David Sedaris recently took an IQ test in an attempt to become a member of genius fraternity Mensa. The cutoff is an intelligence quotient of 132. How did the best-selling comic essayist -- who has been compared to Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde and Woody Allen -- fare?

"There are cats that weigh more than my IQ score," Sedaris writes in Me Talk Pretty One Day, his latest collection of stories.

The 44-year-old Sedaris may not be the smartest American writer, but he is arguably the funniest. His four essay collections have sold hundreds of thousands of copies. And while other popular books by "smart" guys like Tom Wolfe or Don DeLillo often sit unread on coffee tables, Sedaris' tomes get devoured, passed from friend to friend, like dirty emails, creating an underground railroad of fans. When Sedaris shows up at a bookstore, he gets a rock-star reception.

So how did this Mensa reject become a literary star? After graduating from the Art Institute of Chicago, the North Carolina-bred Sedaris got his start reading acidly funny diary entries on National Public Radio's Morning Edition in the early Nineties. One story in particular caught the attention of literary editors: "The SantaLand Diaries," a hilarious story about working as a holiday elf at Macy's.

In 1994, Little, Brown published "SantaLand Diaries" in the collection titled Barrel Fever, launching Sedaris' career as a best-selling author. Subsequent collections Naked, Holidays on Ice and last year's Me Talk Pretty One Day rocketed to the top of the book charts. The paperback release of Me Talk Pretty One Day is near the top of The New York Times bestseller charts, and the buzz around Sedaris has grown: He's appeared on Letterman, and director Wayne Wang has signed on to make a movie of Talk Pretty, with Matthew Broderick slated for the lead role.

Put Sedaris at a typewriter or in front of a mike, and he unleashes a seemingly endless barrage of hilarious observations about daily life, blindingly funny tales about his family members, childlike forays into bathroom humor and irreverent discussions on smoking, drugs, homophobia, mental illnesses, dwarfs and anything else that tweaks his twisted sense of comedy and pathos. In Me Talk Pretty One Day, as in previous books, family members, or Sedaris himself, provide some of the most gut-busting laughs.

In the story "You Can't Kill the Rooster," Sedaris describes the lenient treatment his parents gave his foul-mouthed younger brother Paul: "When I was young, we weren't allowed to say 'Shut up,' but once the Rooster hit puberty it had become acceptable to shout, 'Shut your motherfucking hole.'"

In the second half of the book, Sedaris satirizes his attempts to learn French and assimilate to Paris, where he has lived for two years with his boyfriend Hugh. In the title story, he recalls his stuttering efforts to learn French. "Making the most of our pathetic French, my fellow students and I engaged in the sort of conversation commonly heard in refugee camps. "'Sometime me cry alone at night.' 'That be common for I, also, but be more strong, you. Much work and someday you talk pretty. People start love you soon.'" When Sedaris took a break from his book tour in June to talk with Playboy.com about cadavers, crystal meth and the laugh-out-loud image of crap in a paper cup, the conversation may not have been pretty, but it was entirely in English.