Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
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Book Reviews of Me Talk Pretty One Day
Book Review: A Complex World and A Lot of Perspective
Summary: 5 Stars
What makes the work itself so intriguing is its affinity for authenticity. His first essay details the ridiculous obsessions of his father with hiding and eating rotted food as if it were his life treasure. In all of his essays, there remains something original or personal from the author's life and it is far from boring or long, but simply witty and astounding.David Sedaris, the character, is the focus of the book - as he explains in great detail the most memorable episodes of his life, whether it is embarrassing, funny, absurd, or deeply personal. It remains clear throughout the entire book Sedaris examines moments, events, and language as though he was a shrink. A lot of writers fail due to their inability to recognize their own bias, but where other writers fail - Sedaris is successful. He recognizes his personal bias in numerous stories, and surprisingly makes a mockery, or perhaps a joke, out of it. Take for instance, his seemingly shrewd personal indictment of the ever-growing technological era of computers. "I hate computers for any number of reasons, but I despise them most for what they've done to my friend the typewriter. In a democratic country you'd think there would be room for both of them, but computers won't rest until I'm making my ribbons from torn shirts and brewing Wite-Out in my bathtub. Their goal is to place the IBM Selectric II beside the feather quill and chisel in the museum of antiquated writing implements. They're power hungry, and someone needs to stop them." The reason why David Sedaris, the character, works so well in the book is because of his flat-out honesty on any number of subjects and issues. He also has an extraordinary sense of self-awareness most do not possess, or at least are less than eager to broadcast it.
He weaves in and out of his own personal life, writing about the misfortunate (and comical) habits of his sister, Amy, who has always took a liking to `fatty suits' and mind-games. She has had a field day masterminding such stunts as disguising herself as a victim of physical abuse, masking her identity to flirt with her father, and stealing money from an unguarded till at a grocery story and then simply explaining that "she wasn't stealing, she was simply pretending to be a thief. `And thieves steal,' she said. `So that's what I was doing.' It all made perfect sense to her." Amy appears in several of the essays, each time with an unusual story and same role.
Comedic short-story essay books are generally at a great disadvantage because they lack what non-fiction books have to offer - which is an education. They are at another disadvantage because they lack what fiction has to offer - a world filled with what the author desires, whether it is a representation of reality, fantasy, horror, or a mixture of everything in between. Instead, David Sedaris has defied the expectations and proved that essays can be as equally effective and compelling as historical accounts of world or national events.
David Sedaris writes hilariously of being offered a position as a college professor: "The position was offered at the last minute, when the scheduled professor found a better-paying job delivering pizza. ...In a voice reflecting doubt, fear, and an unmistakable desire to be loved, I sounded not like a thoughtful college professor but, rather, like a high-strung twelve-year old girl; someone named Brittany. My first semester I had only nine students. Hoping they might view me as professional and well prepared, I arrived bearing name tags fashioned in the shape of maple leaves. I'd cut them myself out of orange construction paper and handed them out along with a box of straight pins. My fourth-grade teacher had done the same thing, explaining that we were to take only one pin per person. This being college rather than elementary school, I encouraged my students to take as many pins as they liked. They wrote their names upon their leaves, fastened them to their breast pockets, and bellied up to the long oak table that served as our communal desk." He then talks about his empty brief case and fantasizes about a class full of enthusiastic students, struggling to maintain order while students simultaneously shouted to be heard. This is only a small glimpse into Sedaris' larger insights and analysis of the human condition.
Sedaris has managed to convert ordinary happenings from one's life to incredibly comical vignettes worth discussing. His linguistic tongue most closely resembles a sharp and oddball Woody Allen for his clever ability to make situations funnier than they normally would be and his over-the-top affair with words. In creating something more valuable than a simple comedic story-telling book, he has both educated and entertained us with his personal experiences and observations of the world. Hats off to David Sedaris, whose contribution to the literary world make us all the more grateful for his endless campaign to keep us thinking, and reading.
