david sedaris essay about learning french

Me Talk Pretty One Day

At the age of forty-one, I am returning to school and having to think of myself as what my French textbook calls "a true debutant." After paying my tuition, I was issued a student ID, which allows me a discounted entry fee at movie theaters, puppet shows, and Festyland, a far-flung amusement park that advertises with billboards picturing a cartoon stegosaurus sitting in a canoe and eating what appears to be a ham sandwich.

I've moved to Paris in order to learn the language. My school is the Alliance Française, and on the first day of class, I arrived early, watching as the returning students greeted one another in the school lobby. Vacations were recounted, and questions were raised concerning mutual friends with names like Kang and Vlatnya. Regardless of their nationalities, everyone spoke what sounded to me like excellent French. Some accents were better than others, but the students exhibited an ease and confidence I found intimidating. As an added discomfort, they were all young, attractive, and well dressed, causing me to feel not unlike Pa Kettle trapped backstage after a fashion show.

I remind myself that I am now a full-grown man. No one will ever again card me for a drink or demand that I weave a floor mat out of newspapers. At my age, a reasonable person should have completed his sentence in the prison of the nervous and the insecure--isn't that the great promise of adulthood? I can't help but think that, somewhere along the way, I made a wrong turn. My fears have not vanished. Rather, they have seasoned and multiplied with age. I am now twice as frightened as I was when, at the age of twenty, I allowed a failed nursing student to inject me with a horse tranquilizer, and eight times more anxious than I was the day my kindergarten teacher pried my fingers off my mother's ankle and led me screaming toward my desk. "You'll get used to it," the woman had said.

I'm still waiting.

The first day of class was nerve-racking, because I knew I'd be expected to perform. That's the way they do it here--everyone into the language pool, sink or swim. The teacher marched in, deeply tanned from a recent vacation, and rattled off a series of administrative announcements. I've spent some time in Normandy, and I took a monthlong French class last summer in New York. I'm not completely in the dark, yet I understood only half of what this teacher was saying.

"If you have not meismslsxp by this time, you should not be in this room. Has everybody apzkiubjxow ? Everyone? Good, we shall proceed." She spread out her lesson plan and sighed, saying, "All right, then, who knows the alphabet?"

It was startling, because a) I hadn't been asked that question in a while, and b) I realized, while laughing, that I myself did not know the alphabet. They're the same letters, but they're pronounced differently.

"Ahh." The teacher went to the board and sketched the letter a. "Do we have anyone in the room whose first name commences with an ahh?"

Two Polish Annas raised their hands, and the teacher instructed them to present themselves, giving their names, nationalities, occupations, and a list of things they liked and disliked in this world. The first Anna hailed from an industrial town outside of Warsaw and had front teeth the size of tombstones. She worked as a seamstress, enjoyed quiet times with friends, and hated the mosquito.

"Oh, really," the teacher said. "How very interesting. I thought that everyone loved the mosquito, but here, in front of all the world, you claim to detest him. How is it that we've been blessed with someone as unique and original as you? Tell us, please."

The seamstress did not understand what was being said, but she knew that this was an occasion for shame. Her rabbity mouth huffed for breath, and she stared down at her lap as though the appropriate comeback were stitched somewhere alongside the zipper of her slacks.

The second Anna learned from the first and claimed to love sunshine and detest lies. It sounded like a translation of one of those Playmate of the Month data sheets, the answers always written in the same loopy handwriting: "Turn-ons: Mom's famous five-alarm chili! Turnoffs: Insincerity and guys who come on too strong!!!"

The two Polish women surely had clear notions of what they liked and disliked, but, like the rest of us, they were limited in terms of vocabulary, and this made them appear less than sophisticated. The teacher forged on, and we learned that Carlos, the Argentine bandonion player, loved wine, music, and, in his words, "Making sex with the women of the world." Next came a beautiful young Yugoslavian who identified herself as an optimist, saying that she loved everything life had to offer.

The teacher licked her lips, revealing a hint of the sadist we would later come to know. She crouched low for her attack, placed her hands on the young woman's desk, and said, "Oh, yeah? And do you love your little war?"

While the optimist struggled to defend herself, I scrambled to think of an answer to what had obviously become a trick question. How often are you asked what you love in this world? More important, how often are you asked and then publicly ridiculed for your answer? I recalled my mother, flushed with wine, pounding the table late one night, saying, "Love? I love a good steak cooked rare. I love my cat, and I love . . ." My sisters and I leaned forward, waiting to hear our names. "Tums," our mother said. "I love Tums."

The teacher killed some time accusing the Yugoslavian girl of masterminding a program of genocide, and I jotted frantic notes in the margins of my pad. While I can honestly say that I love leafing through medical textbooks devoted to severe dermatological conditions, it is beyond the reach of my French vocabulary, and acting it out would only have invited unwanted attention.

When called upon, I delivered an effortless list of things I detest: blood sausage, intestinal pâté, brain pudding. I'd learned these words the hard way. Having given it some thought, I then declared my love for IBM typewriters, the French word for "bruise," and my electric floor waxer. It was a short list, but still I managed to mispronounce IBM and afford the wrong gender to both the floor waxer and the typewriter. Her reaction led me to believe that these mistakes were capital crimes in the country of France.

"Were you always this palicmkrexjs ?" she asked. "Even a fiuscrzsws tociwegixp knows that a typewriter is feminine."

I absorbed as much of her abuse as I could understand, thinking, but not saying, that I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself. Why refer to Lady Flesh Wound or Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never deliver in the sack?

The teacher proceeded to belittle everyone from German Eva, who hated laziness, to Japanese Yukari, who loved paintbrushes and soap. Italian, Thai, Dutch, Korean, Chinese--we all left class foolishly believing that the worst was over. We didn't know it then, but the coming months would teach us what it is like to spend time in the presence of a wild animal. We soon learned to dodge chalk and to cover our heads and stomachs whenever she approached us with a question. She hadn't yet punched anyone, but it seemed wise to prepare ourselves against the inevitable.

