Nuts and Bolts and Sedaris, Oh My!

David Sedaris’ “Me Talk Pretty One Day” is crafted simply and beautifully. The essay uses all the tips for good writing given in Michael Harvey’s The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing. Sedaris’ point is clear and effective about the simple beauty of understanding and language.

Harvey begins his book by emphasizing the importance of concision, placing the “Beware” sign over what he dubs the “pompous style.” “Yet many of us are afraid of writing concisely because doing so can make us feel exposed. Concision leaves us fewer words to hide behind,” says Harvey (1). If a majority of the college-educated population is afraid to expose itself, Sedaris is not among it. His essay is bare of the “big words, self-important phrasing… nouns galore” (Harvey, 1) that are all part of the pompous style. “I’ve moved to Paris with hopes of learning the language,” Sedaris says (1). “My school is an easy ten-minute walk from my apartment, and on the first day of class I arrived early, watching as the returning students greeted one another in the school lobby.” This style of writing is echoed throughout the rest of the essay. Sedaris’ writing is free of “sophisticated” words or turnabout phrasing, and his sentences are structured simply, with a strong verb following each subject.

The clarity and concision of his writing would be nothing, however, if Sedaris’ essay didn’t flow. “Good essays unfold like stories—not in the sense of being dramatic or exciting, but in the sense of showing characters doing things or being described” (Harvey, 23). Because Sedaris’ essay is more like a story than a formal thesis paper, it certainly has characters. But what Harvey means isn’t people, but rather a binding idea, a thing or person that holds the passage together with clues pointing back to it. “The seamstress did not understand what was being said but knew that this was an occasion for shame. Her rabbity mouth huffed for breath, and she stared down at her lap as though the appropriate comeback were stitched somewhere alongside the zipper of her slacks” (Sedaris, 5). This passage from the essay illustrates another of Harvey’s points:  using pronouns as pointers. “Humble pronouns and other pointers permit powerful effects” (Harvey, 25). True to this, if Sedaris had named the seamstress every time he referred to her, the passage would lose its effect. Forcing us to make the connection back to the seamstress every time we see the word “her” or “she” ties the passage together and allows us to create a vivid image in our heads from the description without being stopped. The flow of the passage lies in that readers come full circle every time they have to reconnect with the main idea.

According to Harvey, beginnings and endings run on circles, too. “One of the best ways to end an essay is by closing the circle, or returning at the end to where you began… This imparts a sense of order, elegance, and control to an essay” (83, emphasis in the original). At the beginning of his essay, Sedaris states that he moved to France “with hopes of learning the language.” He is intimidated by the students who speak French fluently. “Regardless of their nationalities, everyone spoke what sounded to me like excellent French. Some accents were better than others, but the students exhibited an ease and confidence that I found intimidating” (1). Neither does Sedaris understand everything said to him in French. Eventually, he stops speaking the language for fear of getting it wrong.

In the end, Sedaris realizes that he now understands French, and the knowledge and the understanding is a “subtle beauty.” Even though he still cannot speak French, he knows now that understanding is not the same as speaking, and his hopes of learning the language should not have been thwarted by being unable to speak it. “Understanding doesn’t mean that you can suddenly speak the language. Far from it. It’s a small step, nothing more, yet its rewards are intoxicating and deceptive. The teacher continued her diatribe and I settled back, bathing in the subtle beauty of each new curse and insult” (Sedaris 5). Sedaris’ point is that the subtle nooks and crannies of language are beautiful, and he illustrates this not only through his own moment of epiphany when he understands French but through a passage that in itself illustrates clear and effective English. Just as Sedaris experienced the “subtle beauty” of understanding French, we as readers experience our own subtle revelation and beauty as we watch his words unfold.