Dave Sedaris

[jjzazzy]

I remember seeing his books in a airport bookstore three years ago. They had great reviews, but I didnt buy. it seemed so, current, so ala mode, flavour of the moment. Well, I finally borrowed some from the library and wish I had bought one at the time. Dave Sedaris is a master of the airplane book genre. A collection of random stories and about random things that leave you bursting with surprise and laughter.

Last month I read Me Talk Pretty One Day about his journey from speech therapy to overcome a lisp, to trying to learning French in Normandy.

Yesterday I finsihed When you are Engulfed in Flames devoted to Art, crazy landladies, death and quitting smoking.

 

 

My rating: 8*/10, a quick, light, read. Funny and strangely relevant. A worthwile break-book between serious novels, or a travelling companion. Well connected stories if you read them together, but your not missing anything if you read it piecemeal.

 

Reviews:

http://literati.net/Sedaris/david-sedaris-reviews.htm

 

Me Talk Pretty One Day(Paperback: Back Bay Books, 2001)

From Publishers Weekly

Sedaris focuses on the icy patches that mar life's sidewalk, though the ice in his work is much more slippery and the falls much more spectacularly funny. Many of the 27 short essays collected here (which appeared originally in the New Yorker, Esquire and elsewhere) deal with his father, Lou, to whom the book is dedicated. Lou is a micromanager who tries to get his uninterested children to form a jazz combo and, when that fails, insists on boosting David's career as a performance artist by heckling him from the audience. Sedaris suggests that his father's punishment for being overly involved in his kids' artistic lives is David's brother Paul, otherwise known as "The Rooster," a half-literate miscreant whose language is outrageously profane. Sedaris also writes here about the time he spent in France and the difficulty of learning another language. After several extended stays in a little Norman village and in Paris, Sedaris had progressed, he observes, "from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. 'Is thems the thoughts of cows?' I'd ask the butcher, pointing to the calves' brains displayed in the front window." But in English, Sedaris is nothing if not nimble: in one essay he goes from his cat's cremation to his mother's in a way that somehow manages to remain reverent to both of the departed. "Reliable sources" have told Sedaris that he has "tended to exhaust people," and true to form, he will exhaust readers of this new book, too,with helpless laughter.

 

When You Are Engulfed in FlamesBooklist

With essay collections such as Naked (1997) and Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000), Sedaris kicked the door down for the “quirky memoir” genre and left it open for writers like Augusten Burroughs and Jeannette Walls to mosey on through. Sometimes the originators of a certain trend in literature are surpassed by their own disciples -- but, this is Sedaris we’re talking about. When it comes to fashioning the sardonic wisecrack, the humiliating circumstance, and the absurdist fantasy, there’s nobody better. Unfortunately, being in a league of your own often means competing with yourself. This latest collection of 22 essays proves that not only does Sedaris still have it, but he’s also getting better. True, the terrain is familiar. The essays “Old Faithful” and “That’s Amore” again feature Sedaris’ overly competent boyfriend, Hugh. And nutty sister Amy can be found leafing through bestial pornography in “Town and Country.” Present also are Sedaris’ favored topics: death, compulsion, unwanted sexual advances, corporal decay, and more death. Nevertheless, Sedaris’ best stuff will still -- after all this time -- move, surprise, and entertain.

[Echo]

I love David Sedaris! I haven't read any of his books, but I love listening to the excerpts he reads on This American Life. I really need to start buying his books!

[Tai_Mai_Shu]

He is coming to town. I might have to check him out.

[sadya]

I love his work. Someone posted his visits to Letterman show and when I heard him read an extract from his book there, I had to find all his books. They were all funny and brilliant. He makes everyday life, even the little things very funny and stand out in a unique way. It's one of those authors whose books makes one laugh a bit loudly, so reading it in a public space as a subway or a train or even your own balcony could make people think something is wrong with you. I found his 'Dress your family in corduroy and denim' in English instead of translated to Dutch and immediately bought it without any hesitation.