Me Talk Pretty One Day

by David Sedaris

Anyone that has read NAKED and BARREL FEVER, or heard David Sedaris speaking live or on the radio will tell you that a new collection from him is cause for jubilation. His recent move to Paris from New York inspired these hilarious new pieces, including 'Me Talk Pretty One Day', about his attempts to learn French from a sadistic teacher who declares that 'every day spent with you is like having a caesarean section'. His family is another inspiration. 'You Can't 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 of food and cashiers with six-inch fingernails. Hilarious, sharply perceptive and surpassing all national boundaries of humour, ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY is a compelling introduction or a very welcome return to David Sedaris - compared by The New Yorker to Twain and Hawthorne - who has taken America and Europe by storm.

• ISBN10: 0349113904
• ISBN13: 9780349113906
• Publish Date: 4 January 2001 (first published 1 June 2000)
• Publish Status: Withdrawn
• Out of Print: 10 October 2008
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
• Imprint: Abacus
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 288
• Language: English

Reviews

[Jennifer | Pushing Pages]

I forgot to update this to say that I finished this! I'll try to get a decent review out soon, but know that I loved it.

[gmcgregor]

When you make your living writing books of essays, usually prominently featuring your childhood, you're definitely liable to accusations that your treatment of the truth is...flexible, which is something David Sedaris knows all too well. Me Talk Pretty Some Day is the first of his books I've ever read, and I have to admit, some of the pieces it contains do strike me as a little too good to be exactly, totally true. The book is separated into two parts: the first focusing on his early life, mostly his childhood with his family, and the second focusing on his adult life, mostly the portions in which he lived in France with his boyfriend. He didn't speak French before he spent time there, and his frustrating attempts to learn the language are a major through-line of the back half of the book.

As in any essay collection, there are hits and misses. For me, personally, there were many more of the former than the latter here. Humor in books is a tricky thing...even if I find something funny, the most it usually provokes is a smile. An out-and-out laugh is a rare thing, but Sedaris managed to get a few good chuckles out of me (including while I was reading it on an airplane, which made me seem A+ sane I'm sure). "A Shiner Like A Diamond" (about David's sister Amy freaking out their father by wearing the bottom half of a fat suit on a trip home) and "Make That A Double" (about Ugly Americans refusing to even try speaking French, and the weirdness of learning to speak a language with gendered nouns) were particular highlights for me, but most of the pieces were decent to good, in large part because they weren't ever boring.

And that's where we get into the truth-telling. These are funny stories, based in fact. But are they true? There's been more than one examination into the accuracy of the stories Sedaris tells, concluding that at least some of them are significantly embellished. So if they aren't really all that true, sometimes, does it really matter? For me, I guess the answer is that it depends. For these kinds of books (memoir-ish essays, usually humorous or meant to be), I'm generally proceeding under the idea that there might be some minor tweaks, usually to fill in dialogue or some of the finer details. But it seems like some of these stories in this book (particularly the one about the guitar teacher) are more than just slightly spruced up. And that's a little more bothersome. Part of the reason some of these stories are so funny isn't just because they recount humorous situations, but because those situations are supposed to have been real. If they're not actually real...I feel like there should be some sort of acknowledgement that these stories are based in fact but might have been dazzled up to tell a better story, maybe?

That probably sounds more negative than I intend it. At the end of the day, even after I read about the likelihood that some of these stories weren't exactly real life, I did enjoy reading the book. And for me, that's what counts. I enjoyed it enough, honestly, that I'm likely to continue reading other David Sedaris books, because I like his writing. My husband tells me that this is his best collection, so I'm curious to read more and see if I agree with him. I'd recommend Me Talk Pretty One Day to anyone looking for a mood-lifter (especially if you, too, have suffered through the indignity of learning a foreign language).

[Whitney @ First Impressions Reviews]

David Sedaris's short stories have me laughing out loud with people turning the heads to look. I can just hear them saying/thinking "What's wrong with that girl?" Nothing is off limits for this author, his parent's dog replacing their children, being taught to play guitar by a midget so his father can put a jazz bad together, unclogging a toilet and his father's thrifty ways.

It's hard to pick a favorite story but I really enjoyed "I'll Eat What He's Wearing" in which he recounts his father's ability to save food/clothing etc long past the expiration date with the excuse of "it's fine". As stated in his book, you could say this accounted for the depression, but it's not and I quite agree as my grandfather is very similar. (I've actually seen mold grow on bacon). I think because I could so relate to this it made it ten times funnier.

David Sedaris can be incredibly politically incorrect, sometimes hilariously so and other times you're unsure whether it's proper to laugh or disapprove. I saw him speak a few years ago and he told a story about flying on an airplane over Christmas time. He went on to explain how rude and pushy people could be at airports and upon arrival of said destination the stewardess came on wishing "everyone sitting down a Merry Christmas, and to everyone standing up, Happy Hanukkah."

[jamiereadthis]

God, Sedaris kills me.