Funny Man

For those eight people who aren't familiar (or I might be the last person on earth to read this book), Me Talk Pretty One Day is about Sedaris's childhood in Raleigh, NC (right down the road a piece) and his later years living in France and struggling to learn the language.

Elise has been telling me to read the damn book forever now, and I finally did, and I can only apologize to Elise for taking so long to read the best book ever. Just to illustrate the book's hilarious awesomeness, I took it to class with me one night to read while my students were testing. Now, before you tell me I'm a horrible teacher, I have a tendency to perch on a desk in the back of my class while they're testing--all 7 students, that is--and watch them when I know they can't see me. It gets rather boring, so I will look at a book while I perch and periodically wander. This particular evening, I was reading an essay called "Big Boy." The big boy referred to in the title is a very large turd. One that Sedaris discovers when he goes to the restroom at a party to wash his hands before a meal. Not wanting the other guests, who know he's adjourned to the restroom, to think he left such a gargantuan artifact, he struggles to flush. But it doesn't budge and it doesn't budge. And I won't tell you how this saga plays out, but I assure you it's very funny, and I was biting every last square inch of my tongue to keep from giggling maniacally while my students were testing.

Not all of Me Talk Pretty One Day is so gross and boy-humored. In fact, Sedaris is perhaps the least boy-humored man I've read ever.

Self-deprecating, check!
Thoughtful, check!
Oddball intellectual, check!

Sedaris certainly has a unique take on every facet of everyday life, and he's lived through some pretty grotesque and unusual experience (the hair nest built by an "artist" in "Twelve Moments in the Life of the Artist," comes to mind). Likewise, his family is just as odd and wonderful as he is, and one of my nighttime writing classes enjoyed listening to "Jesus Shaves" as an example of how to foster one's writerly voice.

I could rant and rave and praise and gush on and on and on about this book, but, instead, I'll just give you a sample to end this sorta review.

As a rule, I'm not great fan of eating out in New York restaurants. It's hard to love a place that's outlawed smoking but finds it perfectly acceptable to serve raw fish in a bath of chocolate. There are no normal restaurants left, at least in our neighborhood. The diners have all been taken over by precious little bistros boasting a menu of indigenous American cuisine. They call these meals "traditional," yet they're rarely the American dishes I remember. The patty melt has been pushed aside in favor of the herb-encrusted medallions of baby artichoke hearts, which never leave me thinking, Oh, right, those! I wonder if they're as good as the ones my mom used to make.

Part of the problem is that we live in the wrong part of town. SoHo is not a macaroni salad kind of place. This is where the world's brightest young talents come to braise carmelized racks of corn-fed songbirds or offer up their famous knuckle of flash-seared crappie served with a collar of chided ginger and cornered by a tribe of kiln-roasted Chilean toadstools, teased with a warm spray of clarified musk oil. Even when they promise something simple, they've got to tart it up--the meatloaf has been poached in seawater, or there are figs in the tuna salad. If cooking is an art, I think we're in our Dada phase.

If you haven't heard Sedaris read, click HERE and watch a video from one of his Letterman appearances.

Five Strengths Meme

Sojourness tagged me for this meme. I have to name five of my strengths as a writer/artist. I'm horrible. Absolutely detestably vile at picking out the GOOD things about my writing. I'm a cynic of the highest order. But, it makes me try hard!

I have a good ear. I can generally tell if something "sounds right." This has served me very well in my academic writing to date, and I hope it carries over into my fiction.

I'm a great notetaker. That is to say, I don't lose a lot of ideas because I'm always prepared to catch them before they flitter away. And I'm getting MUCH better at actually writing and fleshing out the ideas. It's taken me 26 years, but at least I'm on the up and up.

I write in a spare prose style. I've always admired those who could write something affecting and thoughtful in few words or without overly ornate stylings. Apparently it's rubbed off because that's how my writing keeps coming out.

I like to play with form. This is probably a byproduct of my literary studies. I totally love Modernism and Postmodernism, and those sensibilities have rubbed off in the way that I play with narrative form and look for innovative ways to structure a story.