Though we were forbidden to speak anything but French, the teacher would occasionally use us to practice any of her five fluent languages.

"I hate you," she said to me one afternoon. Her English was flawless. "I really, really hate you." Call me sensitive, but I couldn't help taking it personally.

Learning French is a lot like joining a gang in that it involves a long and intensive period of hazing. And it wasn't just my teacher; the entire population seemed to be in on it. Following brutal encounters with my local butcher and the concierge of my building, I'd head off to class, where the teacher would hold my corrected paperwork high above her head, shouting, "Here's proof that David is an ignorant and uninspired ensigiejsokhjx ."

Refusing to stand convicted on the teacher's charges of laziness, I'd spend four hours a night on my homework, working even longer whenever we were assigned an essay. I suppose I could have gotten by with less, but I was determined to create some sort of an identity for myself. We'd have one of those "complete the sentence" exercises, and I'd fool with the thing for hours, invariably settling on something like, "A quick run around the lake? I'd love to. Just give me a minute to strap on my wooden leg." The teacher, through word and action, conveyed the message that, if this was my idea of an identity, she wanted nothing to do with it.

My fear and discomfort crept beyond the borders of my classroom and accompanied me out onto the wide boulevards, where, no matter how hard I tried, there was no escaping the feeling of terror I felt whenever anyone asked me a question. I was safe in any kind of a store, as, at least in my neighborhood, one can stand beside the cash register for hours on end without being asked something so trivial as, "May I help you?" or "How would you like to pay for that?"

My only comfort was the knowledge that I was not alone. Huddled in the smoky 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.

"Sometimes me cry alone at night."

"That is common for me also, but be more strong, you. Much work, and someday you talk pretty. People stop hate you soon. Maybe tomorrow, okay?"

Unlike other classes I have taken, here there was no sense of competition. When the teacher poked a shy Korean woman in the eyelid with a freshly sharpened pencil, we took no comfort in the fact that, unlike Hyeyoon Cho, we all knew the irregular past tense of the verb "to defeat." In all fairness, the teacher hadn't meant to hurt the woman, but neither did she spend much time apologizing, saying only, "Well, you should have been paying more attention."

Over time, it became impossible to believe that any of us would ever improve. Fall arrived, and it rained every day. It was mid-October when the teacher singled me out, saying, "Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section." And it struck me that, for the first time since arriving in France, I could understand every word that someone was saying.

Understanding doesn't mean that you can suddenly speak the language. Far from it. It's a small step, nothing more, yet its rewards are intoxicating and deceptive. The teacher continued her diatribe, and I settled back, bathing in the subtle beauty of each new curse and insult.

"You exhaust me with your foolishness and reward my efforts with nothing but pain, do you understand me?"

The world opened up, and it was with great joy that I responded, "I know the thing what you speak exact now. Talk me more, plus, please, plus."

@media(max-width: 73.75rem){.css-1ktbcds:before{margin-right:0.4375rem;color:#FF3A30;content:'_';display:inline-block;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-1ktbcds:before{margin-right:0.5625rem;color:#FF3A30;content:'_';display:inline-block;}} Lifestyle

Shop Our Exclusive Deals on Saatva Mattresses

10 Cooling Sheets for When It's Just So Damn Hot

The 6 Mattresses We Recommend for Back Pain

Shop the Best AirPod Deals Ahead of Memorial Day

13 U-Shaped Sofas Perfect for Movie Watching

REI’s Anniversary Sale Is Back and Seriously Good

50 Great Gifts for Guys Who Love to Cook

The 6 Best Desks Made for Gaming

Amazon’s Best Memorial Day Sales Are Here Early

4 Portable Monitors That Are Easy to Take Anywhere

The Best Apple Deals Happening for Memorial Day

“Me Talk Pretty One Day” Article by David Sedaris Essay

Introduction.

“Me talk pretty one day” is an article by David Sedaris about him learning French as an adult, presented in a humorous manner. The name of this work relates to Sedaris’ life in France while he could not speak French fluently. Hence, in this article, the reader can witness the French lessons that Sedaris took, and all the mistakes he made, and the issues he faced along the way. The goal of David Sedaris in “Me talk pretty one day” is to create a narrative that a reader can relate to by using humor and informal language.

Sedaris uses humor to illustrate his life Sedaris’ intent is to show that people struggle with similar things in life. He shows that while trying to learn French, he felt out of place. At the first meeting of his class, their supervisor talked in French only, and he could not understand half of what she said (Sedaris, 2007). While reading this, one can recall a similar event and relate to the author’s experience. Sedaris (2007) is forty years old, yet with his knowledge of French, he is “a true debutant” (para. 1). Hence, by writing about situations where Sedaris felt out of place in a humorous manner, the author is able to communicate with a reader better.

The informal descriptions that Sedaris uses to add a unique style to his writing. He is telling a story about himself but inserts jokes or humorous recollections. Sedaris (2007) writes, “I am now twice as frightened as I was when, at the age of twenty, I allowed a failed nursing student to inject me with a horse tranquilizer” (para. 3). Here, he uses humor to show the audience that he, as a human being, gets nervous and anxious. In other instances, he writes about making mistakes, which is also an experience most people can relate to. For example, Sedaris (2007) reports that during his French lesson, he “managed to mispronounce IBM and afford the wrong gender to both the floor waxer and the typewriter” (para. 14). Similarly, the readers may recall situations when they felt the same way and use humor to overcome their anxiety.

Despite Sedaris using humor in his writing, the themes he discusses are serious. One example is the labels attached to people by society, such as a forty years old man who decides to learn something new being viewed as unusual. Another example is shown at one of the French lessons, where Sedaris (2007) recalls the teacher asking a Yugoslavian girl if she liked the war. During this paragraph, the humor is mixed with some serious issues, for example, the style of teaching their French professor has selected.

