In her column, Reading Out Loud, Elephant’s associate editor Emily Burke asks an artist for a book recommendation and then, after reading it herself, sits down to discuss it with them. This month Emily meets with Nadia Lee Cohen to discuss David Sedaris’s Naked.
While I’m waiting for Nadia Lee Cohen to respond with her choice of book for this interview, I imagine her flipping through Jack Kerouac’s On The Road with one perfectly manicured hand, smoking a cigarette with the other. I realise then that I don’t know anything particularly concrete about Nadia other than the visual universe she has crafted for us over the years: an alien world of bleached LA landscapes, poolside mahogany tans, high-contrast Americana and a good dose of sex appeal. But by the time we talk, I know better. I know, for instance, that Nadia and my mum may have more in common than you might think because Nadia, despite all her high glamour, is a big David Sedaris fan.
Nadia suggests Me Talk Pretty One Day and Naked, both by Sedaris. When we can’t choose between them, we decide to read both. Below is our conversation exploring proper Halloween protocol, Nadia’s family, why we probably both need therapy and, ultimately, why David Sedaris brings Nadia Lee Cohen so much joy.
EB: Nadia, how are you? I feel like speaking with you the night before Halloween is a good luck omen or something. What are your plans for the week?
NLC: I’m trying to figure out my outfit for a Shining-themed party tonight and another party tomorrow with no theme – somehow that makes it so much harder.
EB: What are you going to wear?
NLC: ‘The Shining’ one is 1920’s themed – based on the ballroom scene. Flapper might be my least favourite era, so I’m thinking to go a hundred years older – 1820’s and justify it by saying it’s from the deleted skeleton scene. And for the other party… I’ll probably be going as…well, honestly just some sort of slag.
EB: I think that’s the move. Everytime I do something creative and well thought out, I regret it. You just need a bit of fake blood and lots of flesh on show. Sorted.
NLC: Exactly. One year I went as Shelly Duvall. Huge fake front teeth. No flesh on show. I looked identical. And everyone was just like, “Hi Nadia.” No one even knew I was dressed up. Heartbreaking.
EB: Talking of Halloween, I just had a bit of a mad experience. I saw a psychic. She told me I was going to make ‘BIG SALES’ this year and to be very wary of someone called Theresa.
NLC: Oh scary. Bad news for Theresa’s. It’s so British of us to be wary about psychics, I still can’t fully commit in that LA way as so many of them are total bullshit. I remember my brother telling me he had a two pound reading in London once from a man who resembled Del Boy. He told the man he got everything wrong, and he said ‘well what do you want for two paand?’. I did have a good one once from a woman with a thick Boston accent. She entirely changed any skepticism by telling me the exact day that something awful was going to happen.
EB: That’s really weird. Let’s change the topic of conversation before I get scared. The book you’ve chosen is David Sedaris’s Naked, but we actually read two books together for this. We also read Me Talk Pretty One Day. I have to say, I loved both. They were such a joy to read. When did you first encounter Sedaris’s work?
NLC: I have an awful memory, so I’d be lying if I told you exactly when. But something I do distinctly remember was a really long car journey where my mum, brother and my little nephew were listening to one of his books. I have no memory of where we were going, but I remember, with crystal clarity, us all cracking up.
EB: I was going to ask whether you had listened to Sedaris before reading the book, because after listening to Sedaris live, I found that his written work was so much more engaging.
NLC: Right. You read it with his voice and intonation.
EB: Do you think people will be surprised to know that this is the book you chose?
NLC: I would be surprised to know what people would think I would choose. What did you think I would choose?
EB: I expected you to choose something dark and creepy.
NLC: Like a Stephen King sort of thing?
EB: Yes, but then when you suggested Sedaris, it made sense to me, because even when it’s really sensual or dark, there is this real sense of humour in your work. There’s levity there.
NLC: Honestly, I think it’s the most important thing in the world to me. Humour. I’m totally enamored with anyone who can make me laugh. I was stuck between John Waters and David Sedaris actually. I’ve made feeble attempts at reading the books you’re supposed to read. Like ‘Crime and Punishment’ and all the other weighty classics. But I find myself drifting away into intrusive thoughts of ‘why am I not enjoying this? Because I am not smart enough to enjoy this..’ or some other form of guilty self deprecation. I think I just want to be spoken to with humour, vulnerability and occasional offensive vulgarity. Reading Sedaris, it’s like speaking with a really smart friend. You don’t even notice how brilliant he is at writing because it is so easy to read.
EB: And his voice really stays with you, doesn’t it? I started writing something the day after finishing Naked and realised that I was writing like him, which is no bad thing.
NLC: I do the exact same thing. I love when an artist or writer shows me their take on the world, and I get to look through their telescope for a while. Reading Sedaris and going about day-to-day life makes boring interactions way more enjoyable and can turn any kind of tragedy into comedy.
EB: Do you have any specific favourite stories of his?
NLC: Not really, they’re all good. But a part that hits home in Me Talk Pretty is when the Midwestern woman from hell stays with him in New York.
