I just finished David Sedaris’ Naked and Me Talk Pretty One Day. They were quite enjoyable books, a birthday gift from my brown friend in Austin. Thanks, F!
They’re more a collection of essays and memoirs than anything else. As I’ve told other people, Sedaris doesn’t so much finish a book as he just stops writing. It’s a little weird to finish a book with no real wrap-up or anything to tie it all together. Aside from that, I enjoyed these quite a bit. I’ve always had a certain voyeuristic enjoyment of hearing about other people’s lives. It’s always interesting to hear about the stuff people take for granted as Life Experiences, when these things are actually quite unique and fascinating to you, the reader, since you’ve no experience growing up with the supposedly mundane events. Sedaris touches on this towards the end of Me Talk Pretty when he recounts the events of a friend who travelled parts of the world with his father, some kind of Ambassador.
So, I enjoyed the books and was sad when they were ended. I don’t, however, understand the wild, feverish quotes of praise in the beginning of the books. “Sedaris may be the first brilliantly witty New Yorker…”, “sidesplitting”, “wildly funny”, “I laughed so hard I lost control of my bowels. I mean it.” I liked the books, and there were indeed two parts in Me Talk Pretty One Day where I laughed out loud, but as a whole I wouldn’t consider either of these books as “wildy funny”. More “amusing”. If my quote were in the front of one of these books, it’d probably say, “A fun collection of stories. A grinner.”
Everyone I’ve spoken with about Sedaris has described him as “hilarious”. It’s interesting. I can’t quite determine the disconnect between them and me, because a lot of these people are ones I’d consider funny people, sharing the same comedic sensibilities I have. However, while I find the style amusing and quite enjoy the plays on words and turns of phrase found in his books, I would be hard-pressed to recount any situation in either I’ve read as “hilarious”.
I dunno. Maybe it’s because a lot of the humor comes from displaying the dysfunctions of his family. It’s the “humor of the unexpected” in a way. I’ve sort of become deadened to any but the REALLY odd dysfunctional people, simply because I have heard many, many stories about just how weird people can be. As well, a lot of the humor is just mean humor. I can enjoy it on a certain level, but mostly it strikes me the same way slapstick and pratfall comedy does: Sort of a juvenile expression to get a laugh. This is one of the reasons I don’t enjoy SNL any longer… Incidentally, Sedaris has written for SNL, I’m told.
In any case, I did enjoy these two books, and I would recommend reading them because they are indeed frequently engrossing, sometimes touching, and if the stories are true, David Sedaris has lived an interesting, interesting life.
So that’s my review.
