Close Reading Dec 11th

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/24/090824fa_fact_sedaris

Details:
The details are Sedaris are very effective in achieving his goal of highly comedic editorial writing.  Right away the piece starts off with him arguing with his father over who has truly been to Australia. Though obviously they have both physically been to Australia, their differences in the belief of what Australia really is leads to irreparable schism at a dinner with family members they rarely see.  I found this whole situation to be very funny, the fact that they are arguing over a purely subjective idea that one has no chance of persuading the other to believe.  Sedaris also describes Australia as Canada in a thong, something that made me actually laugh when reading.  I was equally amused by an incident that involved them stopped in Australia investigating road kill on the side of the road.  These details, interspersed with more serious subject matter of Sedaris's journeys, are highly comedic and make the piece of reading enjoyable and certainly a form of high comedy.

Diction:
Sedaris uses typical diction to describe his adventures in Australia.  He certainly has no desire to create any disconnect between reader and writer and his diction reflects this.  Occasionally he will use elevated diction when describing especially comedic or important events of his stories, seen the use of the words "shodiness" and "constitute".  He writes in a way that a typical reader of the new yorker would easily grasp.  I was most drawn to his use of local diction, the word "shout" which carries an entirely different meaning in Australia than in America.  Shout is a verb that means to treat, the example used by Sedaris is "She shouted us to coffee".  After explaining the use of the word, and then later using the word in the piece as if its unique colloquial use was natural for him was very interesting and showed to me a level of sophistication in his writing.

Imagery:
Imagery is constantly used throughout the piece.  What is notable about its use however is the comedic way in which it is used. His imagery is explained/created in a way that is funny.  He takes funny situations and further increases the hilarity for the reader by creating images in the readers mind with funny details.  A good example is seen when he describes the roadkill that he comes across, and his attempt to identify it.  "I was surprised by the shoddiness of its coat. It was as if you’d bred a rabbit with a mule. Then there was the tail, which reminded me of a lance.  What was it actually, a teenage kangaroo?"  This absurd attempt to describe this animal certainly doesn't help the reader to get a good idea of what Sedaris saw, but in this piece that isn't his point.  He is using imagery, or rather attempts at imagery, to increase the comedic nature of the situations that he describes.