David Sedaris' 'Jesus Shaves'

Jason Sedaris is an openly gay, radio talk show hosting, world-renowned comedian with a specialty in writing. Damn, what a combination.  

I originally knew Sedaris from his columns in The New Yorker. The man has a way with words that are both relatable and humorous in a way that only he would be able to polish them to a fine finish in print.

In his piece 'Jesus Shaves' we encounter Sedaris who is taking French language classes, and a very humorous exchange of language barrier breaking explanation occurs. I do, however, have one huge bone to pick with this work being included in our Norton Anthology.

Sedaris is meant to deliver these pieces aloud. The humor of this piece in particular is the butchered delivery of explanation that the non-native French speakers try to give about what the Easter holiday means. When we read we scan the sentence and form the proper vision of it in our mind...and then quickly move on. The humor in 'Jesus Shaves' is meant to be linguistically delivered, and our minds don't linger enough on the individual sentences for the real punchline to be effective.

 "He nice, the Jesus.", "He make the good things, and on Easter we be sad because somebody makes him dead today."

This needs to be delivered verbally. 

I believe that the...lackluster response from the class about this piece just helps cement that in my mind. It is easy to read a piece. It is much more challenging to actually analyze what you read. Having a verbal delivery cuts out the middle man of the written, in this case, and would allow the listener to focus on the message and humor more.