The author in his Raleigh, North Carolina, apartment, in 1980. Photographs by Jeffrey Jenkins

David Sedaris has kept a diary for forty years, during which he has filled a hundred and fifty-three handmade notebooks. The following entries, which document Sedaris’s years in Chicago, have been taken from the forthcoming book “Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977–2002),” which is out on May 30th from Little, Brown.

November 19, 1983

Raleigh

On Thursday I was accepted into the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and on Friday I received insurance and housing information. I’ll leave Raleigh on January 2nd. It hasn’t really hit me yet, all the work I have to do before I go. Leaving. I am leaving.

“What’s David up to?”

“Didn’t you hear? He left and moved to Chicago!”

December 26, 1983

This is my twenty-seventh birthday. I’ve been anticipating this age for a long time, thinking that when I reach it, I’ll make a big change. I seem old to me now.

December 28, 1983

This was my last night at the IHOP. I’ve been going steadily since 1979, just drinking coffee and reading. On my way out tonight I said goodbye to my waitress and left a two-dollar tip. I didn’t cry, though I worried I might.

Also today I got a real winter coat, boots, socks, and gloves. The coat is down and super ugly. I never thought I’d see the day that I’d wear a down coat. Gretchen came with me. Then I went and paid a hundred and eighty-three dollars for my train ticket. I liked the woman at the station and felt bad for hating her so hard the other day when she wasn’t answering the phone.

January 6, 1984

Chicago, Illinois

Now I am in Chicago. Everyone came to the train station in Raleigh and saw me off. It was bitterly cold, and I cried as we pulled away. At the D.C. station I bought a Coke from a vending machine that talked. That was a first.

My three days visiting Allyn in Pittsburgh were a blur—smoked a lot of pot, snorted a good deal of cocaine, which never really agrees with me.

Tonight was a reception for new students in the dining area of the Art Institute. There was wine and cheese and people in uniforms who emptied the ashtrays. I’m not as hysterical as I thought I might be and am having a good time looking around. Visited the post office and the big main library and the conservatory of music, where Ned Rorem went. I am beside myself. On leaving the reception tonight, I saw a man sitting on a stool. He’d removed his artificial legs, which were lying on the ground beside him. What a place!

January 10, 1984

I looked at four apartments today, the best being 820 West Cuyler. It’s a short street, and everyone in the building is from Mexico or Central America. There’s trash in the courtyard and on the landings, but the rent is only a hundred and ninety dollars. The living room/bedroom ceiling is covered with plastic to catch the falling plaster. The floors are collaged with different patterns of linoleum, but the bathroom’s O.K. There are plenty of windows and a kitchen big enough to do all my work in. Best of all, it’s eight blocks from an IHOP that looks exactly like the one I left behind in Raleigh, both inside and out.

January 15, 1984

George, the super, told me I can take up the linoleum if I want and remove the flimsy wall that divides the main room in half. The closet’s big, and he will replaster the ceiling.

While cleaning it I found lots of matches, a cap, and a rattrap. The last tenants left behind a sofa I’ll be getting rid of and a framed picture of Jesus spreading his arms as wide as they will go. There are roach eggs everywhere, and the place stinks of pesticide.

January 17, 1984

Because I’m basically starting from scratch, I have to take a number of core classes. These are 2-D (basic drawing), 3-D (basic sculpture), and 4-D, which can be video or performance or whatever the teacher, whose name is Ken Shorr, wants. Our first assignment from him is to collect overheard sentences and shape them into a dialogue. Then we’re to find a scrap of something measuring four by five feet, and slap a word or image on it. This is right up my alley, and I’ve already started on it. My scrap will be some of the linoleum I’ve ripped off my living-room floor.

Ken said that school is one of the few places—perhaps the only place—where we’ll find people who are interested in what we have to say. He’s sort of a pessimist that way. Before class, I looked him up and learned he was in the Whitney Biennial. I wanted to ask what he’d done to get there, but I had already talked too much in 2-D and 3-D and didn’t want to exhaust everybody.

January 22, 1984

I pulled up all the linoleum, got rid of the extra wall in the living room, and have started painting the kitchen. Last night, after finishing the cabinets, I went to the little market around the corner for beer and found forty-five dollars on the floor in front of the checkout counter. I thought I’d dropped it, and by the time I discovered it wasn’t mine I was back home. First thing today I went out and blew it. I bought:

two pounds of goat meat more beer “Fires,” by Raymond Carver The New York Review of Books hardware groceries a magazine called Straight to Hell, in which gay men recount true sexual experiences, many of them outdoors and in cars or under bridges

May 24, 1984

Last night Neil caught another mouse. It was two A.M. and I was in the kitchen working. After presenting it to me, she set the mouse down. He was still alive, and she pounced on him when he tried to make a run for it. She batted the poor thing about, and after a while I started feeling sorry for him. “You’re being cruel,” I said. “Put yourself in his shoes, why don’t you?” I picked her up, and the mouse ran into a hole under the radiator. Looking back, I shouldn’t have gotten involved. I went to bed then, and she stayed up to sulk.

June 14, 1984

I met with a guy named Harry, who’s started a refinishing business. I’d hoped I was done with chemical stripper, but he’s offering five dollars an hour and we’ll be working in people’s houses rather than in a garage. The interview was held at Harry’s apartment, a big, clean place, nicely decorated but with the TV on. His wife was at work, and after asking me a few questions, he offered me a beer. Then he rolled a joint and I thought, Great, I’ve found a job.