Book Review: Hilarious
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is a collection of humorous essays having to do with the author’s life and his observations, similar in format to those we’ve seen by Woody Allen, Steve Martin, George Carlin, or, if you go back far enough, Robert Benchley. They start when he was a boy in junior high school taking speech therapy lessons (“The word therapy suggested a profound failure on my part. Mental patients had therapy”), to his life as a fortysomething adult in France. In between he lives with his family in western New York and Raliegh, North Carolina, and as he grows up he works in various occupations in New York and Chicago. He also travels a lot. The essays are uneven to the extent that while some of them will cause you to bellow or guffaw uproariously, many will only cause you to chuckle gently or giggle uncontrollably. Yes, the book is that funny. Of course, the author was lucky enough to grow up in the Addams family. I take that back. The Addams family looks like Make Room for Daddy in comparison with Mr. Sedaris’ family. There is his father, to begin with, who, among other things, can’t bear to throw away food. He keeps little bits of it tucked in the pockets of his clothes, his suitcase, behind his bed, you name it. Occasionally he’ll whip out a piece and start chewing. There is his sister, born and bred to be thin, who surprises her father one day with her “fat-suit.” She is also prone to saying things to her brother like, “Good luck on beating that rape charge!” while exiting a crowded subway with him on it. And then there is the pathologically profane brother, the self-proclaimed, “Rooster.” Mr. Sedaris has a lot of material to draw from, but then, it is doubtful that anyone else could quite put it his way.
The brother essay is particularly funny. 5’4”, with a high, girlish voice, eleven years younger than Mr. Sedaris, he is the one member of the family who took to the South, unlike the rest of these transplanted New Yorkers. But I suspect even the South would have reservations about the Rooster: “Certain think they can f*** with my s***,” he says. “But you can’t kill the Rooster. You might f*** him up sometimes, but, b****, nobody kills the Rooster. You know what I’m saying?”
And then there is Mr. Sedaris trying to learn French, in France, with Poles and Italians and Koreans. The teacher asks them to try to explain Easter to the Morrocan student who has never heard of it. “A party for the little boy of God who call his self Jesus.” “He make the good things, and on the Easter we be sad because somebody makes him dead today.” “One too may eat of the chocolate,” says the Italian nanny. The teacher asks them who brings the chocolate. “The rabbit of Easter. He bring of the chocolate.” I could go on with this, but it is difficult to type when one’s fingers are shaking from laughing so hard.
There is so much more. I’ve barely even scratched the surface. This book is a real treat. Light, witty, clever, occasionally insightful and always very, very funny. It serves as a great, humorous break between reading the Tolstoys and the Dostoyevskys of the world, and best of all, you don’t have to sacrifice your intelligence to do so.
Book Review: Me Talk Pretty One Day
Summary: 5 Stars
Me Talk Pretty One Day
By David Sedaris
This book is about a gay boy and his experiences through life. It follows the hilarious memories and horrible times in his life. I chose to read this book because my sister recommended it. She said she really enjoyed it and that it was funny and well written. David Sedaris' memoir, Me Talk Pretty One Day, is an outrageously funny account of his life from childhood, through adolescence, and up to adulthood.
In his elementary school days, David Sedaris had a speech impediment and had to take speech therapy. He hated his speech therapy lessons and decided to avoid saying `S's for the rest of the year. He bought himself a pocket dictionary. At the end of the year the speech therapy teacher tried to trick him into saying an `S'. With many failures the speech therapy teacher decided to tell him a very sad story of her life. After the story, David Sedaris said, "Hey, look. I'm thorry." "Ha, Ha", she said, "I got you." [pg. 15]. This was a memorable time in David Sedaris' life because he became more self conscious of himself because of the speech therapy and the teacher drawing attention to it.
Also, in his elementary years, his father enjoyed jazz so much and was convinced all of his kids were very talented in music and that he wanted to start a family jazz band. He enrolled David and two of his sisters into music courses with David playing the guitar. David tried to play the guitar but ended up with much failure. Finally, he had enough. He came home one day and heard his sister, Lisa, playing her flute from the living room "it sounded not unlike the wind whipping through an empty Pepsi can." [pg 24] He also heard his other sister, Gretchen, down in the basement. She was either practicing the piano or "the cat was chasing a moth across the keys." [pg. 24] Finally, the not so talented "Sedaris trio had officially disbanded". From this experience David learned that his talent was not in music and that in order to find his true talent he would have to search through many things such as art and play writing.
Another interesting episode in David Sedaris' life is when he tried to learn French. He took classes with a very strict teacher and other people from all around the world. In this chapter, everything said in French is translated literally into English. For example, "I know the thing that you speak exact now. Talk me more, you, plus, please, plus." [pg. 173]. During this chapter he and the other students start to feel self conscious of whatever they say in French because of this teacher's strict rules so they learn to barely talk at all. The reason the book is called, Me Talk Pretty One Day, is because it is a literal translation from French. This part of the story is very important to him because in these classes he learns what people think of the United States, and he realizes how he is labeled by other nations.
The book also describes David Sedaris' drug experience, his time living in New York, his homosexuality, and his relationship with his family. David Sedaris does not learn a whole lot from his odd experiences. It is basically just what he has been through. But in the last chapter he explains what he has truly learned from his entire life: that he's no good and will never be anything big.