Later on, Sedaris refers to this teacher as a “presence of a wild animal” yet, because he uses humor throughout, the reader can understand that this experience is not, in fact, terrifying or threatening to the students (Sedaris, 2007, para. 17). It is more likely that Sedaris tries to argue that although their French teacher was despicable at times, they still managed to learn.

Moreover, the type of writing Sedaris (2017) uses is mostly informal, which also helps connect with the audience. He describes his experience from his viewpoint, and this choice of perspective is also an essential element of delivering this story. The goal here is to create a sense of Sedaris talking to a friend as if he was sharing his experience of learning French in France and the anxiety and fears he had during this process. The choice of language and writing style Sedaris uses is ideal for creating this atmosphere, and although this is not a one on one conversation, the reader can forget that they are holding a book and not talking to Sedaris.

Sedaris’ choice of style is appropriate for the audience who will be reading this article. This is a nonfiction, nonscientific piece published in Esquire, and later on, presented as a full-length book. The name of this article also hints at the type of style and writing strategies Sedaris applies, since the title is “Me talk pretty one day,” which is grammatically incorrect. However, if Sedaris was to name his work, “I will talk nicely in French one day,” the audiences’ expectations would differ.

Since there is no humor in the title, one would expect an article based on the author’s experience of learning French, written in a professional manner. Perhaps, the audience would expect some useful advice on how to learn French from such a title. Hence, Sedaris masterfully applies his unique writing style even in the title of this article to prepare the reader and communicate the general purpose of this writing piece.

In summary, in this paper, the author argues that Sedaris applies his unique writing style to create a humorous article that a reader can easily relate to because similar things might have happened to them as well. This experience of analyzing an essay by Sedaris (2007) has shown me that a choice of writing style is crucial. It allows communicating the purpose of the work and allows creating a connection with the reader.

Sedaris, D. (2007). Me talk pretty one day . Esquire. Web.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2022, September 17). "Me Talk Pretty One Day" Article by David Sedaris. https://ivypanda.com/essays/me-talk-pretty-one-day-article-by-david-sedaris/

""Me Talk Pretty One Day" Article by David Sedaris." IvyPanda , 17 Sept. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/me-talk-pretty-one-day-article-by-david-sedaris/.

IvyPanda . (2022) '"Me Talk Pretty One Day" Article by David Sedaris'. 17 September.

IvyPanda . 2022. ""Me Talk Pretty One Day" Article by David Sedaris." September 17, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/me-talk-pretty-one-day-article-by-david-sedaris/.

1. IvyPanda . ""Me Talk Pretty One Day" Article by David Sedaris." September 17, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/me-talk-pretty-one-day-article-by-david-sedaris/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . ""Me Talk Pretty One Day" Article by David Sedaris." September 17, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/me-talk-pretty-one-day-article-by-david-sedaris/.

• “Humor and Laughter” by Attardo
• Comic Character and Reasons for Its Humorous Acceptance
• "Sure Thing" the Play by David Ives
• About Language Communities and Second Language Learn
• Vocabulary Skills Among Bi- and Monolingual Children
• Adaptive Memory and Survival Subject Correlation
• “Critical Approaches to Tesol”: Main Idea of the Article
• Denotations and Connotations in Language

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Me Talk Pretty One Day — Learning Motivation In Me Talk Pretty One Day By David Sedaris

Learning Motivation in Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

• Categories: Me Talk Pretty One Day

About this sample

Words: 1083 |

Published: May 14, 2021

Words: 1083 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Works Cited

• Sedaris, David. “Me Talk Pretty One Day.” 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology 5th Edition. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2017. Pp. 333-337.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr Jacklynne

Verified writer

• Expert in: Literature

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

4.5 pages / 1980 words

3.5 pages / 2123 words

2 pages / 887 words

1.5 pages / 780 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Me Talk Pretty One Day

The narratives presented by both writers in “Prison Studies” and “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” both describe each author’s pursuit of literacy given different circumstances. In Sedaris’s account, he is illiterate in the French [...]

David is 41 years old and returns to school. After some French lessons back in New-York, he goes to Paris were he wants to learn perfect French. As student you have some advantages, like discounts on food and the cinema or other [...]

In “Me Talk Pretty One Day” by David Sedaris, the author spends the first part of the book describing his childhood years in North Carolina with his many siblings. He talks about how he had to go through speech therapy, music [...]

The title year of George Orwell's most famous novel is nineteen years past, but the dystopian vision it draws has retained its ability to grip readers with a haunting sense of foreboding about the future. At the heart of many of [...]

“How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?” O’Brien asks. Winston’s answer: “By making him suffer” . These two characters inhabit George Orwell’s vision of a future totalitarian government that has evolved to its [...]

Offred and Winston, the main protagonists of the two strikingly similar dystopian fictions, The Handmaid’s Tale and 1984, have disparate fates in the endings of the novels. Julia’s fate, however, is undetermined, as (like the [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

Logout | Profile

    Experience France beyond the cliché

David Sedaris and the Paris he called home

As a widely published author, editor and contributor to both ‘ The New Yorker ’ and ‘ This American Life ’, Sedaris is not short of skills in spinning a sentence.

Combine this with Sedaris’ (over)sea(s) change to France; first for summer getaways to Normandy, then finally to Paris, and you have yourself a collision, that is both entertaining and incredibly enlightening about everyday Parisian life.

Sedaris, like so many expats before him, fell for Paris despite all its despites. And just like Hemingway, Stein and Fitzgerald; Sedaris, being a writer, did not resist the urge to document his vie en rose . The difference being that Sedaris is not afraid to break from tradition and to wax anything but lyrical about his adopted home.

