Happy-Go-Lucky

David Sedaris, the “champion storyteller” (Los Angeles Times), returns with his first new collection of personal essays since the bestselling *Calypso*. Back when restaurant menus were still printed on paper, and wearing a mask—or not—was mostly a decision made on Halloween, David Sedaris spent his time doing normal things. As *Happy-Go-Lucky* opens, he is learning to shoot guns with his sister, visiting muddy flea markets in Serbia, buying gummy worms to feed to ants, and telling his nonagenarian father wheelchair jokes. But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he’s stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, which he loves most. To cope, he walks through a nearly deserted city, smells only his own breath, vacuums his apartment twice a day, and contemplates how sex workers and acupuncturists might be getting by during quarantine. As the world gradually settles into a new reality, Sedaris finds himself changed. Newly orphaned, he considers what it means, in his seventh decade, no longer to be someone’s son. Back on the road, he discovers a battle-scarred America: people weary, storefronts empty or festooned with Help Wanted signs, and graffiti reflecting the contradictory messages of our time: Eat the Rich. Trump 2024. Black Lives Matter. In *Happy-Go-Lucky*, David Sedaris captures what is unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about these recent upheavals, expressing in precise language both the misanthropy and desire for connection that drive us all.