David Sedaris' The Learning Curve - Essay Example

The author has rightly presented that the essay “The Learning Curve” is witty and artful. Here, Sedaris does not conform to the aspect of seriousness, which most artists employ in literary fiction or in the category of serious nonfiction. Sedaris in this essay, therefore, does not aspire to the formality that is adopted in most literary works. For this reason, this essay, including other essays by Sedaris, make him unique. Sedaris works are, therefore, different, compared to the works of other authors today, who has taught in universities or higher learning institutions, and whose works are examined in seminar rooms.

Sedaris does not, therefore, share similar objectives with the other such authors, whose ambition is to set standards in the literary world. “The Learning Curve” is light and full of humor, and lacks seriousness and profoundness. This essay is also simple, thus easy for the reader to understand. The straightforwardness employed by Sedaris in the essay does not require a reader to interpret or look for the literary meaning of the essay. In addition, the prose employed in the essay is simple.

On the contrast, a serious essay would require a reader to consider the implications of the art form and to read the essay with considerable emotional depth. However, in Sedaris’ essay, a reader is not required to make such efforts. Instead, the essay is easy to read, artful, and entertaining. There are various humorous situations in the essay “The Learning Curve.” A part of the humor in the essay centers on the teaching methods of Sedaris at the beginning. For instance, Sedaris asks his students for food recipes for his slow cooker (Sedaris 86).

He then tries to convince his students that this would help them to develop their writing outlines. Additionally, Sedaris plays his favorable his favorite soap operas after which he asks his students to write papers on what would happen next (Sedaris 86). In another instance, Sedaris asks his students that writing becomes fiction when they write it down and fail to say it loud (Sedaris 92-3). Another humorous situation in this essay is when Sedaris opens his briefcase during his first class, and lets out leaf-shaped papers, which he wants his students to use as nametags, “I arrived bearing name tags fashioned in the shape of maple leaves.

I’d cut them myself out of orange construction paper and handed them out along with a box of straight pins. .” (Sedaris 84). Although Sedaris made these tags by himself, when the students ask him whether the tags were handmade, Sedaris argues that they were store bought. Nonetheless, these among other humorous are effective in this essay, as they help to remove seriousness in the essay, even though the author passes on important themes.Although “The Learning Curve” is humorous, this addresses the intelligence of the reader.

The author presents his themes in a clever manner and in an easy way for the reader. Nonetheless, this essay is engaging and intellectually vigorous. For instance, Se