Favouring the food court underneath the Louvre to the Michelin-starred restaurants, and opting to frequent dentists and doctors rather than Les Deux Magots or Café de Flore to gain inspiration for his articles, you can be sure that Sedaris’ work offers a unique Parisian perspective.

As Sedaris discovered after spending many summers in Normandy, there is a certain charm about France that keeps expats such as him coming back for more, despite the hardships that one must endure as an étranger .

Initially moving to Paris with partner Hugh for a one-year trial, his decade in the city illustrates the unassailable lure that keeps us coming back to those can-be cold, Parisian streets for more.

Remaining a frequent contributor to ‘The New Yorker’ during this decade in the city, Sedaris became the American voice on Parisian life and culture for his fellow Americans… Many who were too timid to step foot in a country whose reputation for hospitality is synonymous with the guillotines they invented.

Yet Sedaris manages to charm and be charmed in the city, remaining indifferent in the face of much of this infamous hospitality . Such as his Parisian French teacher who once told him: “Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section.”¹ Sedaris chooses to remember the occasion as the first in which he understood every part of a French sentence.

This immunity in the face of French pride, tradition and lustre is perhaps what sustained Sedaris for so many years.

His writing manages to weave his playful Parisian anecdotes into articles weighted in memory and nostalgia, all seasoned with his signature peppering of comedy.

We are taken along on his page-turning tales about Parisian dental procedures, cultural differences in plumbing, and tourist spats outside his apartment window, all the while falling for the country by laughing with and at the dear French.

The writer now lives in London, but it is clear in his work that he will always be an expat-Parisian at heart.

You can read Sedaris’ Paris musings in his books, particularly ‘Me Talk Pretty One Day’, and in his ‘ The New Yorker ’ articles archived here online, or listen to him on his various ‘ This American Life ’ pod casts.

What is the thing that you love least about Paris or France, but which endears it to you nonetheless?  Tell us in the comments box below!

Read more about French books: Food in Paris , D-Day history , fiction  and more! 

About the Contributor

Zoë bradley.

Share This Story, Choose Your Platform!

Related posts.

Milord, Half a Century on

French Book Club Events wrap-up – The Postcard: lively discussion & unusually personal stories shared

Martinique, France: How is this my window?

One comment.

Great article. I’m going to look up those New Yorker articles that I missed out on first time round, thanks.

Leave A Comment Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

• Arts + Culture
• Gastronomie
• Mode + Beauté
• Reportage + Société
• Vie française
• En Française

et plus…

• Contributors
• Experiences
• Stay in Paris
• Stay in France
• Invest in France
• Meet our team
• Careers & internships
• Become a contributor
• Our favourite links

My French Life™ – Ma Vie Française®

Come with us to experience French life beyond the cliché. Magazine – Events – Experiences

Would you like to work with our team?

Wherever you live, if you’re a francophile or French and you’d like to join our team of Contributors then we’d love to hear from you – check out our submissions   page. We’re also constantly seeking savvy interns – please check on available internships

© 2012 – 2023 My French Life™ – Ma Vie Française®. All rights reserved.

Privacy | Terms

The best free cultural &

educational media on the web

• Online Courses
• Certificates
• Degrees & Mini-Degrees
• Audio Books

20 Free Essays & Stories by David Sedaris: A Sampling of His Inimitable Humor

in Comedy , Literature | September 15th, 2014 6 Comments

My first expo­sure to the writ­ing of David Sedaris came fif­teen years ago, at a read­ing he gave in Seat­tle. I could­n’t remem­ber laugh­ing at any­thing before quite so hard as I laughed at the sto­ries of the author and his fel­low French-learn­ers strug­gling for a grasp on the lan­guage. I fought hard­est for oxy­gen when he got to the part about his class­mates, a ver­i­ta­ble Unit­ed Nations of a group, strain­ing in this non-native lan­guage of theirs to dis­cuss var­i­ous hol­i­days. One par­tic­u­lar line has always stuck with me, after a Moroc­can stu­dent demands an expla­na­tion of East­er:

The Poles led the charge to the best of their abil­i­ty. “It is,” said one, “a par­ty for the lit­tle boy of God who call his self Jesus and… oh, shit.” She fal­tered, and her fel­low coun­try­man came to her aid. “He call his self Jesus, and then he be die one day on two… morsels of… lum­ber.”

The scene even­tu­al­ly end­ed up in print in “Jesus Shaves,” a sto­ry in Sedaris’ third col­lec­tion,  Me Talk Pret­ty One Day . You can read it free online in a selec­tion of three of his pieces round­ed up by  Esquire . Sedaris’ obser­va­tion­al humor does tend to come out in full force on hol­i­days (see also his read­ing of the Saint Nicholas-themed sto­ry “Six to Eight Black Men” on Dutch tele­vi­sion above), and indeed the hol­i­days pro­vid­ed him the mate­r­i­al that first launched him into the main­stream.

When Ira Glass, the soon-to-be mas­ter­mind of  This Amer­i­can Life , hap­pened to hear him read­ing his diary aloud at a Chica­go club, Glass knew he sim­ply had to put this man on the radio. This led up to the big break of a Nation­al Pub­lic Radio broad­cast of “The San­ta­land Diaries,” Sedaris’ rich account of a sea­son spent as a Macy’s elf. You can still hear  This Amer­i­can Life ’s full broad­cast of it on the show’s site .

