Summary Of Me Talk Pretty One Day By David Sedaris

David Sedaris is a published author, as well as frequent contributor to public radio. Most of his books are collections of humors autobiographical short stories and essays about his current life, as well as his up brining. Originally, this quote was published in his book Me Talk Pretty One Day, and it was in reference to himself and how he is confident in the fact that he isn’t “cute” or attractive, and therefore has decided to rely on his cleverness or knowledge to become successful. It is evident that Sedaris has lived by this motto: manipulating his life into short humorous anecdotes that has earned him acclaim in the literary world. I think this quote could be easily misconstrued to be purely about the value of a persons physical appearance

and the assumption of how beauty assures preferential treatment and without it a person has to prove themselves analytically. Which in a sense it is, but I think it extends beyond this simple interpretation. I think this applies to the visual arts, personally, at the moment I’m quite poor at painting and I took an intermediate painting class this year. I knew for many of my assignments, because of my lack of skill, I wasn’t going to produce a good painting, so, with this knowledge in mind, I would develop a concept around my work, which drew focus away form the appearance and made the piece a statement and there for assenting its looks or “cute” appearance in favor of “clever”.