AT THE DOOR OF A dignified apartment on the Upper East Side: Hugh. Among David Sedaris’s devoted fans, the ones who read his pieces in The New Yorker and make his books best sellers and flocked to the 50-city live tours he did each year before the pandemic paused them, he’s just Hugh—the way Sedaris’s sister Amy (comedian, crafter, all-time-great Letterman guest) is just Amy. David writes sketch dispatches from the Sedaris clan with himself at the center as nebbish-raconteur. He has made his family the main characters of a decadeslong, clearly very profitable, and reliably amusing page-and-stage act. Everyone in Sedaris’s ambit ends up sounding a little bit off-kilter in that very Sedaris way, at least as reported by David. Or at least everyone save one: his boyfriend, Hugh.
Who is Hugh? In Sedaris’s stories, Hugh is a durable background presence. He isn’t kookified, and he doesn’t get the laugh lines. When the kilter needs to be un-offed, he is deployed; he restores order. When the Sedaris family head to North Carolina to clean up their father’s house after his move to assisted living, everyone is stymied by a turd on the carpet left by some untended animal—but not Hugh, who picks it up with his bare hands and disposes of it. “You people, my God,” says Hugh, which is the kind of thing Hugh can be counted on to say. It’s the kind of thing he does say, over and over, in The Best of Me, the greatest-hits collection Sedaris published this month. It’s the reason Sedaris’s nickname for him is Congressman Prude.
Denne historien er fra November 23 - December 6, 2020-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Denne historien er fra November 23 - December 6, 2020-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Early and Often: David Freedlander - Momentum vs. Machine The Trump and Harris campaigns battle it out for every last vote.
WIth two weeks left to go, the contours of the 2024 presidential election are clear: Both campaigns need voters who usually don’t vote, and Kamala Harris needs to bring the Democratic coalition, including its Trump-curious members, back home.While the Republican side plans to spend the remaining days of the contest trying to lure low-propensity voters to the polls, the Harris team will attempt to persuade voters of color to return to its side and will try to increase numbers among white voters in previously red suburbs.
Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
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Can the Media Survive?
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In a time of war, there is a danger in surveying the world as if it were a novel.
Trust the Kieran Culkin Process
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The Funniest Vampires on TV
What We Do in the Shadows is coming to an end. Its idiosyncratic brand of comedy may be too.
