With a collection of diary entries ranging from 2003 to 2020, David Sedaris is back and better than ever as an essayist and humorist. I’ve read several of Sedaris’ other books, including When You Are Engulfed in Flames and Me Talk Pretty One Day. All of these are essay collections that capture his interactions with everyone, from his large family to strangers in the supermarket, through outlandish personal anecdotes. Sedaris has never shied away from self-deprecating humor, either, and A Carnival of Snackery reveals that he’s never lost sight of the best target at which he can aim his sharp wit and hyperbolic hilarity: himself.

I found that the fragmented format of A Carnival of Snackery was quite a departure from the more long-form writing Sedaris has previously published. Instead of fully-fleshed comedic essays, readers are presented with bits and pieces of Sedaris’ life over an extended period of time. We follow his winding train of thought from city to city and country to country as he embarks on book tours, meeting various savory/unsavory characters at his book signings and scooping up dozens of bizarre jokes along the way. We also bounce between his odd encounters with other cultures (in Japan, Poland, The Philippines, and elsewhere) while familiar figures from his previous books slip in, establishing their presence in one entry or another. There is his father, whom he presents as a person equally flawed and family-oriented; his siblings, who hide the burden of a difficult upbringing beneath their prodding and wisecracking, just as he does; and his quirky and beloved husband, Hugh. There is also a bevy of publishers, assistants, cab drivers, and neighbors, all of whom inject their oddball personalities briefly into the pages.

Just as he does in his other books, Sedaris transforms seemingly mundane and ordinary moments into absurd and extraordinary diary entries about a world that’s undergone intense social and geopolitical transformations over the last two decades. Even the origin of the book’s title (a restaurant menu, in fact) is plopped matter-of-factly among several unrelated entries; this is just another plot point Sedaris has plucked from his life and polished with bravado.

Though he turns outward to gather so much of the material for his work, Sedaris spends much of A Carnival of Snackery facing inward, examining a man who is grappling with familiar demons like aging and turbulent family relationships. Because this is a diary, he never fixates on a single one of these issues for long, yet they do hang over his day-to-day entries, popping up from time to time in the form of a tense doctor’s visit, a political argument with his father, or a squabble with Hugh over how to treat a backyard fox. This is Sedaris at his finest—raw, unfiltered, and willing to offer up his life for ridicule. Like Sedaris, we are capable, wise, and compassionate sometimes, yet incompetent, daft, and selfish at other times. The best thing we can do during our long, exhausting lives, Sedaris implies, is to laugh at ourselves. We’re all a little pathetic, aren’t we?

“What you can say at the start of the book, you can’t by the end,” announces the back-cover blurb. This is quite fitting, as it turns out, for Sedaris is introspective enough to touch upon the changing role of an author like himself in a world rocked by political tensions and culture wars. In a previous blog post, I discuss a Washington Post interview with David Sedaris in which he stood firmly against the idea of watering down his writing to suit today’s sensitivities. It will be interesting to see whether he sticks with this viewpoint going forward, as his ability to get right to the heart of ordinary people’s impulses and desires could not be expressed through a censored imitation of his previous work. While I await his next publication, I consider A Carnival of Snackery to be an impressively honest reflection on all the lessons Sedaris has learned as a husband, brother, son, and world-famous author over the last several years.