David Sedaris is witty about everything, including mortality: 'I would like to have three weeks' notice before I die'

When you were in Toronto previously for “When You Are Engulfed in Flames,” you had a massive plastic bag full of pilfered shampoos and soaps from hotels that you were giving away to anyone who got their book signed. Do you have a similar bag of goodies on this tour?

I usually have gifts for teenagers and then for somebody’s birthday or anniversary. I’ve got a box of Turkish delight that somebody gave me the other day, and I have handkerchiefs that I give to teenage boys, saying, “You’re going to have a future girlfriend or a boyfriend and wake up one day and realize you don’t love them anymore. When you tell them, they’re going to start crying. Take this out of your pocket then and say, ‘Here, dry your eyes. They’ll love you even harder because you’re a gentleman who carries a handkerchief.’ Then I make them practice. I pretend to cry and make them toss me the handkerchief.

Also, somebody gave me a deck of playing cards from the 1970s that are haunting. I mean, you’ve never seen anything filthier. Every now and then, I find the perfect person and I say, “I’ve got a bookmark for you.”

While you were in Rome with other entertainers to meet Pope Francis and adding the Vatican to your “Countries I Have Been To” list, you went with Julia Louis-Dreyfus to Gammarelli, the tailor to popes and cardinals for generations. Are you wearing your bespoke cassock with its 33 covered buttons at all on this tour?

No, because sometimes under stage lights it can be kind of hot. At first, I called it a “Cossack” and somebody had to correct me. I was, however, wearing it in New York last month at the UPS store when one of the doormen from my building walked in. He said, “Father David.” It was just so funny to have the doorman come in and see me dressed as a priest.

Your essay “Good Grief” has you scrolling through your address book, a sure exercise in mortality, as you realize how many people in your life have died. At the same time, you marvel at your connection with them, like with Phyllis Diller and Elaine Stritch. A lot of readers will find it relatable that you can’t bring yourself to erase them from your contacts.

I just noticed there’s another one today, somebody who died not long ago, and I was going through my address book this morning writing postcards in the hotel. I’m at an age now that there’s a lot of them.

Getting to know Phyllis Diller took me completely by surprise. She had called my lecture agent and asked if I was free for lunch. I would join her for lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel and she would say, “That’s Nancy Reagan’s booth over there.” It never, ever occurred to me that Phyllis Diller would know who I was. She was such a big part of my childhood: when she would come on TV, we would run to see her. Learning that she did it all by herself was inspiring. What we did was different, but I admired her regard for the audience, and how she could read a room. In her final years, she went out every night. Never stopped being funny. Never stopped looking for funny people. Never stopped laughing.

How did you meet Broadway legend Elaine Stritch?

For (my book) “Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk,” I wanted other people to do the audiobook, and Elaine Stritch was my dream performer. When the producer contacted her, she wanted to talk to me. We spoke twice and she was terrific to me. I wasn’t there when she recorded, but she was just horrible to my producer. I don’t think she prepared at all, but her reading of “The Cat and the Baboon” was just perfection. For the rest of my life, when I listen to that, I cannot believe that Elaine Stritch recorded something that I had written.

One of the things that interests me about this new collection is how tender it is in parts. I’m wondering if you had any insight about why that might be?

I think I’m oblivious to it. Hopefully, it’s not sentimental. I started this tour with four new essays. I go onstage and read them out loud, come back to the room and rewrite them. Read them and rewrite them. Everything in “The Land and Its People” was read onstage, workshopped the same way, but I know that there were certain essays that I would feel something when I read them and I’d think, “Oh God, don’t cry onstage. That would be so bad.” Maybe that’s the tenderness you were talking about. Like there’s a moment in “Good Grief” that I really need the audience to believe that my sister Gretchen died. All of a sudden, when I read that I think, “Oh, she is going to die.” The enormity of that hits me and I always crack a little.

In “I Did,” you out yourself as a married man. How does that feel?

It’s been so funny. People say, “How could you do that to your sisters?”

I say, “Do what?”

“Not tell them that you’re married.”

Nobody cares. It’s not a big deal.

Hugh’s mother sent us a dozen roses, and she’s super thrifty, and I thought, “I don’t want her spending her money on that, not for us getting married.” I’m afraid, too, that now The New Yorker is going to make me call him my husband. Why can’t I be a husband but identify as a boyfriend?

Speaking of Hugh, are you still annoying him with your Duolingo obsession as you recount in “A Long Way Home?”

Hugh hates my Duolingo. I’m number one in French right now in the Diamond League. With Duolingo Max you have these whole conversations. I go back and forth between French, German and Spanish. Yesterday, I really surprised myself because I had a long time in the airport. I was trying new categories of conversation in German. It’s not like you go to Germany and no one speaks English, but it’s just fun. I’m at an age now where instead of interrupting me and speaking in English people are, “Oh, let’s just humour him. This old man seems jolly.”

Do you have any legacy plans for your money? Are you thinking of doing something stealthy like Dorothy Parker did, giving her estate to Martin Luther King Jr. and then the NAACP upon his death?

I would like to have three weeks’ notice before I die. I mean, I already made a will, then I changed it and made a different will. But I would like to leave money — and I already have, but I want to do it more — to people who don’t expect it. People whose lives could really be changed by $20,000. I would like to let people know that I thought of them.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.