Discussion Questions for Me Talk Pretty One Day
by David Sedaris
1. What did or didn’t you enjoy about this book?
2. What was your favorite chapter or scene and why?
3. Have you been to France? Did you have anxieties about speaking
French with native speakers? What did you do? Did you have any particularly embarrassing
gaffes?
4. Sedaris has certainly had some odd jobs. Were there any that were especially hilarious?
5. Fake battered woman bruises, drug addled performance art, poop — it’s all here.
Were there any essays that were just too much? Too over the top?
6. In the chapter “Jesus Shaves,” Sedaris details the way our holidays are celebrated
quite differentlyelsewhere. Were you aware of any of these variations on our American traditions? Do see our holidays in a different light now that you’ve read this?
7. In her review for the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani calls Sedaris “a self-dramatizing
narcissist by turns egomaniac and self-deprecating, needy and judgmental.” How did you feel about the author?
8. What do you think of the Sedaris family as a whole? Are the stories about his family the result of situations that could have happened to any family, or from extraordinary events particular to him?
9. Not every member of the Sedaris family is included in David’s books -- by their own
choice. If David were your son or brother, would you let him include you in his work?
10. How would you describe the author’s style of writing? Would you call this a collection of essays, short stories, memoirs or something else?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
2008 - Indefinite Leave to Remain
2005 - Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (editor)
2004 - Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
2002 - The Book of Liz (play)
2000 - Me Talk Pretty One Day
1998 - Santaland Diaries & Seasons Greetings: (2 plays)
1997 - Holidays on Ice
1997 - Naked
1994 - Barrel Fever
- Born: 26 December 1956
- Birthplace: Johnson City, New York
- Best Known As: Author of the essay collection Me Talk Pretty One Day
Author David Sedaris is known for his prickly, funny essays about his absurdist childhood in North Carolina and his adult life as a just-slightly-neurotic gay expatriate in Paris. His best-known piece may still be "SantaLand Diaries," an exasperated memoir of his temporary job as a Christmas elf at a Macy's department store.
Sedaris was born in New York, grew up in North Carolina, and spent the 1980s as an aspiring writer. He and his sister, Amy Sedaris, later teamed up in New York under the ironical name of The Talent Family, writing plays like Incident at Cobbler's Knob and One Woman Shoe. He was asked to read parts of "SantaLand Diaries" on National Public Radio in 1992, and the gig made him a sudden radio star.
That led to his first book, Barrel Fever, in 1994. By 2001, when Time magazine profiled him in a feature called "America's Best," his essays were appearing in The New Yorker and Esquire and he had become a regular on the radio show This American Life. His other essay collections include Naked (1997), Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000), and When You Are Engulfed In Flames (2008).
David and Amy Sedaris won a "special citation" Obie Award in 1995 for their play One Woman Shoe... Sedaris attended both Kent State and Duke University; he got a writing degree from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1987... Me Talk Pretty One Day is a reference to his poor performance as a student of French... Sedaris has lived for many years in Paris with his partner, the theater director Hugh Hamrick... The New York Times reported in 2008 that Sedaris's books had sold over seven million copies.