David Sedaris: Happy-Go-Lucky

David Sedaris event promo graphic. Includes author headshot & (HAPPY-GO-LUCKY) cover.
Tuesday, June 13, 2023 - 5:00pm
Free
BookPeople
603 N. Lamar Blvd
Austin, TX 78703
Happy-Go-Lucky By David Sedaris Cover Image
$18.99
ISBN: 9780316392433
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Back Bay Books - May 30th, 2023

BookPeople welcomes David Sedaris to celebrate the paperback release of HAPPY-GO-LUCKY. The event will include an author discussion, a reading, an audience Q&A, and a signing line.


EVENT INFO:

  • This event is ticketed via Eventbrite.
    • Start time: 5:00 PM
    • Run time: 45-60 minutes, followed by a signing line.
    • Location: The Second Floor of BookPeople
  • The author will be signing and personalizing copies of the book after the speaking portion of the event.
    • In order to get a book signed, you must have purchased a ticket (which includes a copy of the book).
  • If you are unable to attend:
    • We will hold your book at BookPeople for 30 days after the event.
    • We cannot guarantee that your book will be signed. While we do our best to try and get all event books signed, priority is given to event attendees and any extra stock is dependent on the author’s availability.

EVENT GUIDELINES:

  • Seating will be on a first-come, first-served basis.
  • There will not be a live stream or recording available.
  • BookPeople reserves the right to cancel or postpone this event if necessary.
  • If you have any other questions, please email us at online@bookpeople.com

ABOUT HAPPY-GO-LUCKY:

David Sedaris, the “champion storyteller,” (Los Angeles Times) returns with his first new collection of personal essays since the bestselling Calypso

Back when restaurant menus were still printed on paper, and wearing a mask—or not—was a decision made mostly on Halloween, David Sedaris spent his time doing normal things. As Happy-Go-Lucky opens, he is learning to shoot guns with his sister, visiting muddy flea markets in Serbia, buying gummy worms to feed to ants, and telling his nonagenarian father wheelchair jokes.

But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he’s stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, the part of his work he loves most. To cope, he walks for miles through a nearly deserted city, smelling only his own breath. He vacuums his apartment twice a day, fails to hoard anything, and contemplates how sex workers and acupuncturists might be getting by during quarantine.

As the world gradually settles into a new reality, Sedaris too finds himself changed. His offer to fix a stranger’s teeth rebuffed, he straightens his own, and ventures into the world with new confidence. Newly orphaned, he considers what it means, in his seventh decade, no longer to be someone’s son. And back on the road, he discovers a battle-scarred America: people weary, storefronts empty or festooned with Help Wanted signs, walls painted with graffiti reflecting the contradictory messages of our time: Eat the Rich. Trump 2024. Black Lives Matter.

In Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about these recent upheavals, personal and public, and expresses in precise language both the misanthropy and desire for connection that drive us all. If we must live in interesting times, there is no one better to chronicle them than the incomparable David Sedaris.


ABOUT DAVID SEDARIS:

David Sedaris is the author of twelve previous books, including, most recently, A Carnival of Snackery, The Best of Me, and Calypso. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and BBC Radio 4. In 2019, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the recipient of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, the Jonathan Swift International Literature Prize for Satire and Humor, and the Terry Southern Prize for Humor.


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Thank you for supporting David Sedaris and your local independent bookstore!