'Theft by Finding,' a book of David Sedaris diary excerpts, makes compelling reading

However fame and a higher standard of living may have changed him, a new volume of diary excerpts reveals that humorist-essayist David Sedaris has been consistent in his preoccupations. 

The voice who became a star on public radio was, as a young man, a passionate listener to National Public Radio. The eccentric celebrity honored by local authorities in England for compulsively picking up litter was a young man who found things on the ground or floor — including, on one memorable day in 1987, a $50 bill wrapped around $80 of cocaine. 

"Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002" begins when Sedaris is 20, an artistically minded young gay man from a dysfunctional North Carolina family. This volume ends after the "Santaland Diaries" and other essays make him a famous writer. His introduction suggests he will eventually publish a volume with diary excerpts from the later years. 

My gold standard for this kind of project among living writers is the Alan Bennett diaries, which the English playwright excerpts annually in the London Review of Books and which he has distilled into several books. Happily, I can report that this volume of Sedaris' entries is as good as Bennett's.

Like Bennett's collations, the Sedaris diaries are laced with snark, wit and trenchant observations, personal and public; also like Bennett, Sedaris tells on himself. The key difference here is that the classic Bennett self-observation is one of genteel self-deprecation; Sedaris' anecdotes in his young-man years often involve something self-destructive, particularly drug use — meth, Quaaludes, not to mention quotidian pot and alcohol. Most of the time, he reports this matter-of-factly, just as he later comments straightforwardly on his sobriety.

Still, his lack of traction in North Carolina gets him down, as he reports on April 8, 1980:

"I've got $12, no job, and unpaid rent. I'm depressed, I'm broke, and soon I'll be out of drugs. I feel so sleazy and cheap. Still, I have two sculptures in the art museum."

After he becomes a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1984, he finds more to write about: serio-comic dramas at school and at the IHOP where he hangs out, conflicts on the home-improvement odd jobs he picks up.

After he moves to New York, his gig economy whirlwind continues. In 1990 he writes, "Every day I get the paper from the same trash can on Abingdon Square and look through the want ads." (These odd jobs include mopping a loft that had been used to film a Marilyn Chambers porn movie.)

Readers of "Theft by Finding" will see major events and changes in Sedaris' life unfold gradually over time: the holiday stints as a Macy's elf that led to "SantaLand Diaries," meeting future partner Hugh, applying the same eye for the ridiculous that he brought to evenings at IHOP to events on his book tours and his French-language classes in Paris. (Check the 2001 entries for some marvelous R-rated snark about hotels on a book tour.) 

He offers many glimpses of his sister Amy, a major-league comic prankster well before she became famous. Less happily, mentions of his sister Tiffany seem, in hindsight, to foreshadow her suicide in 2013.

IF YOU GO

David Sedaris will speak at 7 p.m. June 7 at Boswell Books, 2559 N. Downer Ave. That ticketed event is sold out, but Sedaris will sign any of his books for anyone after he signs for ticketholders. Read the details at boswellbooks.com/upcoming-events.