True Sedar­i­ans, of course, know him for not just his inim­itably askew per­spec­tive on the hol­i­days, but for his accounts of life in New York, Paris (the rea­son he enrolled in those French class­es in the first place), Nor­mandy, Lon­don, the Eng­lish coun­try­side, and grow­ing up amid his large Greek-Amer­i­can fam­i­ly. Many of Sedaris’ sto­ries — 20 in fact — have been col­lect­ed at the web site,  The Elec­tric Type­writer , giv­ing you an overview of Sedaris’ world: his time in the elfin trench­es, his rare moments of ease among sib­lings and par­ents, his futile father-man­dat­ed gui­tar lessons, his less futile lan­guage lessons, his relin­quish­ment of his sig­na­ture smok­ing habit (the easy indul­gence of which took him, so he’d said at that Seat­tle read­ing, to France in the first place). Among the col­lect­ed sto­ries, you will find:

• “The San­ta­land Diaries” (audio)
• “The Youth in Asia,” “Jesus Shaves,” and “Giant Dreams, Midget Abil­i­ties”
• “Our Per­fect Sum­mer”
• “Let­ting Go”
• “Now We Are Five”

For the com­plete list, vis­it:  20 Great Essays and Short Sto­ries by David Sedaris . And, just to be clear, you can read these sto­ries, for free, online.

Note: If you would like to down­load a free audio­book nar­rat­ed by David Sedaris , you might want to check out Audi­ble’s 30 Day Free Tri­al. We have details on the pro­gram here . If you click this link , you will see the books nar­rat­ed by Sedaris. If one intrigues, click on the “Learn how to get this Free” link next to each book. 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Be His Guest: David Sedaris at Home in Rur­al West Sus­sex, Eng­land

David Sedaris Reads You a Sto­ry By Miran­da July

David Sedaris and Ian Fal­con­er Intro­duce “Squir­rel Seeks Chip­munk”

David Sedaris Sings the Oscar May­er Theme Song in the Voice of Bil­lie Hol­i­day

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer . Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book .

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Comments (6) |

Related posts:

Comments (6), 6 comments so far.

When­ev­er we are down and out, there is David to lift our spir­its. I hope he knows just how muh joy he brings to the life of the aver­age read­er. David, the world loves you.

I just rec­om­mend­ed your site to my grand­son. He is 40 and I am 80 but we like the same Kinds of read­ing. Thanks

Love David Sedaris’s work. I enjoy read­ing his work aloud & can laugh myself into a fren­zy , which is very fun. He is the anti­dote to what­ev­er ails me. Much respect. Please nev­er stop writ­ing for us :-)

I had already trad­ed my Amer­i­can Life for an Ital­ian one when David rose to suc­cess and I was in the dark until, while on a vis­it back to the States, my sis­ter intro­duced me to his work. I bought sev­er­al of his books to take back with me.

The build­ing I lived in was a restored 16th Cen­tu­ry sta­ble and sound trav­eled in odd ways. One night, as I lay on my cot which could have sub­sti­tut­ed for a board in a masochis­tic clois­tered con­vent, the young cou­ple upstairs had final­ly got­ten their frac­tious, col­icky baby to sleep, I could final­ly read. Silence was of the essence.

I opened my first David Sedaris book, the one that begins with him try­ing to drown a mouse out­side his home in Nor­mandy when he is inter­rupt­ed in his mur­der­ous act by some­one seek­ing direc­tions. That was hilar­i­ous enough, but I man­aged to con­trol myself on behalf of the sleep deprived trio who slum­bered above me.

Then I got to French Lessons and par­tic­u­lar­ly to “are thems the brains of young cows?” as David attempts to order calves brains in his local butch­er shop.

I had a near death expe­ri­ence that late night, oblig­ed as I was to turn over and bury my face in my pil­low in order to muf­fle my shrieks of laugh­ter. I could­n’t stop. I was learn­ing Ital­ian at the time and had recent­ly told a room­ful a peo­ple that once, I had found my lost infant sis­ter lying beneath a squid.

The word for hedge is siepe, which is the thing she was in fact lying under fast asleep and not a squid which is sep­pia.

I can’t recall now exact­ly how much time I was com­pelled to remain face down on that pil­low, but it was long enough to begin run­ning out of oxy­gen and yet each time I thought I was safe to regain a sem­blance of san­i­ty and lift­ed my head I was again assailed by incon­trol­lable laugh­ter.

I now live in a 13th Cen­tu­ry build­ing where sound bounces around in even weird­er ways. The Labrador pup­py upstairs,left to his soli­tary devices dur­ing the day, whacks his heavy chew toy on the floor above my head while I try to write, result­ing in the explo­sive sound of a stack of heavy books being repeat­ed­ly slammed down on the floor.

And that is when I look to David, free as I am to sub­mit to venge­ful aban­doned laugh­ter. After all, the pup­py can’t call the land­lord to com­plain.

Your link to the San­ta­land audio at This Amer­i­can­Life seems to be bro­ken: looks like they’ve reor­gan­ised their site.

Here’s a new, work­ing link: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/47/christmas-and-commerce/act-two‑5

Struc­tur­ing your essay accord­ing to the log­ic of the read­er means study­ing your the­sis and antic­i­pat­ing what the read­er needs to know and in what sequence in order to under­stand and con­vince your argu­ments as they devel­op.

Add a comment

Leave a reply.

Name (required)

Email (required)

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Click here to cancel reply.

• 1,700 Free Online Courses
• 200 Online Certificate Programs
• 100+ Online Degree & Mini-Degree Programs
• 1,150 Free Movies
• 1,000 Free Audio Books
• 150+ Best Podcasts
• 800 Free eBooks
• 200 Free Textbooks
• 300 Free Language Lessons
• 150 Free Business Courses
• Free K-12 Education
• Get Our Daily Email

Free Courses

• Art & Art History
• Classics/Ancient World
• Computer Science
• Data Science
• Engineering
• Environment
• Political Science
• Writing & Journalism
• All 1500 Free Courses
• 1000+ MOOCs & Certificate Courses

Receive our Daily Email

Free updates, get our daily email.

Get the best cultural and educational resources on the web curated for you in a daily email. We never spam. Unsubscribe at any time.

