Truth in Nonfiction discussion

In this section of Me Talk Pretty Some Day Sedaris continues to amuse the reader with hilarious moments throughout his life. As with his previous essays, Sedaris writes in the first person and is included in the action of each piece. However, he is not necessarily the focus of each essay. Sedaris devotes "City of Angels" to Bonnie, and stands back as she systematically deconstructs everything that is good in the world. And later he stands aside to talk about his sister Amy in "A Shiner Like a Diamond," acting merely as a buffer between father and daughter. Other examples of personal essays where the main subject does not appear to be the writer can be seen earlier in this work.

As we talked about the other day in class, there are certain characteristics that make a personal essay. One of the most notable elements in Sedaris's work is his depiction of other people to reveal something about himself. Please use evidence from the book to support the idea that Sedaris is telling stories about others to reveal desires, misgivings, and truths in his own life.

I'd like to focus on Sedaris' essay "Today's Special". With parents who appreciate innovative cooking and food that's been fiddled with, I often hear them talk about the cut of meat that was served on a lavender pillow or the berry dessert that they consumed through a straw. I do appreciate this contemporary form of food, but I can understand why Sedaris misses eating a simple hot dog in a bun, which he says is "So simple and timeless" (124). Although Sedaris doesn't focus on a person in "Today's Special", he tells us about the exotic meals that have bothered him in New York City and through his stories we get a glimpse of his appreciation for old-school cooking. He writes, " 'Not again,' I say. 'Can't you guys come up with something a little less conventional?' " (121). It is interesting that, as an artist, Sedaris appreciates experimental art installations of toenails and moths but comments that "If cooking is an art, I think we're in our Dada phase" (122). The line, "...I just need something familiar that I can old on to" (Sedaris, 122) communicated to me that Sedaris is stuck between two different time periods: traditional and modern.

In "The Learning Curve" we see Sedaris in a teaching position during his days after School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This puts him in an area that's outside of his comfort zone and confronts him with people that are definitely on the same level as he is. It's a small class (as writing classes usually are) but he describes half of them as chain smoking nobodies that are reluctant to tell their own stories. It's clear that the class revealed Sedaris's inability to teach others in the beginning and struggled to find some common ground. In fact, he goes on saying "that there had been some complaints regarding my use of class time" (90) after he decided to show some soap operas instead of teach. But what he describes is the development of his own teaching technique that works on a subtle level and tries to get writers out of their own comfort zones like he did. Subjects like Celebrity Corner and Pillow Talk were meant to provide a platform for these aspiring writers, but most of them were too sheepish to take advantage of what they were given. I bet each of them are kicking themselves right now for not taking the chance when they had it. What the reader discovers in this story is that Sedaris comes to terms that he has a sense of power now that he has moved on from college life and can use it in anyway he can to better himself and others.

The “The Learning Curve” tells a story about this so called “Mr. Sedaris.” He confesses, “I was clearly unqualified, yet I accepted the job without hesitation, as it would allow me to wear a tie and go by the name of Mr. Sedaris” (83). In describing the formation of “Mr. Sedaris,” Sedaris explains how he tested out many voices to match his professor persona. It is evident throughout the telling of this story that Sedaris creates distance between who he is and who he thinks he should be, revealing something about his character; he is not very sure of himself. “Mr. Sedaris” definitely adds two dimensions to Sedaris’s self portrait because he discloses to readers what a grotesque and pitiful job he did as a college professor. He admits, “Now that I was an academic, I could watch it in class and use the dinner hour to catch up on All My Children” (90). Readers also learn through “Mr. Sedaris” that Sedaris isn’t a very good role model for students because he encouraged them to smoke. Struggling to mold one’s persona based on certain situations is very universal and a lot of people can admit to occasionally creating a “Mr. Sedaris” of their own. Thus, instead of judging Sedaris for being so honest with his faults, we accept them because we can relate to them.

We learn a lot from the interactions that Sedaris has with the people in his life. Often when he writes about what other people are doing we can see his reactions and his thoughts as well. It's clear that Sedaris doesn't appreciate incompetence. When he worked for Valencia he is constantly annoyed by her suggestions and requests, believing that most of them are ridiculous. His career "hit rock bottom" one day as Valencia demanded that he find a missing parrot so they can "split the money, and then [they would] be rich!" (105). Sedaris's outward response is to politely ignores her and turn back to his work, but inside he is irritated that she would ask something like this, especially because he knows that he will most likely have to do it anyway.Working as a mover in New York, Sedaris encounters a client "who found it charming to spell the name Kim with an h, a y, and two ms" (115). We haven't even met Khymm yet, but you can tell by this statement that Sedaris isn't thrilled by her. He further reveals his dislike for her, explaining that Khymm did nothing to help the movers but rather talked on the phone the whole time.
When one student suggests that they shouldn't be smoking in class he notes down the comment with the word troublemaker next to it (86), showing how he feels about students who may be smarter than he. The humor that Sedaris uses throughout the book helps to relieve some of the tension of awkward situations, but it also shows the reader his thoughts at the time as well. Sedaris employs sarcasm constantly as a way of conveying what he thinks about people and situations and while it comes off as funny it also reveals a lot about his personality.

