Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Me Talk Pretty One Day, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity and Insecurity
Humor, Commentary, and Observation
Class and Belonging
Family, Love, and Support
Summary
Analysis
Sedaris has a friend named Alisha who visits him in New York City several times a year. To his mind, she’s the perfect guest because she doesn’t care what they do; she is willing to just go along with Sedaris’s daily life. However, she brings a friend along one year around Christmastime. The friend’s name is Bonnie, and Alisha doesn’t know her well, though she thinks she’s nice. Bonnie has never traveled outside of North Carolina, and by the time she and Alisha arrive in New York City, Alisha whispers, “Run for your life” to Sedaris. It turns out that Bonnie is extremely rude and constantly thinks people in New York are trying to take advantage of her. For this reason, she yells at the cabdriver who takes her and Alisha to Sedaris’s apartment, refusing to tip him. Worse, she’s not content to simply go along with Sedaris’s daily routine.
Sedaris enjoys chronicling the ins and outs of daily life, but he also likes creating character studies of intolerable people. This is exactly what he does in “City of Angels,” in which he presents Bonnie, a woman who will clearly disrupt his life as long as she’s staying in his apartment. Of course, it’s obvious that Bonnie is quite rude, but it’s also worth noting that Sedaris is a fairly stubborn host. Furthermore, he reveals a bit of his own snobbery when he goes out of his way to point out that Bonnie has never left North Carolina—a detail that he seems to hold against her, as if she is woefully uncultured. To be fair, Bonnie does seem rather inexperienced, but Sedaris appears to use this as a reason to dislike her, effectively subjecting her to the kind of classist judgment that he himself often criticizes.
Themes
Bonnie has an itinerary planned for her time in New York. The problem, though, is that Sedaris hates going to tourist attractions, which aren’t the kind of destinations New Yorkers frequent. When he tries to show her a few casual, lesser known spots, she criticizes the locations. When they all go out to eat, Bonnie yells at the servers, accusing them of overcharging her. Later, she forces Alisha to take her to a Broadway play, and though Sedaris thinks this will satisfy her, she dashes out the following day with Alisha to go to the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the UN, and the South Street Seaport. When they return, Sedaris is astounded to hear that Bonnie still wants to go to the Plaza Hotel for high tea. Then, when he suggests that she shouldn’t wear denim overalls to high tea, she yells at him.
Bonnie is only interested in seeing New York City’s tourist attractions—a fact that Sedaris holds against her. Rather than wanting a unique and authentic New York experience, she would prefer to go to the places that have the most crowds, effectively surrounding herself with other tourists. Of course, this isn’t all that surprising, since it’s understandable that somebody who’s never been to New York City would want to see landmarks like the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty. Sedaris, however, can’t fathom the idea of visiting these places, adopting an attitude of superiority over Bonnie. In doing so, he reveals his own narrowminded perspective while also highlighting Bonnie’s unwillingness to venture beyond the stereotypical New York experience.
Themes
Sedaris walks Bonnie and Alisha to the Plaza Hotel for high tea, secretly loving the idea that Bonnie will be chastised for underdressing. Sedaris relishes this, especially since he did his best to convince her to change, meaning that he won’t have to feel guilty when she’s insulted by a fancy waiter. And yet, when he comes back an hour after dropping them at the Plaza, he’s appalled to see that the place is overrun by people who are exactly like Bonnie. Everyone, it seems, is from out of town and is dressed for comfort, not style. On the way back from the Plaza, Bonnie says, “Now those were some nice New Yorkers,” referring to the other tourists she saw at high tea. Sedaris tries to explain to her that these people aren’t real New Yorkers, but it’s no use—Bonnie is convinced.
The irony of Bonnie’s visit is that she ends up seeking out the places in New York that are most in line with her normal lifestyle. Although going to high tea at the Plaza Hotel seems like a uniquely New York experience, the truth is that only tourists actually do this kind of thing, meaning that Bonnie ends up consorting with people like herself instead of meeting people who live in Manhattan. This frustrates Sedaris, who is especially annoyed when Bonnie claims that the other tourists at the Plaza are “nice New Yorkers.” What’s even more disconcerting to him, though, is that he was wrong: Bonnie wasn’t chastised for underdressing, meaning that she might actually have a better understanding of New York City than Sedaris himself.
Themes
After attending high tea, Bonnie forces Alisha and Sedaris to continue following her around to various other tourist attractions throughout New York City. It’s almost Christmas, so there are thousands of people crowded by the giant Christmas tree at Rockefeller Plaza. Sedaris hates walking through this part of town and dislikes how many people—how many tourists—are beside him, but Bonnie loves the experience and feels, in Sedaris’s words, “overjoyed to have discovered a New York without the New Yorkers.” While she takes in the hectic scene of tourists, Sedaris fights through the crowd to make his way home, suddenly feeling that he is an “outsider” in the very city he used to think of as home.
Forced to come face to face with a side of New York City he normally avoids, Sedaris realizes that his own vision of the city doesn’t define the entirety of Manhattan. This, in turn, makes him feel as if he doesn’t know New York as well as he thought, realizing to his horror that a person from out of town can visit the city and enjoy it without even experiencing the lifestyle he himself leads—an idea that challenges his somewhat snobby belief that his version of New York is better than Bonnie’s.
Themes
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