One writer commented that he’s the closest the literary world has to a rock star. That may be so, but he doesn’t look much like it. Having signed books at Powerbooks Shangri-la and Alabang the previous two days, he finished off his tour with an hour-long reading followed by book signing at Powerbooks Greenbelt Saturday, July 29. Unlike rock stars who make grand entrances in recognizable attire, Sedaris slipped quietly through the crowd, nearly unnoticeable in a buttondown and shorts, while his front act, Mike Unson, was performing.

Sedaris has written a lot about his small stature, which contrasts with the big ideas and big laughs he delivers, and his height allowed him to move through the crowd as if he were one of us. And, to the audience’s delight and surprise, he began sitting beside people and chatting them up as he signed their books.

We don’t normally expect international celebrities (fine, Sedaris’s name will draw more blank stares than looks of recognition, but, come on, he’s a best-selling author and arguably America’s best humorist) to bother talking to people. We’re more used to mobbing them and people swooning over them soon as they sing a few notes or say a few words. Of course, you take into account the fact that the international celebrities we’ve been getting to visit the country recently are stars of Koreanovellas or some other international melodrama, and you know they aren’t here to talk, let alone here so that we can be enlightened by their ideas.

David Sedaris, on the other hand, is here because of his wit, because of the way that he perceives things and puts them on paper. There’s something about Sedaris’s writing that people quickly connect to. He talks about ordinary, everyday things: family, work, growing up; the list of things he writes about can be seen as mundane. But what comes from these mundane experiences, after they’ve gone through Sedaris’s hands, come across as pure magic. They become the stuff of joy and deep human connection.

The audience was treated to Sedaris reading pieces, some from his collections, some recently published, and, a rare treat, some from his diary. The way he read, one would think that he weren’t a writer, but rather a stand-up comedian. It’s a given that the material was great, but the sense of comedic timing and build-up of the pieces were perfect.

One of the most interesting things one could witness was how he processed things. In between reading works, he talked about his experiences in the country thus far and answered questions, and this allowed the audience to see how he thought about things. Even as he talked you could see the humorist at work, finding the ironies and offbeat juxtapositions.

As he signed books, he took the time to talk to each person and write something especially for them. There’s charm and wit ever-present in his writing, but meeting the author and being allowed to feel that for yourself, if only for a few minutes, is something that can’t be beat. One can only hope that book lovers will be given more opportunities to meet their favorite authors and interact with them as they did with David Sedaris.