I think you’re missing the joke. DS had a speech impediment as a child AND is gay.
My only exposure to David Sedaris is Me Talk Pretty One Day, which I bought on the highest recommendations (many at this board).
Nothing but one long self-aware over-wrought attempt at humor. I don’t think I cracked so much as a smile throughout.
Normally, I am very protective of dust jackets for my books (take them off when reading the book, etc.) but I received some joy when I finally found the jacket for this book months after I finished it. Under the cushions of the couch, all wrinkled and destroyed.
Is all his stuff like this or was this book just particularly lame? (I know you all don’t think it is lame, what I’m asking is it all in the same style, which apparently doesn’t work for me.)
Look carefully at the part of my post that you quoted.
I got the point; it was less than subtle. However, to say that his essay doesn’t equate speech impediments with homosexuality is disingenuous.
He says, explicitly, that the boys sent to the speech therapist were future homosexuals identified by their teachers via their speech impediments–“Did they hope that by eliminating our lisps that they might set us on a different path . . .” and goes on in great detail to list the particular methods the therapist used to try to help him. On a basic level, the essay says that boys with lisps are future homosexuals and implies that attempts to cure the former were thinly disguised attempts to eradicate the latter.
I got the joke. I just don’t think it’s funny.