David Sedaris’s Me Talk Pretty One Day is a collection of anecdotal essays, most of which have the same simple goal: to provide humorous commentary about everyday life and human behavior. Whether Sedaris is writing about an awkward situation at a party or the distorted perceptions people have about other cultures, his attention to life’s details renders him uniquely capable of taking something familiar and helping readers see it anew. Most often, he does this by unveiling the various absurdities that people tend to overlook in their daily lives, making even the most ordinary occurrence suddenly seem ridiculous and illogical. This, in turn, encourages readers to second-guess or reevaluate things they might otherwise take for granted. As a result, these essays reorient readers in their own perspectives, and though the vast majority of the pieces lack any kind of overarching moral, the very absence of greater meaning suggests that life is worth examining regardless of the circumstances—even if just to laugh about these circumstances.
From a craft perspective, the vast majority of the essays in Me Talk Pretty One Day culminate in something like a punchline. These concluding lines often undercut the message Sedaris has built throughout the essay, contradicting any resolution he may have made in the preceding pages. A perfect example of this formula is the way Sedaris structures “Big Boy,” an essay in which he recounts visiting the bathroom while attending an Easter dinner at a friend’s house. He announces to his friends that he has to use the restroom, intending to pee and quickly return. When he enters the bathroom, though, he finds an enormous poop in the toilet. Appalled that somebody would leave this, he tries to flush it, but it won’t go down. Trying again and again, he begins to panic, realizing that he’s been in the bathroom for quite some time. He frets that, if he’s unable to flush, the others will think he’s the one responsible for what’s in the toilet—a thought that mortifies him. Eventually, though, he manages to flush it down, and as he washes his hands, he wonders if there’s a lesson to be learned here about humility or vanity, thinking that he shouldn’t care so much if others think he left the poop in the toilet. With this in mind, he ends the essay with the following line: “I resolved to put it all behind me, and then I stepped outside to begin examining the suspects.” The final part of this sentence contradicts Sedaris’s newfound resolution to put this experience behind him. Instead of learning a lesson about humility—instead of accepting without embarrassment that everyone defecates—he focuses on guessing who left the poop in the toilet. In doing so, he humorously casts aside any moral to be taken from the story, leaving readers with an anecdote that uses comedy to call attention to the fact that the calculations people make in social settings are not only frequently absurd, but also hard to ignore—as evidenced by his inability to simply move on from this awkward moment.
Inviting readers to reexamine the things they’ve most likely taken for granted, Sedaris extends his humorous commentary to cover (and interrogate) broader societal topics. To that end, essays like “Jesus Shaves” explore cultural differences and, more specifically, how things that seem completely normal to certain people might seem utterly bizarre to others. “Jesus Shaves” outlines an experience Sedaris has while taking a French class in Paris. In a conversational exercise, the topic of Easter comes up, and one of the students notes that she doesn’t know what Easter is. The class is comprised of students from all over the world, and this particular woman hails from a Muslim-majority country that doesn’t celebrate Easter. In response to her question, many students start describing Easter. When one person says, “One too may eat of the chocolate,” the teacher asks who, exactly, brings the chocolate. Chiming in, Sedaris says, “The rabbit of Easter. He bring of the chocolate.” He’s certain he has answered correctly, but his teacher looks at him incredulously, saying, “A rabbit?” Going on, she explains that in France, a flying bell swoops into the country from Rome to deliver chocolate on Easter. This befuddles Sedaris, who asks how the bell could possibly know where everyone lives—a question that the teacher turns around on him, asking how a rabbit would know this. He concedes that this is a fair point, but he also notes that at least rabbits have eyes. This is the kind of joke—and overall interaction—that characterizes Sedaris’s attention to the many oddities humans are capable of ignoring once they get used to a certain idea. By interrogating these customs, he effectively destabilizes them in a way that allows readers to reconsider things they might otherwise take for granted.
