David, on Tiffany

[wobblymusic.livejournal.com]

From the latest New Yorker:

"In late May of this year, a few weeks shy of her fiftieth birthday, my youngest sister, Tiffany, committed suicide. She was living in a room in a beat-up house on the hard side of Somerville, Massachusetts, and had been dead, the coroner guessed, for at least five days before her door was battered down."

More here.

Comments

[ron_newman]

Earlier posts about her:

RIP Tiffany Sedaris, 49, Somerville artist
Who was Tiffany? (photo of artistic memorial to her on the Community Path)

I don't agree that her neighborhood near Magoun Square* is "the hard side of Somerville". And I suspect that she would rather not have had this published, just as in 2004.

[* - assuming that she lived at the address where her open studio was in May]

[ron_newman]

In Memoriam - Tiffany Sedaris, published on June 12 in (what was then still) the Somerville News. (PDF of the print version here - see page 5)

[serious-noir.livejournal.com]

And, in case anyone ever doubted it, David Sedaris is a f**king asshole, a funny asshole but an asshole.

Really gives a new low water mark for the old saying: "A writer is always selling someone out."

[ifotismeni]

I was wondering if anyone would post this here. Given David Sedaris' penchant for exaggeration I honesty wonder how much of this is true.

[ron_newman]

On a lighter note, here's an LJ post from 2003 by someone who exhibited with her at Somerville Open Studios:

I Gave Bad Directions to David Sedaris and All I Got was This Lousy T-Shirt

[paradoox.livejournal.com]

Yes, Sedaris is an a**hole,

But, the article reminds me that we probably all have friends on the edge of society. I sometimes worry what is going to happen to all of them. I hope we can all be good enough friends to give them whatever support they want / need. And sometimes that support might be telling them to tell their families to go f**k off.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

Strange piece. I notice that it is littered with references to money and the sorts of status markers that are of concern to the middle-to-upper-middle class. But I see that he made his fame on NPR, so that makes sense.

[kalimba21.livejournal.com]

On a previous live journal post from last week, there was a link to a Dutch person interviewing David at his new, amazing old house in England. The post points to a spot where David talks about Tiffany, saying they hadn't spoken in 8 years.

I watched that video to the end, when David, laying on some grass, reads this first paragraph which is now the opener in the New Yorker piece. Then the interviewer asks him: (paraphrasing from memory) "If you could ask Tiffany one question, what would it be?" David responds, "I'd ask her if she was ever going to pay back all the money she owes me." The interviewer laughs nervously, incredulously, saying, "that's what you'd ask her?" David responds, "yes, she always said that she'd pay me back in her lifetime."

That paragraph has haunted me ever since I read it.