I'm versatile. I like to think that while a spare prose style comes easily, I can shift to something more "ornate" if it suits the story I'm telling. I'm working on a collection of short stories right now, and I hope that they are all distinctive when I'm finished.

I tag: whoever wants to play!

Holy crap.

Well, I just did it. I submitted a piece of my fiction for consideration in a Very. Respectable. Journal (no, it's not The New Yorker or anything, just a quarterly lit journal). Now it's time for the heart attack. This particular story has been written and stewing for several *years* now, so I figured it was probably time to shit or get off the pot, as it were. I gave it a once over several weeks ago, and I gave it another once over tonight, and now it's on its merry way, via the glorious Internet to a Very. Swanky. Editor. So, we'll see. I do have every expectation of being mercilessly shot down, but I figure if I'm ever to succeed I've gotta start stacking up the bodies rejection letters in hopes of getting an acceptance letter.

Peeking in windows to see what I see...

So maybe not peeking in windows in the literal sense, but I am recently and quite disgustingly taken with podcasts. As a result, I've become quite disturbingly preoccupied with Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac radio bits. Really, though, what's not to love? I think I might even have an old-man crush on Garrison Keillor. The buttery voice makes me tingle a little. Not to mention the fact that he brings me daily, juicy niblets on some of my favorite writers.

For instance, in today's Writer's Almanac, I learned more about Sherwood Anderson, author of Winesburg, Ohio. I freely admit to you that I'm copying and pasting this next bit explicitly without the permission of Garrison Keillor (rawwr!) or The Writer's Almanac, but I'm hoping they'll take pity on my poor, country bumpkin soul since I'm giving them credit and simultaneously lusting after Garrison Keillor (play the flattery card!). And, technically, I probably could've found this information elsewhere on the web. Like, from those plagiarist ingrates over at Wikipedia.

But I digress...

It's the birthday of Sherwood Anderson, born in Camden, Ohio (1876). He was a manager at a mail-order paint company in Elyria, Ohio. But one day, out of the blue, he stood up from his desk and walked out of the office, ignoring everyone who asked where he was going. He was missing for several days, during which his wife received a bizarre letter from him that said, "There is a bridge over a river with cross-ties before it. When I come to that I'll be all right. I'll write all day in the sun and the wind will blow through my hair."

He was found four days later, wandering around in nearby Cleveland. He was diagnosed as having had a nervous breakdown, but he later claimed that he'd only pretended to be crazy so that the paint company wouldn't take him back. And he never did go back. He left his job and he and his wife moved to Chicago to join what became known as the Chicago Renaissance.

Anderson began writing every day, and one rainy night he got out of bed without any clothes on and began to write, as if in a trance, what became the first story for his collection Winesburg, Ohio (1919). He never wrote another book as successful as Winesburg, Ohio, but his simple prose style had a great influence on other writers, including Ernest Hemingway. In fact, a few years after Winesburg, Ohio came out, Anderson met the young Hemingway and wrote him letters of introduction so that he could go to Paris and meet writers like Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound. He also encouraged the young William Faulkner, whom he met in New Orleans. He inspired Faulkner to write his first novel and helped him get published.

Sherwood Anderson said, "I go about looking at horses and cattle. They eat grass, make love, work when they have to, bear their young. I am sick with envy of them."

Incidentally, when I listened to the radio version of this piece today, they left out that last part about cows making love. I suppose ye olde souls in public radio thought that was a little too steamy. I know I'm getting worked up.

The point is, I love reading about how inventive or innovative or just plain cracked some of my favorite authors were. In the case of Sherwood Anderson, I can't claim he's a favorite since I skipped reading Winesburg, Ohio in graduate school because I was at a conference that week. But, the real wonder of this Writer's Almanac thing is that I'm much more likely to actually pick the book up and read it this time because I know a nugget of unforgettable dirt on Sherwood Anderson.

Thank you, Writer's Almanac, and my beloved Gary Keillor (sometimes I just call him "Gare") for the enlightenment, the laughs, and on those hormonal days...the tears.

Ha!

This is so true!