Oh, I like this question very much and the responses so far. Keep it up, everyone.

"Remebering my childhood on the continent of Africa," I believe is the perfect example of Sedaris revealing his present or past jealousy of those around him. Even the title of the chapter, where he uses MY instead of Hugh's name to describe it, reveals how he wants to have it for himself. In the line "When I'm told such stories, it's all I can do to hold back my feelings of jealousy."(193) Here again we see even mor directly that by telling stories of others Sedaris is masking and also at time showing his jealousy. The chapter A Shiner Like A Diamond, the way he writes about her, his candor and speech you can tell that he envys her just a bit, or even more." ...excited by the news that my sister Amy was scheduled to appear in a magazine article to the subject of interesting New York women."(132)

In the beginning of the essay "The Great Leap Forward", Sedaris introduces us to Valencia (the woman who buys Sedaris's favorite townhouse). From this essay we discover how odd and unusual of a character Valencia is due to her interesting styles of spending, or not spending, her money. We also learn that she wants to find and recieve the award money for finding the "Cheeky" bird. From Valencia's huge urge to find this particular bird, it pushes Sedaris over the top and eventually he has to quit this job. I find this particular essay intersting now, because even though Sedaris focuses on the character of Valencia, we the readers still learn and gain some insight into David's own life. From these scenes with Valencia, I learn that the only reason as to why David took this job as her personal assistant was because he was in love iwth the house that the job took place in. Sedaris was more concerned about the location of his job, than compared with the job itself. This may be a minor and odd example for how Sedaris is discovered through other characters that he brings up in his essays, but from his experiences with Valencia we find David to be somewhat of a pushover when it comes to dealing with Valencia's problems. For example, even though David knew it would be pointless to try to catch the bird, he tries to anyways because Valencia ask and wants him to. Sedaris states, "My career as a personal assistant hit rock bottom one summer morning when Valencia greeted me with a flyer she'd taken from the window of an exotic-bird shop located on the corner" (105). Sedaris, we come to find is the type of person who persists with trying to find the bird, though he never does. And by not catching the bird Sedaris is fired, only to find a new job with the moving company.
At the time I was reading about David's odd job with Valencia, I was thinking what importance is this to the overall novel. What does this situation and experience show of who David really is? But thinking and looking into it more, this one small point in David's life shows us how he is willing to do anything for anybody, and how he is easily open to change(the qucik switch from Valencia's personal assistant to the furniture mover). From this essay I see Sedaris as a fairly chill and in a way scared/wary person- he will do what is asked of him for a certain amount of time, before he gets bored and wants to move on. Sedaris likes to change things up. By mentioning his experience with Valencia I was able to put that fact more into perspective ( along with many other new findings on who Sedaris is in our eyes).

I definitely agree with Courtney that Sedaris is not really sure of himself and that is the reason why he decides to write about his teaching experience. When his student asks, ‘Just who…in the stinking hell do you think…you are?’” (95) Sedaris really questions this himself because as of now, he doesn’t have much of an idea. I found it interesting when he talks about being “…annoyed that Valencia took such great pleasure in pretending to be poor” (106) right after his teaching experience, because his disapproval of Valencia is very similar to the students’ disapproval of him. Similar to the way Valencia gets pleasure out of being poor because its something she’s not, Sedaris gets pleasure out of being a macho guy who asserts his authority because its something he’s not. Sedaris seems to find more comfort in a false identity rather than a real one. In terms of identity, he has been able to create a label for everyone except himself. “My friend the communist, my friend the schizophrenic, and my friend the murderer” (114) are all examples of identities he has given to people in his life. Sedaris uses the different personalities of his friends to demonstrate that what you do doesn’t necessarily dictate the kind of person you are, and that we’re all searching for ourselves to some degree. When Sedaris talks about his friends and listening to the stories they tell, he finds another parallel to himself. When he says he “liked being told these stories, but it was odd hearing such personal information shouted rather than whispered” (114) I couldn’t help but laugh because this is exactly what Sedaris has done throughout the entire book thus far. He’s boldly revealing every intimate detail about his life (whether we like it or not) in order to find himself. I also found it funny when his dad says, “Man, what you don’t know could fill a book” (138) because this describes the nature of the personal essay perfectly—writing about what you don’t know rather than what you do know. Sedaris also finds a parallel himself and his sister when he describes, “Her fondness for transformation [that] began at an early age and has developed into something closely resembling multiple personality disorder” (134). Sedaris doesn’t use the same methods as Amy so to speak, but both are trying to find themselves. When David says, “The harder I’m pressured to use a computer, the harder I resist” (148) I immediately thought of the relationship between him and his father. The resistance to Lou seems to be a common theme among the Sedaris children. By discussing the details of his siblings’ experiences, Sedaris illustrates the difficulty of satisfying his father’s expectations and how much this influences his identity crisis.