Book Review: Honest and Hilarious, Honestly
Summary: 5 Stars
Honesty. Pure, unrivaled honesty. Even Augusten Burroughs' tales of family crazies cannot touch the honesty of David Sedaris's written word, and Me Talk Pretty One Day is no exception. He is brutally honest when describing his father's obsession with saving and eating food long past its expiration date. He is painfully honest when he discloses his drug abuse while feigning artistic inclinations. I think it is this honesty that makes me love Sedaris. I am truly jealous of the candor with which he can tell any story, no matter how embarrassing or slandering it might be. It amazes me that his honesty can literally make me sob but a few pages later can make me laugh until I cry.
The dramatic, emotional swings are paralleled in the bi-continental setting of the short stories in Me Talk Pretty One Day. Sedaris explores the entire spectrum of his life from the time he is his South Carolina grade school taking speech lessons to lessen his lisp to his forays into learning French while living in France, the short story providing the title line. The book is full of binaries: self-conscious pre-teen to self-accepting fifty-something, despising his family to accepting the quirks of his parents and five siblings, and drug addicted to stone sober.
These binaries are not special to Me Talk Pretty One Day, however. Naked, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Blue Jeans all exemplify Sedaris's honest look at the changes one takes in life. He is able to poignantly address crazy neighbors and Christmas whores but also look at the funny side of death and addiction. Perhaps the thing that makes Me Talk special is that Sedaris deftly balances the bittersweet with absurd in a way that, at the end of the book, makes you feel like you've just walked away from one really great therapy session where you realized that a) you can deal with your problems and b) at least you don't have it as bad as this Sedaris guy.
And it is so funny. I laughed until I snorted. This is not to say that Sedaris's other books are not funny because they are very much so, but Me Talk just has something special about it that makes it unique. Again, Sedaris's honest look at himself is what makes it so personal and like a close best friend. He is able to find the humor in the fact that he is not as smart as his partner and his partner makes him feel better about this fact by stating that he is good at things like "vacuuming and naming stuffed animals." My favorite part of the book occurs in the short story with the same title as the book, in which Sedaris takes us through his evolution from speaking one French word at a time ("ashtray" and "bottleneck") to speaking French phrases: "'Is them the thoughts of cows?' I'd ask the butcher, pointing to the calves displayed in the front window. `I want me some lamb chop with handles on `em.'" I can open to the page this quote appears on and laugh out loud like I had never read it before.
This book is so worth the money and time. If you've not read Sedaris before, this is a great place to start. If you are a longtime fan of Sedaris, you will appreciate his ability to make you think deeply about hilarious instances and to make you laugh at things you probably shouldn't laugh at.
Book Review: Done, David
Summary: 5 Stars
David Sedaris has a voice like no other. His observations seem random but somehow produce compelling autobiography on its own idiosyncratic terms, even if it isn't a straight-through chronology of his life. This book moves quickly through signposts in his life, as he evolves from an effeminate boy with a lisp...to a guitar-strumming college dropout...to an aimless writing teacher in Chicago...to a self-proclaimed no-talent performance artist...to an American living abroad with his partner Hugh in France. What ties these different stages together is his constant sense of the absurd and an acute ability to include himself in that world, not as an observer but as someone who creates an existence that is simultaneously at odds with yet strangely compatible with the world around him. Sedaris seems as much an eccentric as everyone else in the book, especially compared to his family, even compared to his deliciously wacky sister Amy, but he still stands out as a character without alienating the reader, no mean feat. Sedaris does not use cheap sentiment, and I like how he takes me on his journeys no matter how bumpy.
The second half of this book focuses on his adventures settling into the Gallic world, where his boyfriend owns an 18th century house in the French countryside. Sedaris does not take the easy way out by ridiculing the French but hilariously describes the quixotic nature of language barriers. The chapter, "Jesus Saves", is a great illustration of how he captures the quirkiness that befalls all sorts of international students trying to make sense of the French language on their terms by having everyone explain what Easter is.
But I have to say my favorite section is earlier on when he discusses his succession of pets and the sadness he felt when someone brought up "euthanasia" for his aged cat Neil, in the aptly named chapter, "The Youth in Asia". Sedaris brings up a cherished memory for me by remembering "Fatty and Skinny", the Japanese movie that showed up periodically on Saturday mornings with Kukla, Fran and Ollie in the sixties. His vivid recollection of this movie completely embraces me, as his memories match mine completely, especially when Fatty climbs the pole to the cruel taunts of his schoolmates and then cries out his friend's name for forgiveness of his failure, I had the privilege of meeting David Sedaris at a book signing this past summer where I could share this with him, and so in my copy of this book, he signed.... How funny and dear this man is, and what a wonderful read this book is.