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Biography & Autobiography. Essays. Nonfiction. Humor (Nonfiction.) A new collection from David Sedaris is cause for jubilation. His recent move to Paris has inspired hilarious pieces, including Me Talk Pretty One Day, about his attempts to learn French. His family is another inspiration. You Cant Kill the Rooster is a portrait of his brother who talks incessant hip-hop slang to his bewildered father. And no one hones a finer fury in response to such modern annoyances as restaurant meals presented in ludicrous towers and cashiers with 6-inch fingernails. Compared by The New Yorker to Twain and Hawthorne, Sedaris has become one of our best-loved authors. Sedaris is an amazing reader whose appearances draw hundreds, and his performancesincluding a jaw-dropping impression of Billie Holiday singing I wish I were an Oscar Meyer weinerare unforgettable. Sedariss essays on living in Paris are some of the funniest hes ever written. At last, someone even meaner than the French! The sort of blithely sophisticated, loopy humour that might have resulted if Dorothy Parker and James Thurber had had a love child. Entertainment Weekly on Barrel Fever Sidesplitting Not one of the essays in this new collection failed to crack me up; frequently I was helpless. The New York Times Book Review on Naked.… (more)
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I enjoy cranky essayists, but I expect them to have something that they do like when venting their thoughts on something they don't. I sensed none of that in these essays...just pushing nouns up against verbs in order to blow something up, not to point to something better. When poking fun at his brother for being white trash, I couldn't help but think...were his brother any other way...Sedaris would be poking at him for being white bread. When ranting about computers being inferior to typewriters, I couldn't help but feel that, if the former didn't exist, he'd be ranting that typewriters were nothing compared to the fountain pen.
Once he gets to France, I found some of this impression eased and I laughed a bit more. His encounter with the Americans who thought him to be French was quite funny.
However, in the final analysis, I never found myself overcome with laughter such as when I read Trillin or someone of that ilk. Sedaris just isn't my cup of tea.
Each
"'Yes,' became 'correct', or a military 'affirmative.' 'Please' became' with your kind permission,' and questions were pleaded rather than asked. After a few weeks of what she called 'endless pestering' and what I called 'repeated badgering,' my mother bought my a pocket thesaurus, which provided me with s-free alternatives to just about everything. I consulted the book both at home in my room and at the daily learning academy other people called our school. Agent Samson was not amused when I began referring to her as an articulation coach, but the majority of my teachers were delighted." (pg. 11)
In the book's second half, Sedaris is living in France and battling the language and culture barrier. Personally, I found this second part to be better than the first, possibly because I could relate a little more to his adventures with masculine and feminine articles.
"It's a pretty grim world when I can't even feel superior to a toddler. Tired of embarrassing myself in front of two-year-olds, I've started referring to everything in the plural, which can get expensive but has solved a lot of my problems. [...] A masculine kilo of feminine tomatoes presents a sexual problem easily solved by asking for two kilos of tomatoes. I've started using the plural while shopping, and Hugh has stated using it in our cramped kitchen, where he stands huddled in the corner, shouting, 'What do we need with four pounds of tomatoes?' [...] Hugh tells me the market is off-limits until my French improves. he's pretty steamed, but I think he'll get over it when he sees the CD players I got him for his birthday." (pg. 191)
Sedaris also deals with the challenge of trying to explain Easter -- in his fledgling French -- to a fellow language student. This particular chapter had me laughing out loud, and also annoying my mother. But when I made her stop what she was doing -- it's okay, she was only watching the news -- to read it, she cracked up herself.
I'm not sure that David Sedaris is for everybody -- he has a dry delivery style, and if you read too quickly, you might miss some of the less-in-your-face funny bits. I totally enjoyed this book, though, and will probably pick up another of his books in the near future.
Sedaris' irreverence and dry
Me Talk Pretty One Day was the first of his books I read and after that I knew I was hooked. It remains my favorite of his, though that might be because it was my first. It's a collection of 26 essays, mainly dealing with Sedaris' personal life and experiences.
