copyright 2000,
David Sedaris.
Little, Brown, and Company. 272 pgs. fictional essays (good true stories expanded with excellent lies).
If you already know and love David Sedaris, hear this: This book is just as good as his others. Go get it!
If you haven't read Holidays on Ice or Barrel Fever or Naked, you've missed out on a good time BUT IT'S NOT TOO LATE. You might want to start with one of the others, but not necessarily.
Sedaris is one funny little fucker. He is Santa's badassest elf. Me Talk Pretty is a series of stories of his new life, mostly his new life in Paris, having moved to France with his new boyfriend (oh yes, I meant "elf" that way). He can't speak the language. He gets lost. France is hard ! But he loves it. His seemingly neverending sarcasm suddenly clears, every once in a while, and reveals his total joy at discovering his favorite country, the place where he finally feels at home.
We've got asinine tourists who assume Sedaris is a pickpocket, Sedaris's dad who will eat ANYTHING, hopeless garbled language-barrier conversations (Easter: "He call his self Jesus and then he be die one day on two . . . morsels of . . . lumber." "The rabbit of Easter. He bring of the chocolate. . . With a hand he have basket and foods."). Hell, folks, we got taxidermied kittens. An excellent read all around.