Me Talk Pretty One Day
by David Sedaris
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Book Reviews of Me Talk Pretty One Day
Book Review: Me laugh hard all day
Summary: 4 Stars
The pieces gathered in this collection of humorist David Sedaris's writings are all interesting, insightful (into the human condition), and funny. But behind the humor, I suspect, is a deep well of pain. Sedaris is a gay author who writes about things other than being gay; and when he writes of his own homosexuality, it is always without any fanfare. In fact, the unifying theme of these stories seems to be the pain of being "odd" or an outsider. In some cases, Sedaris's outsider status can be clearly linked to his being gay (as in the opening story, "Go Carolina," which describes the ordeal of being one of several sensitive boys in his school who is singled out for speech therapy for their lisps and effeminate speaking patterns). Elsewhere, his outsider status is due to being a northerner who moved to North Carolina, or an American who spends summers in France. On top of this, just being a member of his family seems to automatically qualify him for instant alien and mutant status. In fact, because of this many of his stories reminded me of souped up (some may say "vulgarized") versions of James Thurber's classic stories of his eccentric Ohio relatives. In fact, one story about his struggle to give up drinking, "The Late Show," reminded me of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." As Sedaris struggles to make it through painful nights of insomnia he fashions a variety of outlandish identities for himself. While exagerated humor is a constant in Sedaris's stories, there is always something else present just below the surface that almost anyone can identify with. In flaunting his eccentricities and outsider status, Sedaris has presented himself as a universal type, a true everyman.Book Review: ggggggg
Summary: 5 Stars
I couldn't dislike this book if I tried. Upon completion, I find myself flipping back through essays, re-reading over and over again finding little details that I missed before and laughing out lout in inappropriate situations. Sedaris is so likeable and undeniably funny that it might take a while before you start questioning how this dry, often pestamistic passive observer became the protagonist of his stories for no obvious reasons and became your personal hero. He's not really criticizing human behavior, he's just admitting that no one is above it and for being a writer with such wit and charm stripped down to confessionals, you can't help but love him for writing the words that never left your mouth with such cleverness and fluency. "Me Talk Pretty One Day" is the collected writings of David Sedaris' experiences in France and that general era of his life, but instead of being filled with the hopelessness and drama he was searching for, he manages to find whimsical humor everywhere he goes, never failing to display his own pretentions and akward mannerisms to which I relate and praise him for. Even though I have yet to meet an eccentric bipolar french-teacher who constantly throws objects and asks questions purely for the intent of criticizing thier answers, a father who refuses to not eat appaulingly old food and forces his children to appreciate jazz, or a speech therapist who seems to interrigate her child patients determined to find flaws in thier speech, I'll never lose my appreciation for those great story tellers who'm I've never had the privelege to be. Sedaris and his world full of eccentric characters, never fail to entertain.Book Review: innovative, but irrelevant
Summary: 3 Stars
Looking for an edge away from the "same ol' same ol'", I picked up this book on a recommendation by a friend. In reading the first chapter, I was extremely delighted in this non-timeconsuming and simplistically funny book. However, the further I got into the book, the more abstract the humor was and the harder it was for me to believe the outlandish situations that David Sedaris claims to have experienced. Though this was not true for every chapter, I found that the far-fetched chapters that slightly pinched a nerve had then made many of the other chapters unbelievable, thus ruining the chance of finding ANY meaning in this book and, instead, making it a book purely for entertainment. The chapters don't even run together in any plausible and linear format, and instead seem to be formed in the succession of a scattered memory.
Though I have nothing against books meant for entertainment purposes only, I do not wish to spend much of my time reading them. Luckily, each chapter contains a short story in itself that could be picked up at any moment I desired. So, despite my criticism, I did enjoy the book...but only sparingly.
In conclusion, this book is innovative in the way it is written and in it's contents. However, if you are a fan of philosophy fiction and stories with hidden meanings, I would recommend this book only if you're the type that needs a complete break once and a while. Though the book is funny, I would only fully recommend it to those who don't mind spending hours reading scattered stories with no meaning for the lone purpose of being mindlessly entertained.
Book Review: A little disappointed
Summary: 3 Stars
Before I read this book, I read "Naked" and "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim," also by David Sedaris. I liked those much better.
"Me Talk Pretty One Day" often seems forced, with situations that fall flat on their face - Sedaris watching young men get injured by angry cows, Sedaris watching a girl almost fall off a halted amusement park ride, Sedaris flubbing an IQ test in French, etc. The opening essay, about seeing a speech therapist in high school and Sedaris's ability to avoid the letter s (which would reveal his lisp), isn't very funny.
Also, oddly, the book reads as a tribute to Sedaris's father, which is strange considering Sedaris's light mockery of him in other books. "Naked" is more of a tribute to Sedaris's mother, and that felt more natural somehow. I know from his other books that there was a lot of tension between Sedaris and his father on account of Sedaris's sexuality, and that tension seemed to be missing between Sedaris and his mother.
The book also suffers from a dearth of Paul, Sedaris's funniest sibling in my opinion. "Corduroy and Denim" features lots of Paul and is all the better for it.
Probably the best essay in the book is the one based on the title, which documents Sedaris's struggle to learn French. He can't keep track of which nouns are masculine and which are feminine, and he recounts the butchered language in which he and his classmates comfort each other. Touching and funny at the same time. An essay about his sister Amy and how she wears the lower half of a "fat suit" home for the holidays is also very funny.
Book Review: Not as funny as I'd hoped.
Summary: 2 Stars
Sedaris describes vignettes from his life in this wry-humored self-deprecating autobiography.
He and I do not share the same sense of humor, so though I did find some of his stories throughout the middle of the text quite funny (particularly the way he described learning French and moving to France), I found the beginning and end of the book tedious reading. Perhaps I didn't read it in the right frame of mind. If I had approached it as a collection of short stories instead of a continuing narrative, I might have enjoyed it better, and I am willing to take the blame for that oversight, though I didn't see any reference to this book as a collection of short stories in any reviews.
In the beginning, Sedaris describes himself as a vapid and shallow child, and a pretentious and annoying art student. As a reader, I simply didn't care about him.
If you can stick with this novel until chapter nine, when Sedaris moves to NYC, his humor kicks into gear and the book becomes very amusing through chapter twenty-three.
After that, subsequent chapters about uncomfortable self-revelations and insomniac fantasies are at times both repulsive and tedious, and divorced from any of the previous text. But then Sedaris finishes with one of the funniest chapters of the whole lot which leaves the reader laughing, but does nothing to draw the whole book together in conclusion.
Many people have loved this book, but I did not find it very appealing or satisfying.
C.A.Wulff - author of Born Without a Tail