I think to some extent we all bring our own reading backgrounds into this. I am really used to reading memoirs and essays about the writers' own experiences, including extremely private ones. For example, five minutes ago I read an essay in
Time by an author I know slightly IRL about her rape in college and how she came to think of it afterward. And that was pretty normal because at this point I have read sooo many first-person accounts of rapes (never from the rapist, though -- which actually would be interesting), gang rapes, domestic abuse, incest, mental illness, addiction and so on. In fact, there are so many of those things there's been a backlash that says, essentially, don't bother unless you have something fresh and universal to say about it (which my IRL friend did). Which is actually what I've always thought. I don't want to read an essay that reads like someone's journal written for their own therapeutic benefits -- it should say something larger than that.
Which I think David Sedaris' do. I haven't read much of his early work but I gather that back then he was just trying to be funny. Since he's been writing for the
New Yorker his essays seem to make deeper and more nuanced points. Those are almost always critical at his own expense -- he doesn't portray himself as heroic (that's generally been Hugh's role) which is why it doesn't come off as self-absorption to me. His behavior and character flaws are often used to make the point of the piece.
As I recall, I first noticed this with an essay some years ago about how a family had moved into his neighborhood from somewhere else, and at Halloween didn't realize you were expected to go trick-or-treating on the actual Halloween night. They came the following night instead. The Sedarises were out of candy at that point, so David's mother (I'm recreating this from dim memory, but it went something like this) asked him to share some of the candy he'd acquired trick-or-treating. He refused. He just sat there surrounded by piles of candy, greedily eating it all himself. I realized he was making a larger point about inequality and privilege -- either in general among all people or maybe just the United States compared to poorer countries/cultures. I think that might have been the first time I noticed how his writing seemed to have evolved (or at least evolved from what AFAIK was, previously, purely comedic). I think that's when I really started liking his stuff. His pieces had subsequently become more subtle and nuanced and -- in the case of the one we're discussing as well as the one about his mom's alcoholism -- more serious in topic. But they never come across as particularly self-serving to me; I think he usually makes himself the butt of the joke (or of the larger point). In the dad story, I think it's a little more ambiguous than that because his dad really does sound pretty bad.
OK, i just found the Halloween piece and skimmed through it. It's from 17 years ago and it's not as subtle as his more recent work. But it's pretty much as I remember.
https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/2003-11-03/flipbook/052d/