I agree with the rest of the posters who immediately recognize that this is just completely ridiculous. It is so different from exaggeration and fabrication in journalism or a serious autobiographical work. It is the difference between saying:

"President Kennedy was shot 42 times in Dallas today." Inappropriate if it is incorrect and reported that way by the NYT.

"I was shot 42 times during the course of my campaign against gang violence which I'm now writing about to cash in." Inappropriate as the exaggeration/fabrication is the entire basis for writing the memoir.

"Bob, the guy who lived downstairs, once told me he had been shot at 42 times in his lifetime. I felt like Hillary in Bosnia every time I passed his doorway". Maybe Bob didn't exist or he never said such a thing, but the author's apartment was a terrible place, and this is a harmless concoction to convey the point.

The first two are so clearly different in import from the last. I simply do not understand why this isn't obvious.

Sedaris is hilarious. The idea that he or Dave Barry or Stephen Colbert or Bill Bryson can't exaggerate for the purpose of humor is moronic.