My favorite essay so far is "A Shiner Like a Diamond." I can't believe that Amy Sedaris is David's sister, and I also can't believe how zany and carefree she is. At this point in the book, I was literally laughing out loud at how hilarious these characters in David's life tend to be. I mean, half of a fat suit? Just for fun? It almost seems made up, it's all so bizarre. Especially in the last part of this essay where David talks about Amy's photo shoot with the makeup to look like "'someone has beaten the shit out of me"' (140). I love that this is just so normal for her. What I love even more is that, at the very end of this essay, Amy told people in public that, "'I'm in love. Can you believe it? I'm finally in love, and I feel great"' (141). I liked that David ended the essay on this note because it made me think more about how Amy's carefree personality affected him. I don't know if this is a stretch, but I felt like David was trying to point out that he loves Amy for these zany characteristics and loves how easily she can change her entire persona without even thinking twice. I wonder if David relates to her in this way, because it seems like being a writer would force David to also look through that lens of a completely new persona at some point in his career. By looking at all of his other stories, it's also obvious that he has had a bit of identity confusion in his life and has had trouble finding which persona he wants to fully embrace for himself. I wonder if showing his admiration for Amy's talent of quickly and easily changing her persona inadvertently shows us more about his desire to know who he is, even if this person that he eventually becomes is not exactly a real person (like Amy does with her acting).

I do agree that the interactions that Sedaris has with the different characters throughout the book reveal things about Sedaris himself. For example, before Sedaris starts working at the school, he goes through several personas that this "Mr. Sedaris" could be. "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 dount, 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 named Brittany" (84). These are several personas that Sedaris dreams of, the people who he cannot be. He thinks up these characters in his head because of the fact that he is not these characters, nor will be. He even admits at the end when it comes time to teach that he is the shy, doubtful, and fearful guy, not in the right place to lead a class. Sedaris' description of Valencia also made me think about her character in comparison to his, and how they interacted throughout their experiences. With her believes about money and his personality as a personal assistant, I could picture their interactions quite well. The difference in chapters is also very sporadic, continuing to add to the stream of events that make up his life.

In “The Learning Curve” I was able to see Sedaris’ troubles with finding his authority, his desire to make something of himself, and his hope to turn this real lifestyle into something that will last. Through this story of his teaching career, Sedaris continuously returns to thoughts of making his own Mr. Sedaris identity. “I was clearly unqualified, yet I accepted the job without hesitation, as it would allow me to wear a tie and go by the name of Mr. Sedaris…I liked to imagine someone getting the two of us confused…“are you talking about Mr. Sedaris the retired man living in North Carolina, or Mr. Sedaris the distinguished academic?”” (83-84) In these lines I noticed that Sedaris is in question of who he his and what he is doing with his life. Who has he become? What has he made of himself? What does his life have and what does it lack? In the progress of the chapter, we see his progression from a timid substitute like teacher, to someone who learns that he has authority and ability to do something worthwhile. He transforms from a person struggling to find an identity as simple as what voice to use when announcing his name to the class (84) into a man who is willing to embrace the philosophy that he is “the only one paid to be in (the) room” (95) and therefore he holds all power. As he reveals his account of a small class of inexperienced writers, he is revealing his own insecurities of his persona, and his desires to become someone better received, Mr. Sedaris, a writer with the right to teach more than one small class, and instead the many that would someday learn from his published stories.

This seems crazy, especially to me, but I think I gained the most valuable insight into Sedaris' world and personality after reading "Big Boy". It's definitely the shortest of the personal essays in the book (oh, the irony), but I find it oddly suitable that a story about a giant turd is the one that showed me who he really is.