Never one to overlook even the smallest detail of daily life, Sedaris calls on ordinary experiences in order to construct amusing, anecdotal essays, and if it ever seems in Me Talk Pretty One Day that an essay doesn’t have a point in the traditional sense, that’s most likely because it doesn’t—Sedaris isn’t interested in sculpting arguments, he’s interested in portraying life as it is and, moreover, making observations that most people overlook. In this way, his commentary urges readers to more closely examine their lives while also appreciating the humor and absurdity that comes along with seemingly normal human behavior.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Humor, Commentary, and Observation ThemeTracker
Humor, Commentary, and Observation Quotes in Me Talk Pretty One Day
No one else had been called, so why me? I ran down a list of recent crimes, looking for a conviction that might stick. Setting fire to a reportedly flameproof Halloween costume, stealing a set of barbecue tongs from an unguarded patio, altering the word hit on a list of rules posted on the gymnasium door; never did it occur to me that I might be innocent.
“One of these days I'm going to have to hang a sign on that door,” Agent Samson used to say. She was probably thinking along the lines of SPEECH THERAPY LAB, though a more appropriate marker would have read FUTURE HOMOSEXUALS OF AMERICA. We knocked ourselves out trying to fit in but were ultimately betrayed by our tongues. At the beginning of the school year, while we were congratulating ourselves on successfully passing for normal, Agent Samson was taking names as our assembled teachers raised their hands, saying, “I've got one in my homeroom,” and “There are two in my fourth-period math class.” Were they also able to spot the future drunks and depressives?
“Seriously, though, it helps if you give your instrument a name. What do you think you'll call yours?”
“Maybe I'll call it Oliver,” I said. That was the name of my hamster, and I was used to saying it.
Then again, maybe not.
“Oliver?” Mister Mancini set my guitar on the floor. “Oliver? What the hell kind of name is that? If you’re going to devote yourself to the guitar, you need to name it after a girl, not a guy.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “Joan. I’ll call it…Joan.”
“So tell me about this Joan,” he said. “Is she something pretty special?”
Joan was the name of one of my cousins, but it seemed unwise to share this information. “Oh yeah,” I said, “Joan’s really…great. She’s tall and…” I felt self-conscious using the word tall and struggled to take it back. “She’s small and has brown hair and everything.”
Either one of these things is dangerous, but in combination they have the potential to destroy entire civilizations. The moment I took my first burning snootful, I understood that this was the drug for me. Speed eliminates all doubt. Am I smart enough? Will people like me? Do I really look all right in this plastic jumpsuit? These are questions for insecure potheads. A speed enthusiast knows that everything he says or does is brilliant.
Immediately following the performance a small crowd gathered around my father, congratulating him on his delivery and comic timing.
“Including your father was an excellent idea,” the curator said, handing me my check “The piece really came together once you loosened up and started making fun of yourself.”
I was given two weeks to prepare, a period I spent searching for a briefcase and standing before my full-length mirror, repeating the words “Hello, class, my name is Mr. Sedaris.” Sometimes I’d give myself an aggressive voice and firm, athletic timbre. This was the masculine Mr. Sedaris, who wrote knowingly of flesh wounds and tractor pulls. Then there was the ragged bark of the newspaper editor, a tone that coupled wisdom with an unlimited capacity for cruelty. I tried sounding businesslike and world-weary, but when the day eventually came, my nerves kicked in and the true Mr. Sedaris revealed himself. In a voice reflecting doubt, fear, and an unmistakable desire to be loved, I sounded not like a thoughtful college professor but, rather, like a high-strung twelve-year-old girl; someone name Brittany.
I jotted these names into my notebook alongside the word Troublemaker, and said I’d look into it. Because I was the writing teacher, it was automatically assumed that I had read every leather-bound volume in the Library of Classics. The truth was that I had read none of those books, nor did I intend to. I bluffed my way through most challenges with dim memories of the movie or miniseries based upon the book in question, but it was an exhausting exercise and eventually I learned it was easier to simply reply with a question, saying, “I know what Flaubert means to me, but what do you think of her?”
As Mr. Sedaris I lived in constant fear. There was the perfectly understandable fear of being exposed as a fraud, and then there was the deeper fear that my students might hate me.
