Me Talk Pretty One Day

When I first saw the title of the essay, “Me Talk Pretty One Day”, I was unsure what to think.  The title drew my attention and made me want to know what the essay was about.  At first I thought that it would be written by someone who couldn’t speak English fluently and I expected it to be written in broken English.   To my pleasant surprise I thought that the essay was a masterpiece.  It held my interest throughout and included many elements of The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing by Michael Harvey.   His essay flowed well, his ideas were clear and concise, and he used punctuation very well.

     David Sedaris’ “Me Talk Pretty One Day” is an informal essay that gets the point across clearly.  He did not jam his essay with big words to make himself sound smarter like most college kids do but instead he used the proper word choice to communicate his ideas effectively.  In The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing Michael Harvey says, “Concision leaves us fewer words to hide behind”. (1)  When you cut out all the filler your ideas are much easier to read and understand however if your ideas are weak that will also show easier.  Sedaris had very strong ideas and he did not add in unnecessary words and filler to hide them.  The product was a clear and concise essay that is easy and entertaining to read.   

     I thought Sedaris did a great job following Harvey’s rules for punctuation.  In his book, The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing, Harvey says, “Indirect questions have their uses, but direct questions are also legitimate and can be remarkably effective in formal writing.” (44)  Sedaris did a good job using a direct question when he says, “Why refer to Lady Crack Pipe or Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?” (13)  Another success was Sedaris’ use of dashes.  A good example of this is when he said, “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 which is incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself.”  He uses the pair of dashes to stray away from the normal flow of the paragraph.   

     Sedaris’ essay is an easy, entertaining read as it is very clear and concise but also because he uses many of the techniques mentioned in the third chapter of The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing about flow.  He used many pronouns, punchlines, and introductory clauses to create a flow that Michael Harvey would surely be proud of.  “Me Talk Pretty One Day” is a piece of comedic and literary genius.  David Sedaris did an outstanding job of using punch lines to make the story interesting.  My favorite punch line of his is when he says, “The teacher forged on, and we learned that Carlos, the Argentine bandonion player, loved wine, music, and, in his words, ‘making sex with the womans of the world.’” (12)  Harvey said that punch lines can make it easier to take in large amounts of information without feeling swamped by it.  Sedaris also used introductory clauses such as, “At the age of 41” (11), and “While the optimist struggled to defend himself”.  In Harvey’s words introductory clauses “make room for contextual information, so that by the time you reach your main point your reader gets it.”  This helped to make Sedaris’ essay even clearer, easier, and more interesting to read. 

     It is very unlikely that David Sedaris ever read Michael Harvey’s book The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing, his essay “Me Talk Pretty One Day” does a great job of applying Harvey’s techniques.   David Sedaris wrote an essay that was smart without writing in the collegiate pompous style that Harvey talks about.  I think Harvey would consider this essay a model essay that all writers -not only in college- should try to emulate.