FOLLOW ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Free Movies

• 1150 Free Movies Online
• Free Film Noir
• Silent Films
• Documentaries
• Martial Arts/Kung Fu
• Free Hitchcock Films
• Free Charlie Chaplin
• Free John Wayne Movies
• Free Tarkovsky Films
• Free Dziga Vertov
• Free Oscar Winners
• Free Language Lessons
• All Languages

Free eBooks

• 700 Free eBooks
• Free Philosophy eBooks
• The Harvard Classics
• Philip K. Dick Stories
• Neil Gaiman Stories
• David Foster Wallace Stories & Essays
• Hemingway Stories
• Great Gatsby & Other Fitzgerald Novels
• HP Lovecraft
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Free Alice Munro Stories
• Jennifer Egan Stories
• George Saunders Stories
• Hunter S. Thompson Essays
• Joan Didion Essays
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez Stories
• David Sedaris Stories
• Stephen King
• Golden Age Comics
• Free Books by UC Press
• Life Changing Books

Free Audio Books

• 700 Free Audio Books
• Free Audio Books: Fiction
• Free Audio Books: Poetry
• Free Audio Books: Non-Fiction

Free Textbooks

• Free Physics Textbooks
• Free Computer Science Textbooks
• Free Math Textbooks

K-12 Resources

• Free Video Lessons
• Web Resources by Subject
• Quality YouTube Channels
• Teacher Resources
• All Free Kids Resources

Free Art & Images

• All Art Images & Books
• The Rijksmuseum
• Smithsonian
• The Guggenheim
• The National Gallery
• The Whitney
• LA County Museum
• Stanford University
• British Library
• Google Art Project
• French Revolution
• Getty Images
• Guggenheim Art Books
• Met Art Books
• Getty Art Books
• New York Public Library Maps
• Museum of New Zealand
• Smarthistory
• Coloring Books
• All Bach Organ Works
• All of Bach
• 80,000 Classical Music Scores
• Free Classical Music
• Live Classical Music
• 9,000 Grateful Dead Concerts
• Alan Lomax Blues & Folk Archive

Writing Tips

• William Zinsser
• Kurt Vonnegut
• Toni Morrison
• Margaret Atwood
• David Ogilvy
• Billy Wilder
• All posts by date

Personal Finance

• Open Personal Finance
• Amazon Kindle
• Architecture
• Artificial Intelligence
• Beat & Tweets
• Comics/Cartoons
• Current Affairs
• English Language
• Entrepreneurship
• Food & Drink
• Graduation Speech
• How to Learn for Free
• Internet Archive
• Language Lessons
• Most Popular
• Neuroscience
• Photography
• Pretty Much Pop
• Productivity
• UC Berkeley
• Uncategorized
• Video - Arts & Culture
• Video - Politics/Society
• Video - Science
• Video Games

Great Lectures

• Michel Foucault
• Sun Ra at UC Berkeley
• Richard Feynman
• Joseph Campbell
• Jorge Luis Borges
• Leonard Bernstein
• Richard Dawkins
• Buckminster Fuller
• Walter Kaufmann on Existentialism
• Jacques Lacan
• Roland Barthes
• Nobel Lectures by Writers
• Bertrand Russell
• Oxford Philosophy Lectures

Receive our newsletter!

Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.

Great Recordings

• T.S. Eliot Reads Waste Land
• Sylvia Plath - Ariel
• Joyce Reads Ulysses
• Joyce - Finnegans Wake
• Patti Smith Reads Virginia Woolf
• Albert Einstein
• Charles Bukowski
• Bill Murray
• Fitzgerald Reads Shakespeare
• William Faulkner
• Flannery O'Connor
• Tolkien - The Hobbit
• Allen Ginsberg - Howl
• Dylan Thomas
• Anne Sexton
• John Cheever
• David Foster Wallace

Book Lists By

• Neil deGrasse Tyson
• Ernest Hemingway
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Allen Ginsberg
• Patti Smith
• Henry Miller
• Christopher Hitchens
• Joseph Brodsky
• Donald Barthelme
• David Bowie
• Samuel Beckett
• Art Garfunkel
• Marilyn Monroe
• Picks by Female Creatives
• Zadie Smith & Gary Shteyngart
• Lynda Barry

Favorite Movies

• Kurosawa's 100
• David Lynch
• Werner Herzog
• Woody Allen
• Wes Anderson
• Luis Buñuel
• Roger Ebert
• Susan Sontag
• Scorsese Foreign Films
• Philosophy Films
• February 2024
• January 2024
• December 2023
• November 2023
• October 2023
• September 2023
• August 2023
• February 2023
• January 2023
• December 2022
• November 2022
• October 2022
• September 2022
• August 2022
• February 2022
• January 2022
• December 2021
• November 2021
• October 2021
• September 2021
• August 2021
• February 2021
• January 2021
• December 2020
• November 2020
• October 2020
• September 2020
• August 2020
• February 2020
• January 2020
• December 2019
• November 2019
• October 2019
• September 2019
• August 2019
• February 2019
• January 2019
• December 2018
• November 2018
• October 2018
• September 2018
• August 2018
• February 2018
• January 2018
• December 2017
• November 2017
• October 2017
• September 2017
• August 2017
• February 2017
• January 2017
• December 2016
• November 2016
• October 2016
• September 2016
• August 2016
• February 2016
• January 2016
• December 2015
• November 2015
• October 2015
• September 2015
• August 2015
• February 2015
• January 2015
• December 2014
• November 2014
• October 2014
• September 2014
• August 2014
• February 2014
• January 2014
• December 2013
• November 2013
• October 2013
• September 2013
• August 2013
• February 2013
• January 2013
• December 2012
• November 2012
• October 2012
• September 2012
• August 2012
• February 2012
• January 2012
• December 2011
• November 2011
• October 2011
• September 2011
• August 2011
• February 2011
• January 2011
• December 2010
• November 2010
• October 2010
• September 2010
• August 2010
• February 2010
• January 2010
• December 2009
• November 2009
• October 2009
• September 2009
• August 2009
• February 2009
• January 2009
• December 2008
• November 2008
• October 2008
• September 2008
• August 2008
• February 2008
• January 2008
• December 2007
• November 2007
• October 2007
• September 2007
• August 2007
• February 2007
• January 2007
• December 2006
• November 2006
• October 2006
• September 2006

©2006-2024 Open Culture, LLC. All rights reserved.