“Who are you,” she asked. “I mean, just who in the hell are you to tell me that my story has no ending?”
It was a worthwhile question that was bound to be raised sooner or later. I’d noticed that her story had ended in mid-sentence, but that aside, who was I to offer criticism to anyone, especially in regard to writing? I’d meant to give the issue some serious thought, but there had been shirts to iron and name tags to make and, between one thing and another, I managed to put it out of my mind.
One more flush and it was all over. The thing was gone and out of my life. […] And I was left thinking that the person who'd abandoned the huge turd had no problem with it, so why did I? Why the big deal? Had it been left there to teach me a lesson? Had a lesson been learned? Did it have anything to do with Easter? I resolved to put it all behind me, and then I stepped outside to begin examining the suspects.
I was mortified, but Bonnie was in a state of almost narcotic bliss, overjoyed to have discovered a New York without the New Yorkers. Here were out-of-town visitors from Omaha and Chattanooga, outraged over the price of their hot roasted chestnuts. […] The crowd was relentlessly, pathologically friendly, and their enthusiasm was deafening. Looking around her, Bonnie saw a glittering paradise filled with decent, like-minded people, sent by God to give the world a howdy. Encircled by her army of angels, she drifted across the avenue to photograph a juggler, while I hobbled off toward home, a clear outsider in a city I’d foolishly thought to call my own.
Before beginning school, there’d been no shutting me up, but now I was convinced that everything I said was wrong. [...]
My only comfort was the knowledge that I was not alone. Huddled in the hallways and making the most of our pathetic French, my fellow students and I engaged in the sort of conversation commonly overheard in refugee camps.
“Sometime me cry alone at night.”
“That be common for I, also, but be more strong, you. Much work and someday you talk pretty. People start love you soon. Maybe tomorrow, okay.”
In communicating any religious belief, the operative word is faith, a concept illustrated by our very presence in that classroom. Why bother struggling with the grammar lessons of a six-year-old if each of us didn't believe that, against all reason, we might eventually improve? If I could hope to one day carry on a fluent conversation, it was a relatively short leap to believing that a rabbit might visit my home in the middle of the night, leaving behind a handful of chocolate kisses and a carton of menthol cigarettes. So why stop there? If I could believe in myself, why not give other improbabilities the benefit of the doubt? I told myself that despite her past behavior, my teacher was a kind and loving person who had only my best interests at heart. I accepted the idea that an omniscient God had cast me in his own image and that he watched over me and guided me from one place to the next. The Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, and the countless miracles—my heart expanded to encompass all the wonders and possibilities of the universe.
A bell, though—that’s fucked up.
I asked myself, Who wants to be handcuffed and covered in human feces? And then, without even opening my address book, I thought of three people right off the bat. This frightened me, but apparently it’s my own private phobia. I found no listing for those who fear they know too many masochists. Neither did I find an entry for those who fear the terrible truth that their self-worth is based entirely on the completion of a daily crossword puzzle. Because I can’t seem to find it anywhere, I’m guaranteed that such a word actually exists. It will undoubtedly pop up in some future puzzle, the clue being “You, honestly.”
People are often frightened of Parisians, but an American in Paris will find no harsher critic than another American. France isn’t even my country, but there I was, deciding that these people needed to be sent back home, preferably in chains. In disliking them, I was forced to recognize my own pretension, and that made me hate them even more.
My brain wants nothing to do with reason. It never has. If I was told to vacate my apartment by next week, I wouldn’t ask around or consult the real estate listings. Instead, I’d just imagine myself living in a moated sugar-cube castle, floating from room to room on a king-size magic carpet. If I have one saving grace, it’s that I’m lucky enough to have found someone willing to handle the ugly business of day-to-day living.
Hugh consoled me, saying, “Don’t let it get to you. There are plenty of things you’re good at.”
When asked for some examples, he listed vacuuming and naming stuffed animals. He says he can probably come up with a few more, but he’ll need some time to think.
