Me Talk Pretty One Day

Pretty in Paris

Oh to be the partner of Hugh Hamrick and to explore Paris. I’m jealous.

David Sedaris is the funniest humorist I’ve come across in years. I can listen to him narrate his short stories again and again and they never lose their humor. Sheer genius.

Me Talk Pretty Some Day needs to be listened to. Sedaris narrares the short stories in this collection which won the Thurber Prize for American Humor in 2001. I’m not sure how it would come across in print, but Sedaris is clearly a performer.

While the stories range from learning French in situ, to family matters to living in New York, those revolving around his attempt at fluency in French are the best. Sedaris is completely incapable of learning French. He just doesn’t get show more the language. He’s flummoxed by the nouns having genders for example. He tries all sorts of gimmicks to try to remember the sex of various objects.

‘Hoping to learn by repetition, I tried using nouns’ gender in my everyday English. ‘Hi guys,” I’d say, opening a new box of paperclip, or “Hey you, have you seen my belt? I can’t find her anywhere.”.’

He joins a French beginners class, with immigrants from countries in Bosnia and Middle Eastern war zones. The teacher is sarcastic and belittles her hapless charges.

‘My only comfort was that I was not alone. Hurdled in the doorways and making the most of our pathetic French my fellow students and I engaged in conversation currently overheard in refugee camps.
“Sometime me cry alone at night.”
“That be common for me also.”
“But be more strong you. Much work and some day you talk pretty. People start love you too, maybe tomorrow, OK.”’

The French stories are interspersed with 19th century French carousel music. The book is a gem.

I highly recommend this book for anyone suffering illness or depression, for first-time visitors to Paris, for those of us who notice those Americans who think there are two syllables in “pen”.

And for lovers everywhere. show less

Wow.
That's not a good wow.

When I read a review which stated that Sedaris was 'one fo the worst human beings in history,' I was perplexed as to how someone could be moved so much as to have that opinion. Then I read it. Then I understood.

I don't know what is more incredible - the fact Sedaris is a sucessful author or the fact that people like him/his writing! Without an ounce of hyperbole, David Sedaris is an unhappy, conceited, ignorant, self-obsessed, fearful, judgemental, unaware, unintelligent see you next Tuesday!

He is a man who clearly thinks very little of others (a woman nearly falling from a fairground ride only led him to regret she didn't as he became deprived of a box office story about it) and hasn't the capacity to show more effectively reflect on his own issues (with learning, compromising, not getting his own way) and see how much of a princess he is (recting to an unflushed mega-turd like it was a life or death situation).

Who goes to France to be with a partner and does the bare minimum to involve himself in French society? (spending most of his time watching English films in local cinemas even refusing to show friends the sights when they come visit instead leaving them a spare key and a map to go by themselves). Who gets jealous of their boyfriend's African schooltrips to an Ethiopian slaughterhouse because they are more exciting than his and hence passes such experiences off as his own because he's so obsessed with appearing interesting in the eyes of others? Who thinks someone has an inferior IQ level due to the not taking up of advice from a waiter then actually ends up with a significantly lower IQ than said person? Who laments having a single maid over a houseful of servants because it signifies more importance? Who spends an entire story being insulted on a Paris metro, explaining his hate for the insulter only to end said story by doing absolutely nothing?

You know who.

I've been let down by the goodreads rating system. I have two more of his books as they all are above 4 stars. I will try another but if there is even a hint of the drivel held in these pages, of self-obsessed spoilt princess musings which ignore the trials and struggles of and empathy towards others, I shall not hesistate to get rid of them. If I could give this 0 stars I would. Steer clear, it's horrendous. show less

I always wonder at reviewers who describe Sedaris as "screamingly funny" or similarly, because I find his humour more quiet and understated. No less enjoyable, but it only sometimes makes me chuckle out loud (which I did in the doctor's waiting room with this book). I do love his turns of phrase, however, and his knack for touching upon things we might think but never admit to--thus making some of us feel a bit more "normal." This collection struck me as a bit more melancholy than some of his others, but I did enjoy it very much.

David Sedaris writes with plain-spoken eloquence, which is a rare combination. He's also darn funny and slyly unfliching in the autobiographical essays that make up Me Talk Pretty One Day. In the weaker essays, I'd argue Sedaris treats with so light a hand that he doesn't quite bring down the kicker (count how many metaphors I mixed there). At his best, he builds his wry observances of human absurdity into startling comic mosaics.

The standouts in the collection:
- On the meditative side, "The Great Leap Forward", a piece on his stint as a moving man (on a crew with a Communist, a schizophrenic, and convicted murderer) and what housing reveals about New Yorkers
- & "A Shiner Like A Diamond" on the hilarious side, on his sister Amy's gift show more for transformation and the chagrin it brings his father. show less

This is one of those books that I intended to read years ago because of its catchy title and its initial buzz, but then I forgot about it for a couple decades until I started regularly passing by its shelf at the library earlier this year. What the heck, I thought, it's never too late to try.

It got off to a good start with his speech therapy travails and weird family life as a child. The first half of the book was fairly humorous and engaging, but then in the back end the book nosedived as Sedaris moved to France and totally lost me as he spent a chapter recounting some goofy daydream fantasies.

Now I'm wondering if I was conflating this book with Augusten Burroughs Running with Scissors. I wonder where that's shelved?

Well, I guess it's no surprise that my sense of humour is different from most people. I really enjoyed these short stories and I had lots of laugh out loud moments. I actually had to flag one paragraph so I could reproduce it here:

SoHo is not a macaroni salad kind of place. This is where the world's brightest young talents come to braise carmelized racks of corn-fed songbirds or offer up their famous knuckle of flash-seared crappie served with a collar of chided ginger and cornered by a tribe of kiln-roasted Chilean toadstools, teased with a warm spray of clarified musk oil. Even when they promise something simple, they've got to tart it up--the meatloaf has been poached in seawater, or there are figs in the tuna salad. If cooking is show more an art, I think we're in our Dada phase.
(This is from the story Today's Special which ends with David leaving the restaurant unfulfilled and has to buy a hotdog from a vendor before going to the movie.)

I think it takes great talent to write a satisfying short story, far greater than writing a novel. David Sedaris may be one of those few who can do it superbly. show less

This is book of humour, and some other things, but mostly humour. It is a series of vignettes extracted from the life and times of the author. From his youth as a lisping boy, though his early adulthood as a substance abusing performance artist, to his adulthood as an Ex-patriot in France doing his very best to parlez avec les francophones, we follow as he leads us though his observations with a gentle hand and a smirk. But this book is much more than the sum of its parts.

As entertaining as it is, what you really get out of it is a new perspective on your own life-- in vicariously experiencing Sedaris' family life it is easy to slip into a mode wherein you relate personally with the subject at hand. All his neurosis are shared, along show more with delusions of grandeur, self deprecation, and missed efforts. All we as readers can do is sit back and think to ourselves: "yeah, I've done that." These tales are about more than just one's person's experience in exposition. They are about the human experience in all its fickle glory, and how funny it really is when we stop taking it so seriously. show less