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The Great Leap Forward
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Me Talk Pretty One Day, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity and Insecurity
Humor, Commentary, and Observation
Class and Belonging
Family, Love, and Support
Summary
Analysis
Sedaris and his partner, Hugh, go out to a fancy restaurant in New York City before going to a movie. Because he didn’t bring his own, the restaurant gives Sedaris a suit jacket to wear, and it looks absurd on him. Trying to ignore this, he and Hugh place their orders, struggling with the absurdly intricate and strange nature of the meals, which include dishes like “raw Atlantic swordfish served in a dark chocolate gravy and garnished with fresh mint.” Sedaris makes a joke to the waiter, pretending that he’s tired of eating this dish yet again, but the waiter doesn’t appreciate the humor. This causes Sedaris to reflect on the strange nature of dining in New York City, where restaurants pair unlikely foods with one another and arrange meals in ways that make them disconcertingly unrecognizable.
Once again, Sedaris observes the subtle ways in which society at large often takes ridiculous things for granted. In this essay, he turns his attention to the fine dining industry in New York City, criticizing it for taking itself too seriously and—more importantly—for losing sight of what really matters: satisfying customers with tasty food. To that end, he intimates that fancy restaurants have become too focused on finding unconventional ways to cook and plate the meals they serve. By calling attention to this, he invites readers to laugh at the self-seriousness of fine dining.
Themes
Chief among Sedaris’s complaints about dining out in New York is that customers aren’t allowed to smoke in restaurants. If he had his way, he thinks, he would like a chef to figure out how to prepare and cook a cigarette. When it’s time for dessert, he repeatedly tells the waiter, “I just couldn’t.” After paying the check, Sedaris and Hugh walk to the movie theater, rushing because Sedaris wants to get something to eat on the way there. Stopping at a cart, he orders a hotdog with mustard, thinking about how his friends can’t believe he’s willing to each such food. “How can you eat those?” they ask, pointing out that these hotdogs are often made of pig’s lips, hearts, and eyelids. To Sedaris’s mind, this means the hotdogs only have three ingredients, making them much simpler and more “timeless” than the food he eats at fancy restaurants.
That Sedaris would prefer to eat a hotdog made of the most unappetizing body parts of a pig says something about his approach to food. Indeed, he isn’t impressed by creative flourishes or obscure flavor pairings. Instead, he cares exclusively about taste and simplicity. And since hotdogs taste good regardless of what body parts they’re made of (within reason, that is), he appreciates them much more than the small helpings he receives in overpriced restaurants—something that says something about his lack of interest in indulging a supposedly high-class lifestyle for the sake of status and self-image.
Themes
