David Sedaris takes the stand at the Landmark

The Landmark Theater was filled with the young and old as folks from Richmond and beyond came to see David Sedaris on his lecture tour Tuesday night. Sedaris was being presented by the University of Richmond’s Modlin Center for the Arts and was sponsored by the Steven Barclay Agency.

Sedaris, a rather inoffensive-looking man with a high, almost nasally voice, did not look intimidating or overly academic as he took to the stage in front of the almost packed theater. This is one of the first of Sedaris’ lecture tour, which he started Saturday and will reach about 35 states.

“They call it a lecture series, but all I do is read out loud,” he joked to the audience.

With a command of the English language that was almost dauntingly equipped with wit and casual turns of phrase, Sedaris captured the audience with three stories he had written specifically for the tour.

The first story was one in which he recounted becoming enamored with bringing up stories he had read in newspapers during conversations.

One particular story that he brought up in different company was about a man whose house was infested with mice and the untimely end of his property when one of the mice that was chased into a pile of leaves and set on fire ran back inside. The story was absolutely fantastic for him.until he realized that for several conversations he had been convoluting the facts.

The story, while very simple, was profound as Sedaris commented on how everyone makes stories somehow their own, even when they are as simple as things read in the paper.

The next story was about when he was a child growing up with his many siblings and having to deal with Mrs. Peacock, a horrendous sitter the children had to deal with during their mother’s trip out of town. The bulbous Southern woman, with “hair the color of margarine” and skin a Vaseline hue broken only by the rather precarious black hairs between her shoulders – which she argued against their disgust, saying, “Ya’ll’s got the same damn things; they just ain’t poked out yet” – is the bane of seven long days.

The last story, “All the Beauty You Will Ever Need,” was a piece in which Sedaris talks at length about his life as a homosexual. Again, his caustic humor came out as he recounted a conversation with an ignorant woman during a drug deal.

“So, this boyfriend,” she had said, alluding to the man he was with at the time. “Which one of you is the woman?”

“Well, neither of us is,” he said in a slow, condescending voice. “That’s why it’s a homosexual couple.”

He thanked the audience after a strong round of applause following the stories.

“You never know if these things will work,” he said, describing the never-before-released pieces. “So that’s nice.”

After about half an hour of talking about random things like his travels around the world to such places like Tokyo and Thailand (where the writer was arrested for throwing his cigarette butt in the street), Sedaris opened up the floor to a few questions regarding his life and opinions, even in politics.

“I would never trust a candidate who runs on a campaign to ‘protect our children.’ I mean, who is for slaughtering them?”

When the show finished, there were at least four lines looping through the Landmark of people getting ready for signings. Whoever thought a man who never learned to drive a car, never had a computer for use beyond a typewriter and could only type with one finger would ever make it so far as an experienced and well-loved writer and speaker?