A good time for David Sedaris

At the end of September, when our friend JD left Morocco for less green pastures (by the way, we still miss him), he put into our care several books he didn't feel he could take with him. One attitude I adopted very quickly after becoming an "ex-pat" in a non-English speaking country is that English language books are precious. If someone gives you a book, you read it. Then you pass it on to someone else so that person can read it, too. There is a communal attitude about books that I appreciate.

One of the books JD left with us Is Me Talk Pretty One Day by the hilariously insightful (or insightfully hilarious?) David Sedaris. I'd come across many of the essays in the book before (in fact, I used the essay "Big Boy" every single semester in my composition classes, much to the shock and surprise of my students), but I'd never actually read the entire book.

As I'm reading it, I'm discovering that this is a really good time for David Sedaris. The essays in the second half of the book focus on Sedaris's experience trying to learn French while living in France. I think I appreciate both the humor and the poignancy of the essays in a way I never could have before moving to Morocco.

Many of the things he writes about are resonating with me. For example, in "See You Again Yesterday," he writes:

Life may be difficult for a year or two, but I would tough it out because living in a foreign country is one of those things everyone should try at least once. My understanding was that it completed a person, sanding down the rough provincial edges and transforming you into a citizen of the world.

I think Sedaris moved to France without ever having left the country of the United States before that. I guess that means I was a little bit ahead of him before I moved to Morocco, but not by much. And even though I might be reluctant to admit it, I think I moved to Morocco with an attitude similar to the one Sedaris conveys in the above quote.

Sedaris writes that he moved to France knowing only one word of French, the word for "bottleneck."* (In this case, he was ahead of me, because I don't think I knew a single word in Darija when I stepped off the plane in Casablanca last August.) Since this was the only word he knew, it was the only word he could use to communicate. He used it in all situations and at first, he writes, the French responded kindly and generously saying, "You speak very well." This also sounds like a familiar situation. Just as Sedaris started out in France with the memorized list of French nouns, I have memorized several words in Darija and use them enough that I sometimes fool people into thinking I speak Arabic. But of course, I don't, and I can't say I speak it no matter how many nouns I memorize.

I do not always get a positive and supportive response when I try using some Darija. One of the things Me Talk Pretty One Day has gotten me thinking about is how vulnerable we make ourselves when we first start trying to use a new language. I realized the other day that no one has ever made fun of me for speaking English to them, no matter where in the world I was. But I can very clearly and vividly recall a handful of experiences in which I tried to speak Darija in Morocco or Spanish in Spain and was laughed at. I know I have the type of personality that makes me sensitive to situations like this. (I vaguely recall my mother telling me that on the first day of kindergarten I was worried because I didn't know how to read yet, and she had to reassure me that I didn't need to know what I was going to be taught before it was taught to me.)

If I am serious about trying to learn some Darija during the remainder of my time in Morocco, I need to develop more of a sense of humor about myself, my miscommunications, my mispronunciations, etc. Sedaris reminds me of this and provides a model for how to do it.

There is one other reason I love this book. While David Sedaris is now a well-known and successful essayist, in many of his essays he portrays his life as a series of failed attempts to discover his talents. He failed as an artist, as a musician, as a student, as a teacher; he held jobs as a mover, a housekeeper, and a Christmas elf. Given the major changes in my life over the past two years and the degree of uncertainty I'm still experiencing, I gain some comfort from his life story. Maybe this sounds silly, but I get a message of solidarity from his essays: If you're a loser, I'm a loser. And it's okay. Life is a series of discoveries, and it's okay.

If I'm a loser, I'm in the company of David Sedaris, and that's pretty good company.



*Although I'm pretty familiar with Sedaris's essays, I've never been able to figure out how much of what he writes is True. But I've decided I don't care. His essays are incredibly entertaining, and there is clearly some kind of Truth in them. So what does it matter?