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 Book
Review
Dress
Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
By David Sedaris
Little, Brown
272pp
Amazon.com
An
American Original
So Why Does It Feel Like I've
Been Here Before?
By
Kemble Scott
Editor - SoMa Literary Review
When author Mitch Albom spoke at a San Francisco bookstore recently, he explained how the publishing industry responded when his
Tuesdays with Morrie became a phenomenal bestseller.
Albom had struggled to get the book out. Even his own publisher didn’t stand behind it, refusing to print anything more than a few thousand copies. Who wants to read the dying words of some nobody professor? Well, Oprah did. Once she gave
Tuesdays her support, printing presses couldn’t keep up with the demand.
After being the number one bestseller for the zillionth week, it finally dawned on the publisher that, perhaps, Albom had a hit on his hands. The conference rooms back in New York schemed. What’s better than one hit? Two hits!
So they went to Albom and asked for more. What did they want?
“Wednesdays with Morrie,” Albom sighed.
Didn’t the publisher read the book? It captured a dying man’s brilliant
final words about life.
Maybe Albom left out more brilliant final words?
No. Final words were final words.
Albom stood his ground. There would be no sequel. The original book said all it had to say, which is probably why it resonated with so many readers. Squeezing out more would be a cheat.
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris isn’t quite a cheat, but he would have been wise to follow Albom’s lead.
Without a doubt, the publishers are right. Sedaris will make a ton of money with this book. His fans, myself among them, have waited years from something new after loving
Me Talk Pretty One Day, Naked, Barrel Fever and Holidays on
Ice. In those books Sedaris cherry-picked the most outrageous adventures of his life growing up as the fey gay oddball in a middle-class American family.
Now he gives us more.
And that’s the problem.
There are only so many most outrageous moments in anyone’s early life. Sedaris has already written four books worth!
For some reason, he hesitates to take us into the life he lives today. The one that includes being an author who gets rock star attention, a jewel in the crown of National Public Radio, and nothing less than a treasured gay icon
Sedaris refuses to go there. When describing his ten year relationship with his partner he writes, “our lives are boring. The courtship had its moments, but now we’ve become the predictable Part II no one in his right mind would ever pay to see.”
Not true. Some of the most interesting scenes in the book involve the tiny crumbs he offers about his life today and relationship with partner Hugh. But because Sedaris dismisses all this as dull, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim spends most of its pages exploring his childhood, teenage and young adult years.
Again.
Sure, we get some new material about his snarky, alcoholic mother, and
Homer Simpsonesque father. There are some laugh-at-loud scenes involving his relentlessly crude brother. Poop stories have always been a Sedaris favorite of mine, and he doesn’t disappoint.
But haven’t we been here before?
It wasn’t the events in Sedaris’ family and his growing up that grabbed readers. It was his
take on those events that made his other books so wonderful.
Even Sedaris himself must know that he’s mined those early fields of life for most of their anecdotal gold. How else can he explain how he repeated the same stories in different earlier books? He was stretching the old chestnuts even then.
With this latest book, we get the B-sides.
Sedaris has moved on, and so should his stories. He’s so smart, self-effacing and funny, I bet he could write about the phonebook and it would be wildly entertaining. I’d read him on any subject. Just not the same subjects he’s already nailed in past books.
He wowed us with his move to France in Me Talk Pretty One Day. You get a little more of that here. Plus a bit about siblings we didn’t learn much about in previous books. It’s engaging, but familiar territory.
I’m ready to get his unique spin on other parts of his life. Like the famous parts. There must be enough new material about dealing with the pretentious nitwits at NPR and
The New Yorker to fill five volumes. Where’s that? You can’t tell me there’s nothing to say about equally odd actress sister Amy.
It would be better than rehash.
That’s what Mitch Albom did. He fought the publishing industry pressure to write
Wednesdays with Morrie, and instead penned a novel. It still played to his strengths, but took readers someplace new. They rewarded him with yet another bestseller.
I don’t doubt that Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim will be another big seller. It’s modestly entertaining, and Sedaris has far too much fan appeal to fail. It’s money in the bank for the publisher.
But imagine what it would have been like if this great American original had taken the time to write something completely new.
Copyright © 2004 Kemble
Scott
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