EB: Does that story resonate with you for any particular reason? I’m keen for a David Sedaris-esque family anecdote from Nadia Lee Cohen.
NLC: It reminds me of Raani. We had pretty much an open door policy when I was growing up. My parents always had random people coming to stay. Which, now I think about it as an adult, is actually pretty unusual. But at the time it was totally normal that we would have semi-strangers living in the house with us. At one point my dad’s friend called him up and asked if a distant cousin could come and stay, which, my dad, being the way he was, was like ‘yeah sure’. So in the next couple of days Raani arrived on the doorstep donning nothing but a white loincloth – fresh from a stay with his guru in India. I’m convinced we had no relation to him at all, but there he was, our distant cousin. I was about 9 years old and Raani shacked up living in what was the room downstairs that I played in. I had zero access to my toys for 12 months. He used all the hot water every morning and left my brother screaming ‘fuuuuck fuuuuck’ when he was forced to take an ice cold shower in December before school. Every night he would boil mounds of potatoes and sit in front of the only TV eating them watching whatever he wanted. Anyway one day my mum totally lost it, I remember it vividly. She was in the kitchen making a roast dinner and Raanie told her to vacate the sink so he could get started on that evening’s round of potatoes. She said she wasn’t finished in a slightly snappy tone and he said ‘you got a problem?’ then mum said ‘Yes I’ve got a problem, my problem is you! Get out and take your fucking potatoes with you’ and then she physically threw him and his potatoes out of the house.
EB: Oh, my god! Carnage!
NLC: Yeah. Potatoes everywhere.
EB: I feel kind of sad for him.
NLC: Oh, don’t worry. He came back the next morning and asked if he could stay in the garden in a tent.
EB: Okay, that’s incredible. Everyone talks about how they’re shaped by their parents, but nobody wants to talk about how, growing up, they’re shaped by the random people their parents invite over to their house.
NLC: A circus.
EB: In Me Talk Pretty, Sedaris talks about people’s reactions to finding out that he dedicated a book to them. If you were going to write an autobiography of your life, who would you dedicate it to this year?
NLC: Possibly David Owen, my publisher, because he’d probably be the one writing it. We talk almost everyday. He might know more about me than I know myself.
EB: Okay. And if you were going to do a photoshoot based on one of Sedaris’s anecdotes, which would it be?
NLC: God, that’s hard. What about the nudist colony he went to? Actually, that plan is flawed because you’re not allowed to take photos there. That whole thing was very inspiring, though, because I’m sure he just went there so he could write about it. Full frontal nudity in front of strangers has to be the ultimate commitment to your art.
EB: It’s incredible. I was listening to an interview with Sedaris and he says that he has been keeping a diary since 1977, and that’s where he pulls his anecdotes from. Do you keep a diary?
NLC: I tried to start one a couple of months back actually. It seemed romantic. A friend told me it changed her life and that “all I had to do was write a stream of consciousness”. This seemed like an easy enough task to change my life so at the end of each day I would sit down for 15 minutes and write whatever came into my head. I did this for about 5 days until I realised that it was becoming a chore and I was starting to resent it. I was doing it all wrong, I wasn’t being honest and I found myself trying to be funny to no audience. And what is the point in that? I don’t think I could let go of the fact that someone is going to find this and read it, and if it’s not funny that would hurt me way more than any truth I told.
EB: Would it really be so bad if someone did read your diary?
NLC: If it wasn’t funny, yes. I don’t really ever speak on the internet and only do a few select interviews with publications I really like. The idea of someone reading my diary is like accidentally going on Instagram Live for the entire day without realising it.
EB: We need my psychic to confirm that no one will ever read your diary.
NLC: We do.
EB: What’s your relationship like with reading in general?
NLC: Guilt. Continual overwhelming feelings of guilt. If I start a book and it’s boring me I feel as though I have to finish it or I am a total failure. Of course some books are so dull that reading them gives me the same kind of enjoyment as going to the gym. So I have to stop, and then I feel guilty for stopping and then I get scared of starting another one in case it’s the same situation. I have trusty authors that I always return to; and I’m comforted in the knowledge that I know them, they know me and whatever they say I’m going to want to hear. I also fully immerse myself into that person and almost become them when I like a book. Which can be a good or bad thing depending on who I have been reading.
EB: That makes a lot of sense to me, because there’s this real element of transformation in your practice. You’re always morphing into other people.
NLC: I really enjoy taking on someone else’s mindset, momentarily. I’m sure that’s another thing for your psychic to deal with.
EB: Who else have you been obsessed with authorwise?
NLC: I know Charles Bukowski might not be a popular answer, but I can’t help but love the way he writes. I didn’t understand the appeal of poetry before him. This revelation only came about because I had read everything he wrote, and all I had left were his poems, so I was forced to read them. Now I love some of them even more than his books. He’s often described as an acute misogynist, but to me, his writing reveals how desperately he needs women and how he’d be nothing without them.
Words by Emily Burke