Whether he telling stories about his unconventional family, dealing with a lisp or trying to learn how to speak French, he brings an absurdity to the most banal situations.
"You Can't Kill the Rooster" is Sedaris' story about his hillbilly brother... who refers to himself as "the rooster." It's one of my favorites in the bunch. I first read it, then later listened to Sedaris read it and it literally made me laugh so hard I was crying. He does a squealing, high-pitched imitation of his brother's voice, which is too ridiculous to be far from the truth.
Yes Sedaris can be crude and occasionally the situations he finds himself in are a bit disturbing, but he tells the stories in a way that's irresistible. I once attended a reading he gave and was thrilled to discover he was even funnier in person. If you've never read anything of his I would highly recommend starting with this book and get the audio version if you can!
"I noticed an uncommon expression on Alisha's face. It was the look of someone who's discovered too late that she's either set her house on fire or committed herself to traveling with the wrong person."
Me Talk Pretty One Day is a rough autobiography of writer and humorist David Sedaris. I say a
Me Talk Pretty One Day is extremely funny in parts. As a New Yorker, I especially liked his observations working for a moving company in New York City. (As anyone who has lived in New York long enough can tell you, conversations inevitably always turn to real estate if you get m ore than two of us in a room together). For example:
It was generally agreed that a coffin-size studio on Avenue D was preferable to living in one of the boroughs. Moving from one Brooklyn or Staten Island neighborhood to another was fine, but unless you had children to think about, even the homeless saw it as a step down to leave Manhattan. Customers quitting the island for Astoria or Cobble Hill would claim to welcome the change of pace, saying it would be nice to finally have a garden or live a little closer to the airport. They’d put a good face one it, but one could always detect an underlying sense of defeat. The apartments might bigger and cheaper in other places, but one could never count on their old circle of friend making the long trip to attend a birthday party. Even Washington Heights was considered a stretch. People referred to it as Upstate New York, though it was right there in Manhattan.
However, I found that autobiographies (no matter how good they are) often become relentlessly self-indulgent in parts, and this book is no exception to the rule. For instance, in one vignette Sedaris describes a series of dreams that he often has. This particular section doesn’t fit as well with his other stories about living in France and seemed to drag on and on.
All in all, not great literature, but a fun read nevertheless. I read it on the plane ride from New York to Amsterdam, and it was perfect for that kind of trip. Mindless and entertaining, to pass the time.
I'm not quite sure I get the point of books like this (or "Travelling Mercies" or "Pitching My Tent"
I still don't have a good answer to those questions, but have simply come to the conclusion that whether or not I understand the purpose of them, I do enjoy books like this, and that may be purpose enough. I especially enjoyed reading about David Sedaris' troubles with learning the French language. I never felt that way about learning English (fortunately), but it reminded me very vividly of my experience with learning German... a language that I never took to, and have now mostly forgotten, but where I found myself grasping for words and coming up with exceedingly more convulted sentences as I tried to find the words I needed, and avoid any use of gender-based grammar!
I think that if I met him in person, however, he would annoy me.
Perhaps the fact that I, too, have gone through the process of learning French as a second language is to blame. He never really
Or maybe the reason I didn't like this book is because I have a hard time relating to a frivolous- to- the- point- of- insanity gay man. Who knows?
I didn't enjoy this book one iota. Don't read it. Don't let other people read it. Don't even look at it's LT page. WHAT ARE YOU STILL DOING HERE? ESCAPE WHILE YOU STILL CAN!
And yet, he writes with such charm and wit that I couldn't
I loved his description of life in NYC, and even though I didn't always want to, I often found myself if not agreeing with him, at least smiling in understanding of his experience.
All in all, a wonderful collection of essays to introduce me to David Sedaris. Now I need to decide should I persue his material further, or stop here? As I mentioned, I found him to be an often times unlikeable fellow, and many times what got me through a section was his description of other countries or NYC (two of my favorite topics). I'm not sure what the rest of his writing is like.