David Sedaris (2000) Me Talk Pretty One Day.

The book cover has a blurb from the Guardian: ‘Like an American Alan Bennet’. You might be asking what’s the Guardian and who is Alan Bennet? Why do we need more of him, especially if you’re American and already got David Sedaris.

Like most writers David Sedaris writes about himself. Like most writers he tells the same story over and over while trying to capture new readers who’ll appreciate him for his literary talent, or at least pay him for what he’s written. He’ll claim to have it much worse than everybody else, while worrying over the problem of being an undiscovered and unappreciated genius.

‘The Late Show’ tells how it is. First establishing tone:

‘I’m thinking of a little jacket for my clock radio. Nothing fancy or permanent, just something casual it can slip into in during the wee small hours. I’m not out to match it with curtains or disguise it to look like something it’s not. The problem is not the clock radio feels underdressed, the problem is I cannot bear to watch the numbers advance in that heartless way common to that particular model. Time doesn’t fly—it flaps, the numbers turning on a wheel that operates much like the wheel on a stretching wrack.’

That’s a meal in itself, said the exhausted Willy Loman of his cup of coffee in Death of a Salesman and equally it applies to this paragraph. Look and listen. This is who David Sedaris is.

I listen to my partner and all the women out the back discussing how bad their insomnia has been the night before. Even Francis of 1000 stories, who lives in the house facing me, wouldn’t have thought of putting a wee doily on time.

Sedaris tells the reader what he did before he thought of dressing up time. He’d a pretty conventional upbringing in taking booze and drugs and smoking dope to help him sleep. It worked a treat. Sometimes he woke up in his own bed. Other times he floor bathed.

The middle bit of the story is when he tells you all the things he gave up and why. He admits that reading is too much like work, which for a writer isn’t a good sign. But he goes with the flow, even if it’s to the bathroom after his twelfth cup of coffee or even tea. The insomniac reader gets the irony of having to get up and go to the toilet just when you’re dropping off.

Sedaris likes to indulge himself and his readers in his fantasies. This is the denouement of his story. ‘Mr Science’ has him effortlessly producing a serum in his basement laboratory that for pretty much anything you can think of. He’s got it covered but is more concerned about how his hair will look or how he will act when receiving the Nobel Prize. His rejuvenating soap cures ageing and he builds a spaceship that take him—and us—to another planet that is pretty much like Earth.

He’s not finished. ‘The Knockout’ has him effortlessly winning the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship, while retaining his ‘perfectly luminous teeth’. The media love him because he’s the great white hope and they hate blacks, but only in a media friendly way. They turn against him when he lets slip he has a boyfriend, which has Barbara Walters choking on a peanut.

‘I’ve Got a Secret’ (the last act of the denouement trilogy) could be considered that hackneyed phrase: based on true events.

Sedaris has jumped but not from spaceships but from the point of view of ‘a pretty slightly chubby White House intern’ (Monica Lewinsky) that had sex with President Clinton. This is written before the draft dodging, lying, raping, tax dodging, insurrectionist, white supremacist and moron’s moron was elected 45^th American President. Anything Sedaris tells us will already seem tame and lack irony by comparison. Read on.