I caught David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell on their reading tour last night. It was interesting to hear their work with a live audience instead of alone with a radio or a book because, to my surprise, the audience laughed. Out loud. To every joke, like on a sitcom.
I'm used to taking certain kinds of humor dry, on the rocks, with only an occasional splash of outright laughter. For me there's an overriding suspension of disbelief in which I imagine that perhaps the ironist really means what he or she is saying, instead of its opposite. I withhold laughter in sort of a tantric approach, one might say.
But the primate ritual of vocalizing together with my fellow homo ridens was good, too. David and Sarah had enough experience to time their reading in call and response with the crowd. After a moment of recalibration, I was guffawing on cue like everyone else. For those of you wanting highlights, the most memorable lines of the evening are unprintable in a family blog, but the readings included this and this. Sarah's adolescent fascination with dreary German cinema struck a chord, as did David's caution about certain highbrow hanky-wringers.
Oh, and I owe Esquire an apology for my recent dig: Sedaris is worthy of anyone's stable but he's in theirs, and they have a fine archive to prove it.