In general, he’s moved from the often outrageous, escalating rants of unhinged characters, in which he takes an off-the-wall idea and runs with it, to more deeply personal material.

Even if you’ve read or listened to every word he’s ever written, it’s a terrific highlights reel and a chance to view the arc of Sedaris’ development as a writer over 25 years. But “The Best of Me” is an excellent introduction to Sedaris’ work if, somehow, you’re not among the millions who have made him a mainstay on bestseller lists and flocked to his ticketed readings. OK, so technically, there’s nothing new here. “The Best of Me” offers 46 previously published essays and stories curated from nine earlier books, beginning with “Barrel Fever”(1994) and ending with his most recent, “Calypso” (2018). His first retrospective was “Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977–2002)” (2017), selections from his unpublished diaries. After milking his family and personal life for decades, he is now mining his work for literary gold worth anthologizing. Today, Uvalde will be honoring them, and as the town journeys toward calmer waters, it will never forget them.ĭavid Sedaris, one of the great American humorists, has reached the age of retrospection. Maite Rodriguez will never study marine biology.Today, I’m thinking of those 19 children and two teachers.

Eva Mireles will never go on another hike. Rojelio Torres will never catch another football. Tess Mata will never throw another softball. Today is as much about them as anything, and anyone, else. Here I want to devote a few words to those who are no longer here. It looks at the aftermath, at the past year, at the living. The town has been grieving, and it has been tense and divided.Our story today will describe that in more detail. One fewer journalist in Uvalde today is no bad thing, we thought. It’s one reason the Monitor chose last week to visit. Pedestrians glanced at the memorial as they continued about their day.“Everyone is walking on eggshells,” one local told me last week. Twenty-one white crosses surround the fountain downtown, decorated with stuffed animals and superhero action figures that filled my eyes with tears. Twenty-one white crosses are staked in front of a “Welcome to Uvalde” sign.

The town I visited last week was quiet, but eerie. Now make it unexpected, add a global media frenzy and a heavy dose of politics, and multiply it by a population of 15,000, and you can begin to imagine what the last 12 months have been like in Uvalde.The town was shellshocked when I visited a year ago. It has been a difficult, surreal year for a town that, like so many others, never thought it would be anything other than a quiet, anonymous town. Grief is a journey – and a long, complicated one at that.Uvalde, Texas, will never be the same after the horrific shooting at Robb Elementary School last May.

The best of david sedaris