We see, very early on in the story, the idea of responsibility. Sedaris immediately affirms that he, through some unlucky twist of fate, is responsible for this enormous poop, though it was obviously left by somebody else. Not once does he entertain the idea of simply leaving it be and letting Janet deal with it, and assume it is his. This led me to conclude that Sedaris is the sort of person who will go to any lengths to avoid being spoken about negatively. He contemplated picking it up and flinging it out the window! If he had been the calm and collected sort and had opened the door and shown Janet why he was taking so long, it certainly could have led to an awkward situation, but he was displaying his knack for imagining the ultimate worst-case scenarios. I can sympathize with him in that respect; I have a tendency to fall victim to the Spotlight Effect, in which I assume that other people are out to get me when I'm placed in an uncomfortable setting. This attitude is prevalent throughout his works (especially with Go Carolina, when he described Miss Samson as a hostile and merciless secret agent out to ruin his life), but it took "Big Boy" to show me this underlying fabric.

I also gleaned a favored structure from the final paragraph, in which he wonders whether or not this gargantuan pile of feces was meant to teach him a lesson or not. Many of his stories seem to be based upon a central dogma, or overarching moral, which makes his stories memorable, cohesive, and organized. I am definitely going to try to learn from this idea of what I consider a "hidden thesis"--one that is never explicitly stated at the bottom of the introduction paragraph like we are taught in school, but one that is always just below the surface, and always easily recognized for what it is.

Everyone needs to think of a suitable punishment for Mallory for calling this book a novel. I'm waiting . . .

In "City of Angels" Sedaris seems to be a completely different person. Much more uncaring and impatient than his last personas. In this essay, Sedaris claims to have "moved to New York with the express purpose of escaping Americans such as Bonnie." (127) This description gives the idea that Sedaris is now a much harsher person, who disliked the "retlentlessly, pathologically friendly" people who used to surround his life. (131) Through this idea, we get the hint that although he used to be one of these people, for some reason they bothered him, thus resulting in his entrance into harsh New York City. Yet despite the visible harshness of the Sedaris living in New York, in the essay, "The Great Leap Forward," he can be seen as much more hospitable and naive. He describes Manhattan from up close as, "an oppressive series of staircases, but from a distance it inspires fantasies of wealth and power so profound." (119) Although it may only be a short time earlier, in this essay Sedaris seems much more like the one we have come to know from earlier in the book.

A suitable punishment, in my mind, would be that Mallory must stand in front of class and begin with her favorite with quotes, a major theme, and how it relates to another work we have studied and or the themes throughout the stories, in Me talk Pretty One Day as I felt a strong sense of consistency to the work. This would be a good spark our group and class discussion! Throughout this year a major topic of discussion in TNF has been the incorporation of ones own life through a character, particular place, and descriptiveness through setting. In particular, I believe a strong argument can be made that the beauty, (at least for me), has been the mechanics over the content. That is to say that I find that the relationship amongst the two is very unique and certainly intertwined. For example the writing style is very reminiscent of Cheever in the use of descriptiveness through commons and diction, while at the same time that plays a large role in the reader’s interpretation of the content in the stories. Obviously we see Sedaris enter the novel through his feelings and in a sense he feels ostracized and once again not content with the current situation. The interesting part is that the current situation is, as we have been discussing in class, is more often than not, a situation that is defined by confronting the internal versus external issues that we are constantly presented with in the readings. I mean Sedaris is often not content in his stories, he feels out of place, and this is all part of that large incorporation of his work in his stories. Because Sedaris was such an unique and descriptive writer, it becomes evident that he is not a novelist but a story teller, and a fine one at that. His use of mechanics, or writing style is the reason the stories are so vibrant and clearly painted as if we could imagine the time and place as if it were on a screen in front of us. Great writing, good stories.

Throughout many of these essays there is a common theme of Sedaris observing the people around him; he details their actions and reactions, makes comparisons between various characters he meets, and from these things we can draw connections to what Sedaris is revealing and discovering about himself. I feel like this is one of the greatest things about writing; it often helps you look at and understand other people and honestly the whole world around you, and also at the same time better understand yourself. I think this is something that Sedaris's writing does very effectively. On page 118 he says "I just had to understand that for Patrick, moving a certain kind of person was the equivalent of me calling a pigeon Cheeky." While initially he expressed frustration with Patrick's refusal to move the rich man, Sedaris eventually connects this to a similar point within himself. I believe by doing this he came to have a little more understanding about how people work, and also how he himself works within. There are other instances of this throughout the book, and they don't necessarily always have to do with people. In "Big Boy", a large crap helps Sedaris realize there is really no need to over think things, to worry unnecessarily ("the person who'd abandoned the huge turd had no problem with it, so why did I? Why the big deal?"). This is what makes Sedaris's writing so great; he has the ability to extract importance from just about anything around him.