Me Talk Pretty One Day is a collection of essays by David Sedaris. Sedaris has been a frequent contributor to Ira Glass’ Chicago Public Radio show This American Life on WBEZ. In fact several of the essays in this book were first read on This American Life. I’ve become an avid fan of Glass’ show. Most often I listen to it in podcast form. Very occasionally I will listen to it online, and once in a great while I will listen to it broadcast on the air. There’s a sort of timelessness to the show. After all, as Glass himself states, This American Life is not really a news show.
So it is out of my appreciation for This American Life that I have picked up Sedaris’ collection of mostly autobiographical essays. Reviews of the book have been almost universally laudatory. And after the bleak and powerful conclusion of Cormac McCarthy‘s The Road, I could use with a bit of a laugh.
Beta|Erinyes 
After a longtime disdain for David Sedaris, based chiefly on his having appeared on This American Life — unlike apparently everyone else in the NPR listening area except one former coworker, I despise Ira Glass, but I listened to TAL semi-regularly because of living with someone who listened all the time — anyways, one day out at the farm, Smokes made me listen to an audio recording of David Sedaris at Carnegie Hall (despite my pissing and moaning; he said I just had to listen to that one and if I hated it, he’d never bug me about it again). After that, I demanded more, and he gave me this book. I devoured it and promptly set out on reading everything else he’d written. The guy is astonishing. Don’t miss Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim either; you can borrow it from me if you like.
I’m not wrong about Ira Glass, though. Someday the rest of y’all will catch on. Just call me a trendsetter.
I can’t say that I know much of Ira Glass’ work when he was with NPR. That was before I discovered him. I do know that NPR is where he got his start in broadcasting and radio in general. But I am a big fan of his work on Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International with This American Life. The show has been awarded for its ability to “capture contemporary culture in fresh and inventive ways that mirror the diversity and eccentricities of its subjects.” And I quite agree with that assessment. But more than that I am compelled by the show’s ability to link the universal to the mundane, the arcane, and the downright bizarre.
Despise him if you must. I won’t hold it against you.
Much.