From drug-addled, would-be college artist to unscrupulous ne’er-do-well, David Sedaris has made a successful career feasting on his own dysfunction. In this way, readers will welcome the insanely humorous Happy Go Lucky as another delicious slice of his often half-baked, not-so-humble pie.

An acerbic humorist who has entertained National Public Radio listeners for more than three decades, Sedaris is perhaps most widely known for his regular contributions to New Yorker magazine. One of his most famous essay collections, “The Santaland Diaries,” includes tales of David’s misadventures as an oft-disgruntled Macy’s Christmas elf.

“I could have you fired,” Sedaris says a customer once scolded him.

“I could have you killed,” the impish elf whispered in reply.

This younger, but equally mischievous David says he once hitchhiked cross-country with a quadriplegic female roommate posing as his pretend fiancé, panhandling together for money and a bucket of fired chicken along the way. Now, with Happy Go Lucky, Sedaris is older, often delivering essays focused around the experiences of a more mature, but altogether still damaged soul.

In “Father Time,” Sedaris visits his 95-year-old father in a nursing home, alarmed to discover himself labeled as “Dave — the famous son.” Even more troubling is a medical staffer who mistakes the rather diminutive, softspoken, pasty-skinned, Caucasian writer for comedian Dave Chappell. Eager to avoid any awkwardness, Sedaris agrees to sign autographs and pose for selfies, wondering how long it will take after he drives away for the nurses to realize their mistake.

“A Speech to the Graduates” is a commencement address Sedaris could have easily delivered, one that includes the following rather sage advice:

“Choose one thing to be terribly, terribly offended by — this as opposed to the dozens or possibly hundreds that many of you are currently juggling.”

He also suggests writing thank-you notes to grandmothers who send money in cards:

“Then a few months down the line, you can write again, telling her that you just spent the last of the money she sent. ‘I was at Goodwill buying a dress I can wear for my job interview tomorrow,’ you could say. ‘The skid marks will hopefully come out after the first wash, and as for the underarm stains, I guess we’ll see. But as I was paying for it, I thought of how kind you’ve always been to me, and of how lucky I am to have you in my life.’”

Amidst this vast collection of humor is the stark reality of a life impacted by trauma and abuse.

In a past offering, aptly entitled “Now We Are Five,” Sedaris recounted the impact of his youngest sister’s death by suicide.

Now, in Go Lucky’s “Unbuttoned,” the surviving siblings face the death of their domineering and emotionally abusive father, a man whose final words to David are, “You won.”

Sedaris writes, “As for my dad, I couldn’t tell if he meant ‘You won’ as in ‘You won the game of life,’ or ‘You won over me, your father, who told you — who assured you when you were small and then kept

reassuring you — that you were worthless.’ Whichever way he intended those two faint words, I will take them and, in doing so, throw down this lance I’ve been hoisting for these past sixty years. For I am old myself now, and it is so very, very heavy.”

In these words endures the true joy in feasting on Happy Go Lucky, an awareness that even the most eccentric humor offers a welcome distraction from our difficulties, and if we’re really lucky, a helping of healing and catharsis on the side.