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: Between the Covers: [...]
Summary: 2 Stars
A #1 national bestseller, I was drawn to this book by word of mouth, but was convinced to buy it thanks to the well put-together David Sedaris table found at Barnes & Noble. You know how busy I have been, so it took me a while to get to this book in my very large pile. I've had it since December and I feel very accomplished to have it completed.
David Sedaris is a man who grew up in South Carolina before moving around the United States to San Francisco, Chicago and New York before ending up in Paris, France. Me Talk Pretty One Day is his memoir of trying to grow up and find his place as an individual. Dreaming of hitting it big and becoming famous, Sedaris has it rough as a child already recognizing himself as a homosexual at the age of eleven. Sent to speech pathology for a lisp, and suspecting that others like him are also being sent to kick out more than just the lisp, Sedaris searches for a way to become comfortable with himself. It is hard when even his guitar instructor turned him away for singing showtunes, but he eventually made some type of progress, if you can call it that. Constantly moving from city to city, job to job, Sedaris has been a personal assistant for a woman obsessed with catching a lost cockatoo for a reward and has moved the boxes of enough variable people to get a better understanding of the confusing human race. Leading to a life in Paris with his boyfriend Hugh, Sedaris finds some sense of security.
I found this memoir to be enjoyable to read, but I was hoping that it would be more like a novel. Especially in Part One (Sedaris's portion devoted to living in the United States), the author jumps around between both random topics and time periods. It seemed as if he was jumping to the places that would give him the appearance of a misunderstood artist sitting in a nest of human hair or a troubled young adult with a flair for drug use. I wasn't hip to the "edge" Sedaris was trying to portray because it just left the tale jagged and rough. I was hoping for more of something like his first chapter in speech class but was left disappointed until Part Deux. Part Deux (you guessed it, Sedaris's portion devoted to living in France) is a much more enjoyable, less edgy storyline that flows much better than the jumpy Part One. Finally returning to anything relating to his title (Me Talk Pretty One Day) since the first chapter, Sedaris talks about his adventures in France learning the language and trying to communicate and exist in a foreign country. He finds himself defending the United States at dinner parties, being the scapegoat for America-hating Europeans, and fascinated by American tourists who speak negatively about him in English without knowing he can understand everything they are saying. This is a much better section of the memoir, so please make sure you plow through Part One to get to it. I was disappointed, though, on the seemingly lack of a general ending. Unless you count the fact that some of his family who could afford the trip came to France to celebrate Christmas as an ending, it is hard to find when the last chapter is really devoted to Sedaris's father's quirk of buying and hiding fruit past its expiration date.
I found this book enjoyable and it was nice to have to pass the time. I have said that Part Deux was exponentially better than Part One for storyline and chronological factors, but let me continue to say that I would only read this for bare entertainment. I can only see reading this to pass the time. It did and I had fun, but I cannot see reading this for any higher purpose because it seems that by the last page of this novel, the author is still searching for any shred of purpose and therefore has nothing to offer the reader besides his version of daydreams he has while staying awake after switching to caffinated tea instead of drugs. It's fun as long as you just stay on the surface, as the author seems to do. Success for its wit, comedy and point of view, I can understand the limited crowd it has drawn while still making the work a national bestseller.
"The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it."
-James Bryce
Book Review: Misanthropy CAN be funny. . . but not in this case
Summary: 2 Stars
As David Sedaris relishes reminding the reader on every page, he may be a homosexual, but he is certainly not gay. In fact, much of Mr. Sedaris's book seems to reflect a determination to destroy every stereotype, every prejudice, that the biased reader may carry about his demographic. If such a reader picks up this book assuming that he will be reading of a sunny fellow, respectful of the arts, of learning, of variety, of new experiences, that assumption won't last for long. The author is grouchy about pretty much everything, and the more something is alien to his personal customs, the less he likes it.
You might think that I disliked this book because I dislike the curmudgeonly style of humor; but you'd be wrong. I quite enjoy a good curmudgeon, the operative word being "good". An Edward Abbey or a Bill James or a Mark Twain can be quite caustic, but with a difference. These other curmudegeons are judgmental of the rest of humanity mainly because they possess a particular vision of how the world should be, and humanity isn't holding up its end of the bargain. But Sedaris doesn't really seem to know what he wants; one detects no alternative vision. The reader only knows that pretty much everything irritates him.
Between the covers of this book, the author derides every subject under the sun: performance art, teachers, students, well-meaning but misguided fathers (well, one anyway, the author's own, whom I pitied), computers, boorish tourists in New York City and in Paris, and haute cuisine, among others.
What he actually likes is less clear. At one point he contrasts the old typewriters favorably with today's computers, and not very convincingly. If computers didn't exist, one suspects that Sedaris would be writing pieces complaining about stuck keys, papers dislodged from the roller, or typos created just as he was completing a page.
He also seems to like his siblings somewhat, but only because they join in tormenting his beleaguered father, with their profanity and their dress.
All of which would be forgiven if Sedaris were really that funny. But he isn't. He rather reminds me of that girl who sat in the back of one's middle school class, rolling her eyes, making fun of everyone and everything. A few other kids think her act is amusing, but for the rest of us, it wears thin quickly. Usually that girl didn't have much to offer on her own, it was her way of fighting her own demons. Which seems to be the case here. Ridicule and wit are two different things.
Not that it's all bad. The chapter wherein Sedaris confronts a, uh, well, shall we say, a "deposit" left behind by the last user of the bathroom is pretty funny. And there's an occasional, very occasional, wry phrase along the way.
But most of the pieces are rather mean-spirited diatribes. You can almost sense him lying in wait to lampoon the visitor from the hustings to New York City, dissecting her every word and move so that he can project superiority. So too with the boorish Americans he meets in Paris. If neither existed, he would have invented them, and for all we know, he might have.
Sedaris might seem to have some standing to be judgmental of others if he himself didn't come off as so closed-minded. The chapter on food is classic; he spends the whole piece complaining about how there are too many novel ingredients, piled too high on his plate. Memo to David Sedaris: New York City does serve Big Macs for those who want them.
I rate this a 2 rather than a 1 because it's an easy, light read. I did smile once or twice.
But mostly I wanted to finish the book, take a shower, clear my mind of it, and then to read something more uplifting. You know that girl I mentioned in the back of your middle school class? You hang around with her too long, and pretty much you're rolling your eyes, too, and mocking everyone and everything you come across. This book made me want to get away from Mr. Sedaris and to hang out with someone I liked a lot more.
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.