• Advertise with Us
• Copyright Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Use

It's complicated…

• Amazing French Juggler
• Frank Sinatra’s: My Way Stolen from the French
• Fresh French Canned Air for Sale
• Gassy Cows Blow the Roof Off
• Hollande’s Camel Cooked
• How the French Practice Typing
• La Mc Baguette
• Live Like a Hamster in Nantes
• Real-life Canadian Fairy
• Rooster on His Naughty Bits
• Seriously Ugly Christmas Sweaters
• Steaming Horse Sh*t for Hollande
• Strange Menorahs
• Superman Forever
• Textopornographie
• The Dog and Pet Cemetery, Paris
• Ugly Hanukkah Sweaters
• Sheep Invade the Louvre
• “Nutcracker” Fish Caught in the Seine
• Blogs I Like
• April Reads
• November Reads
• October Reads
• January Reads
• February & March Reads
• Summer Reading
• The Cast of Characters
• Why France?
• Eating in Paris
• Authentic Brioche
• Buttermilk Pain Perdu (French Toast)
• Chocolate Mendiants
• Croque Monsieur
• Daube Provençale / Pork Stew
• Eggs Over Bread (Dad’s Saturday Special)
• Galette des Rois à la Rachel
• Geraldine’s Gougères / Savory Puffs
• Géraldine’s Profiteroles
• Madeleine Cookies
• Navettes Classiques
• Navettes Sucrées (Canadian Version)
• Parmentier de Confit de Canard Express à la Hélène
• Roquette Pesto
• Salad Périgourdine
• Tuiles au Caramel
• Basse-Normandie
• Haute-Normandie
• Languedoc-Roussillon
• Midi-Pyrénées
• Paris-île-de-France
• Pays de la Loire
• Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur
• Rhône-Alpes

No. 210-211: Jesus Shaves: Easter Explained (in French Class) by David Sedaris and the Returning Bells of Easter

David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day is a must read for any expat in France, especially those of us who have taken too many French classes to count, and are still longing to “talk pretty” one day. In this particular excerpt, Sedaris and his global classmates are asked to explain the religious significance of Easter to an Islamic student who has never heard of the holiday. Without having the vocabulary for “cross” or “resurrection” let alone, “He gave His only begotten Son”, the conversation, and I use that term very loosely, quickly degenerates to trying to explain the Easter Bunny, and understand how and why the French Easter Bells fly in from Rome.

Take a listen (or read the transcript below).

It is a dead on and excruciatingly accurate (and hilarious) portrayal of those cringe worthy moments in French class when your dismal vocabulary and tenuous grasp on grammar leads you to say things like:

“He call his self Jesus, and then he be die one day on two . . . morsels of . . . lumber.”

  Jesus Shaves by David Sedaris

“And what does one do on the fourteenth of July? Does one celebrate Bastille Day?”

It was my second month of French class, and the teacher was leading us in an exercise designed to promote the use of one, our latest personal pronoun. “Might one sing on Bastille Day?” she asked. “Might one dance in the street? Somebody give me an answer.”

Printed in our textbooks was a list of major holidays alongside a scattered arrangement of photos depicting French people in the act of celebration. The object was to match the holiday with the corresponding picture. It was simple enough but seemed an exercise better suited to the use of the word they. I didn’t know about the rest of the class, but when Bastille Day eventually rolled around, I planned to stay home and clean my oven. Normally, when working from the book, it was my habit to tune out my fellow students and scout ahead, concentrating on the question I’d calculated might fall to me, but this afternoon, we were veering from the usual format. Questions were answered on a volunteer basis, and I was able to sit back, confident that the same few students would do the talking.

Today’s discussion was dominated by an Italian nanny, two chatty Poles, and a pouty, plump Moroccan woman who had grown up speaking French and had enrolled in the class to improve her spelling. She’d covered these lessons back in the third grade and took every opportunity to demonstrate her superiority. A question would be asked and she’d give the answer, behaving as though this were a game show and, if quick enough, she might go home with a tropical vacation or a side-by-side refrigerator-freezer. By the end of her first day, she’d raised her hand so many times, her shoulder had given out. Now she just leaned back in her seat and shouted the answers, her bronzed arms folded across her chest like some great grammar genie.

We finished discussing Bastille Day, and the teacher moved on to Easter, which was represented in our textbook by a black-and-white photograph of a chocolate bell lying upon a bed of palm fronds. “And what does one do on Easter? Would anyone like to tell us?” The Italian nanny was attempting to answer the question when the Moroccan student interrupted, shouting, “Excuse me, but what’s an Easter?” Despite her having grown up in a Muslim country, it seemed she might have heard it mentioned once or twice, but no. “I mean it,” she said. “I have no idea what you people are talking about.”

The teacher then called upon the rest of us to explain. The Poles led the charge to the best of their ability.

“It is,” said one, “a party for the little boy of God who call his self Jesus and . . . oh, shit.” She faltered, and her fellow countryman came to her aid. “He call his self Jesus, and then he be die one day on two . . . morsels of . . . lumber.”

The rest of the class jumped in, offering bits of information that would have given the pope an aneurysm.

“He die one day, and then he go above of my head to live with your father.”

“He weared the long hair, and after he died, the first day he come back here for to say hello to the peoples.”

“He nice, the Jesus.”

“He make the good things, and on the Easter we be sad because somebody makes him dead today.”

