want real emotion. Whenever it's time to write an ending, I always think of the endings in the stories that I just love — the last two paragraphs of The Great Gatsby, or the ending of Tobias Wolff's short story, “Bullet in the Brain” [The Night in Question, Knopf, 1996]. Those endings are just perfect — and that's what I want.