'Me Talk Pretty One Day' by David Sedaris
16 October 2014The American humourist David Sedaris is now such a familiar figure on BBC Radio 4 it is hard to read his essays without hearing his voice in your head. I've been reading his collection published in 2000, 'Me Talk Pretty One Day'. It's a good sample of the David Sedaris style – a neurotic, sarcastic, self-deprecating collection of personal experiences. I know his writing is not to everyone's taste – his amusing observations of foreigners can sail close to racism and he sometimes succeeds in his attempts to persuade you that he's not a very nice person. But his prose is beautifully constructed and can be incredibly funny. I liked this opening to 'The Learning Curve' in which “a terrible mistake was made” and the recently graduated Sedaris was offered a position teaching a writing workshop:
“The position was offered at the last minute, when the scheduled professor found a better-paying job delivering pizza. …. Like branding steers or embalming the dead, teaching was a profession I had never seriously considered. I was clearly unqualified, yet I accepted the job without hesitation, as it would allow me to wear a tie and go by the name of Mr Sedaris.”
Labels: Books
posted by Robin Simpson @ 7:50 pm
2 Comments:
Hi Robin, great to see you today. I''ve subscribed to your other blog, but this blog doesn't allow me to. I wonder if others have had similar problems? I click on the link (atom) and it gives me lines of code. Hope you can resolve it! All the best, Anita
Hi Anita.
My Cultural Playing Field blog is in Wordpress whereas this one is created in Blogger which seems to work differently. There is a way of becoming a "follower" of Blogger blog but I'm not really sure how you do this. Alternatively you can copy and paste this link (atom) into a RSS reader: http://culturaldessert.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
Best wishes,
Robin.
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