Career
While working odd jobs across Raleigh, Chicago and New York City, Sedaris was discovered in a Chicago club by radio host Ira Glass. Sedaris was reading a diary he has kept since 1977. Glass asked him to appear on his weekly local program, The Wild Room. Sedaris said, "I owe everything to Ira ... My life just changed completely, like someone waved a magic wand." Sedaris' success on The Wild Room led to his National Public Radio debut on December 23, 1992, when he read a radio essay on Morning Edition titled "SantaLand Diaries", which described his purported experiences as an elf at Macy's department store during Christmas in New York.
"SantaLand Diaries" was a success with listeners, and made Sedaris what The New York Times called "a minor phenomenon". He began recording a monthly segment for NPR based on entries in his diary, and edited and produced by Glass. He signed a two-book deal with Little, Brown and Company. In 1993, he told The New York Times that he was publishing his first book, a collection of stories and essays, and had 70 pages written of his second book, a novel "about a man who keeps a diary and whom Mr. Sedaris described as 'not me, but a lot like me'".
Read more about this topic: David Sedaris
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.”
—Barbara Dale (b. 1940)
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)