TOW #4: IRB Post

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

This far through Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris has covered several topics. He has, respectively, talked about his speech impediments as a child, his attempt at learning how to play the guitar, his father's career as an engineer, his short-lived life as an artist, his younger brother's upbringing in contrast to his own, and his family's history of pets. Each topic has evolved around Sedaris's childhood and young-adulthood. This collection of short memoirs follows David Sedaris's childhood through a somewhat cynical lens. David Sedaris's external purpose in writing Me Talk Pretty One Day is to shed an interesting and entertaining light on everyday experiences. His internal purpose could be to show that perspective means more than the actual event. This book was written for anyone who can appreciate humor and needs to see that the same event can be understood and remembered differently. Potentially anyone can read and enjoy this book. In order to achieve his purpose, Sedaris employs various rhetorical devices to generate logos and pathos in particular. He uses sarcasm to make his life seem more melancholy, and since readers (and people in general) are entertained by despair, it only serves to hook readers. Also, Sedaris uses first person, which helps the reader connect with the ideas expressed in his essay. Lastly, he varies sentence structure to keep the reader interested. All of these techniques make the book more entertaining and prove that perspective dictates the outcome of an event (more so than the actual event itself). David Sedaris has (at least to this point) succeeded at entertaining me and helping me to understand the power of perspective. He did this through humor and excellent control of the English language. He uses a certain melancholic type of humor which works perfectly. Me Talk Pretty One Day is a number one National Bestseller. The author, David Sedaris, is an American humorist and author who has been nominated to receive a Grammy Award for his achievements.