Me Talk Pretty One Day
David Sedaris · 2000
Sedaris is the great American humorist-essayist, heir to Thurber and White but with a darker edge. This collection (learning French, family dysfunction, being strange) is his funniest and most formally precise. The humor essay as literature.
The case against
Sedaris admits to exaggeration, which matters more in some essays than others; the funniest scenes are funny partly because they never happened quite that way. Read consecutively, the machinery shows: self-deprecating setup, grotesque family cameo, ironic last line, repeat. And the French teacher, the speech therapist, the IBM father all blur into one rich vein Sedaris mines past exhaustion.
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