Hardcover, 272 pages
English language
Published Nov. 8, 2000 by Little, Brown & Co..
David Sedaris's new collection, Me Talk Pretty One Day, tells a most unconventional life story. It begins with a North Carolina childhood filled with speech-therapy classes ("There was the lisp, of course, but more troubling than that was my voice itself, with its excitable tone and high, girlish pitch") and unwanted guitar lessons taught by a midget. From budding performance artist ("the only crimp in my plan was that I seemed to have no talent whatsoever") to "clearly unqualified" writing teacher in Chicago, Sedaris's career leads him to New York (the sky's-the-limit field of furniture moving) and eventually, of all places, France.
Sedaris's move to Paris poses a number of challenges, chief among them his inability to speak the language. Arriving a "spooky man-child" capable of communicating only through nouns, he undertakes language instruction that leads him ever deeper into cultural confusion. Whether describint the Easter Bunny to puzzled classmates, …
David Sedaris's new collection, Me Talk Pretty One Day, tells a most unconventional life story. It begins with a North Carolina childhood filled with speech-therapy classes ("There was the lisp, of course, but more troubling than that was my voice itself, with its excitable tone and high, girlish pitch") and unwanted guitar lessons taught by a midget. From budding performance artist ("the only crimp in my plan was that I seemed to have no talent whatsoever") to "clearly unqualified" writing teacher in Chicago, Sedaris's career leads him to New York (the sky's-the-limit field of furniture moving) and eventually, of all places, France.
Sedaris's move to Paris poses a number of challenges, chief among them his inability to speak the language. Arriving a "spooky man-child" capable of communicating only through nouns, he undertakes language instruction that leads him ever deeper into cultural confusion. Whether describint the Easter Bunny to puzzled classmates, savoring movies in translation (It Is Necessary to Save the Soldier Ryan), or watching a group of men play soccer with a cow, Sedaris brings a view and a voice like no other--"Original, acid, and wild," said the Los Angeles Times--to every unforgettable encounter. --jacket
Read it because people said it's funny, parts of it are, but not enough endorphins to keep me reading.
David Sedaris is insightful and hilarious. He has an amazing ability to write his characters saying the perfect thing to epitomise themselves and the situation they're in for maximum honest hilarity.
Not sure if it wasn't as good as Calypso, or his books get tiresome after the first, but I felt as if this was a slog with few humorous moments. Certainly my last Sedaris book.
Admittedly I don't really know who David Sedaris is other than Amy's brother. Not quite sure where this book came from, either. So I remain sort of mystified as to why I picked it up & why I read the whole thing. It's good, in that it's not bad. In fact, I exhaled sharply through my nose on several occasions. It may not contain the answers to life's mysteries but there are worse ways to spend an evening, I'm sure, than reading some loosely strung-together anecdotes.
I'm not going to write a detailed review of this one. The stories, individually, are generally a little humorous but it doesn't add up to a meaningful whole picture of the author.
David Sedaris is a self-deprecating narcissist... Is that a thing? Anyway, he's very funny. I don't think this is his best collection of essays--he has gotten much better at writing good conclusions, which are notoriously difficult--but they are typical David Sedaris. Favorites from this collection are the essays about speech therapy and learning French.
Riotous.
Only a few are dated (Clinton jokes?) and those living-in-a-foreign-country inside-David's-head are excellent.
Nice, elegantly-written, autobiographical stories.
