Me Talk Pretty One Day
Much of Me Talk Pretty One Day began as essays for magazines or for the public radio program “The American Life” and then found home in this loosely autobiographical book.
There is much I loved in this sadly funny book. The fact that parents live their aspirations through their children and want to teach them so much. And how children rebel against it. David’s father wants kids to learn music. He also wants to teach them how things work, and in the process, makes them hate it all. It comes to a point that David wants to escape his Dad at the beach who asks him how many grains of sand there are in the world. For David, the appropriate answer would be ‘A Lot.Case Closed.’ However, a bunch of fishermen get interested in what the father is doing, and David observes how his father engages with those men, gets them interested in his complex symbols and equations and the in-depth discussions they have. That left me with the feeling that sometimes children just do not want to appreciate what their parents may have to offer.
You get an insight into how couples make a marriage work, and still fight to retain their identity through subtle rebellions. How empty nesters engage themselves and much to the distress of their children , don’t seem to disintegrate. How siblings handle rivalry, wishing that someone else would do the honorable thing of killing the other!
These are serious enough issues, but David Sedaris has the comic timing to make you laugh, or shake your head in amusement. After all, which young boy has not imagined the female form in anything he engages with? For instance, of imagining a well-stacked girl instead of a guitar? And who has not been caught in an embarrassing position of being caught in the bathroom with a piece of turd that is not your own!
The book is easy reading, primarily because each chapter is a complete story in itself. My only problem with the book is that it could have been much more. The characters are engaging, but there is less character detailing. The comic timing is brilliant, yet there is so much depth that has not been dealt with.
All in all though, this is a delightful book, that deals with so many issues with biting incisiveness and a light hearted humor.
Rating 3.5/5
Me Talk Pretty One Day
David Sedaris
272 pages,Back Bay Books
Available as an audio, print and ebook on Amazon and other online stores, and in print at bookstores.
About Preeti Singh
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