THE LAND AND ITS PEOPLE

In his 14th collection, our premier comic essayist does what he does best.

The 28 essays collected here, most previously unpublished, along with some familiar to readers of the New Yorker, are a welcome return to form for the much-awarded and much-loved humorist. His last two collections, Calypso (2018) and Happy-Go-Lucky (2022), were shadowed by the deaths of both his parents and his sister, Tiffany, the pandemic, and revelations about sexual abuse. These essays find the author back to thinking about his signature material: the little weirdnesses of living; his relationship with his husband, Hugh; the odd things people say and do; manners, bad and good; his travels and observations thereof; his quirky friendships; and his practice of walking 10,000 Apple Watch–monitored steps per day—all in his signature key of delightfully petty and wonderfully peevish. He might be the only person who jokes about how much fun it is to be obscenely wealthy, as in an essay where he reveals that he has a Paul Klee, a Franz Kline, and an Alexander Calder in the office where he writes; another where he buys a $2,400 cashmere cape for his sister, Gretchen, during a cancer scare, planning to inherit it back after her death; and several others in which his credit card appears as a deus ex machina to slice through various predicaments. A few essays dig back into his already-well-excavated childhood, including what is likely the sweetest essay he has ever written about his mother, “Cool Mom.” Here he applies seven principles he found in an article online (“A cool mom lets her kids see her try new things and take healthy risks”) to arrive at an emotional conclusion of rare poignancy. An essay recalling his teen volunteer job in a Raleigh, North Carolina, mental asylum makes one wonder if his hometown might someday consider erecting what would surely be an adorable and pilgrimage-worthy monument.

Sedaris remains a national treasure.