Part of the problem had to do with grammar. Simple nouns such as cross and resurrection were beyond our grasp, let alone such complicated reflexive phrases as “To give of yourself your only begotten son.” Faced with the challenge of explaining the cornerstone of Christianity, we did what any self-respecting group of people might do. We talked about food instead.

“Easter is a party for to eat of the lamb,” the Italian nanny explained. “One, too, may eat of the chocolate.”

“And who brings the chocolate?” the teacher asked.

My classmates reacted as though I’d attributed the delivery to the Antichrist. They were mortified.

“A rabbit?” The teacher, assuming I’d used the wrong word, positioned her index fingers on top of her head, wiggling them as though they were ears. “You mean one of these? A rabbit rabbit?”

“Well, sure,” I said. “He come in the night when one sleep on a bed. With a hand he have the basket and foods.”

The teacher sadly shook her head, as if this explained everything that was wrong with my country.

“No, no,” she said. “Here in France the chocolate is brought by the big bell that flies in from Rome.”

I called for a time-out.

“But how do the bell know where you live?”

“Well,” she said, “how does a rabbit?”

It was a decent point, but at least a rabbit has eyes. That’s a start. Rabbits move from place to place, while most bells can only go back and forth–and they can’t even do that on their own power. On top of that, the Easter Bunny has character; he’s someone you’d like to meet and shake hands with. A bell has all the personality of a cast-iron skillet. It’s like saying that come Christmas, a magic dustpan flies in from the North Pole, led by eight flying cinder blocks.

It just didn’t add up.

Nothing we said was of any help to the Moroccan student. A dead man with long hair supposedly living with her father, a leg of lamb served with palm fronds and chocolate. Confused and disgusted, she shrugged her massive shoulders and turned her attention back to the comic book she kept hidden beneath her binder.

I wondered then if, without the language barrier, my classmates and I could have done a better job making sense of Christianity, an idea that sounds pretty far-fetched to begin with. 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 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.

THEY’RE BACK! JOYEUSES PÂQUES…

Share this:

Hilarious! Thank you 🙂

Your welcome! Joyeuse Pâques

very funny!! 😃 and … flying bells? … really??? that’s weird!

I love David Sedaris. I wish he was related to me.

I agree, It is a bit odd, the bells, that is, but really how much more odd than a giant bunny delivering eggs? My kids used to get very anxious about the EB. Check out my other post on the Flying Bells: https://365thingsiloveaboutfrance.com/2014/03/05/no-161-getting-ready-for-the-cloche-volant-flying-bells/

and joyeuse Pâques!

ah oui, now i see! the flying bells are sweet and a community event as well, which is a good thing 😃. and the egg-laying bunny is certainly odd, as well as physiologically impossible!! and joyeuse Paques to you aussi!!

Oh thank you for this ! I have the book sitting on my shelf but have never read it because the person who recommended it to me recommended another book – one of the worst I have ever read so I didn’t trust her judgement ! I cried with laughter at the excerpt you posted – hilarious ! Must pick up the book and read it. I’m not American and I feared the book might be too American for me but this text is so funny for any nationality ! Thank you & Happy Easter !

David Sedaris is so hilarious, especially this particular book as there are many funny and relatable French stories. Button and I nearly peed ourselves when we listened to his story about his trip to the French dermatologist, where he asks the doctor “can we please say goodbye to the little spot that lives on my face.” Can’t you just picture yourself saying something like that during a doctor appointment? joyeuses Pâques indeed.

I love this – it’s hilarious! Someone just sent it to me yesterday after I wrote about those flying bells. And unfortunately, this is exactly how conversations have gone in some of the language courses that I’ve taken. Very humbling but at least it’s good for a laugh. And I must be a glutton for punishment, because I am off to another one soon – in Spanish. What was I thinking???

If you don’t do something that scares you every day, you’re not living right? Bravo and bon courage!

Wow crazy! Maybe a priest was needed to exorcise the class! Happy Easter

Maybe! Joyeuses Pâques.

Lol… As I eat the chocolate bunny that was delivered to my house last night by said rabbit

i too eat the eggs of Easter brought by the bells flying from Rome and the Rabbit of Easter today celebrating the Jesus killed with two morsels of lumber.

Very funny! Thanks for explaining about the bells.

I love David Sedaris. Happy Easter. x

This is my most favorite essay by David Sedaris. Seriously LOL.

He is hilarious. Me Talk Pretty reminds me so much of myself and a couple of my friends in French class. It’s so completely humbling to learn a new language when you’re brain is old.

hahahaha… i did read this but it’s still laugh out loud funny again. His christmas one is pretty hilarious too. He spoke eons ago at the American School of Paris when my son was there. I had no idea of who he was at the time. Interesting guy. Did you see the movie about him? It was ok- I’d be interested to hear what you thought about it. I miss Easter Monday- Germany ‘celebrated too’- Ostermontag. It just makes sense- My husband could barely bring himself to do much yesterday as it’s a programmed holiday. i miss that. cheers – wendy

No I haven’t seen the movie, but I’d like too. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I’m a huge fan of his so I am v interested to see it. Yes. The Europeans do it right with their holidays. It will be hard going back to the land of no national holidays. Cheers to you!

Leave a comment Cancel reply

Curent loves

• Roger Vergé and la cuisine du soleil
• Saint Nazaire–La Baule
• Shut down again
• Ancenis—Oudon
• Angers—Montjean-sur-Loire—Ancenis

Love affairs

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Email Address:

• 149,807 hits

Your Loves & Comments

Follow me on twitter, one small request….

• Around France
• Buildings/Architecture
• French America
• French Language
• Transportation
• Uncategorized

Blog at WordPress.com.

• Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
• Subscribe Subscribed
• Copy shortlink
• Report this content
• View post in Reader
• Manage subscriptions
• Collapse this bar

Me Talk Pretty One Day

David sedaris, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

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.

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.