David Sedaris

David Sedaris is the author and first person narrator of the essays collected in Happy-Go-Lucky. Sedaris grew up in North Carolina with his mother, father, Lou, and six siblings, Paul, Gretchen, Lisa, Amy, and Tiffany. Throughout his childhood, Sedaris had a fraught relationship with his father. His father not only had a bizarre, and often sexually inappropriate way of interacting with his children, but particularly belittled, discouraged, and verbally abused Sedaris. Over the course of the years following, Sedaris attempted to use his writing to find catharsis. He would write about his father in order to process his negative relationship with him.

Despite these efforts, now that Sedaris is in his sixties he is still struggling to reconcile himself with his paternal relationship. Throughout the collection, Sedaris depicts his father’s decline over the course of several years. Each time he and his boyfriend, Hugh, and...