Dress Your Children in Corduroy and Denim

Reviewer's Bookwatch, April, 2005 by Coletta Ollerer

Dress Your Children in Corduroy and Denim

David Sedaris

Little Brown and Company

1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

0316143464, $24.00, 257 pp

This is a light-hearted tour of the life of a dysfunctional family member, told in vignettes. The author's shock and aversion, as a 9 year old, when his mother required him to give the neighbor's children his Halloween candy the day after the holiday because they were not in town on October 31. "I knew it was just a matter of time before she came into my room and started collecting the candy herself, grabbing indiscriminately, with no regard to my rating system." (p10)

His Dad's unkept promise to purchase a beach home discourages the children. "We grew to think of him as an actor auditioning for the role of a benevolent millionaire. He'd never get the part but liked the way that the words felt in his mouth." (p28)

The geeky 12 year old boy's chagrin when he is invited to a sleep-over with three "gregarious and athletic boys, which meant that we had absolutely nothing in common." (p31) His parents insist that he attend

As a sixth grader he comes into contact with members of an "in" group discussing their rejected peers during a Labor Day Celebration at the Raleigh Country Club. "So complete was their (the "in" group's) power that I actually felt honored when one of them hit me in the mouth with a rock." (p44)

At 13 the author meets his first hippie. The boy gladly gives him his coke and potato chip money, 50 cents, and continues observing the hippie's 'cool'. "He (the hippie) was a grown-up's worst nightmare and I wanted to be just like him." (p75)

When the author was a young man, his parents invested in rental property. While his mother was the more personable one, he saw that "if a tenant wanted any kind of a break, he soon learned to go to my father, who displayed a level of compassion we rarely saw at home. His own children couldn't get a dime out of him." (p94) While assisting his father with clean-up of part of the property a tenant griped loudly about his efforts. "I was dragging a branch toward the curb, and he complained that in doing so, I was disturbing the integrity of his yard, which was alternately bald and overgrown and had all the integrity of a litter box." (99)

As an adult traveling in a foreign land, the author attempts to get the 'feel' for the country by asking probing questions of the natives. In the Netherlands, he spoke to a person named Oscar about the Dutch version of Santa Claus. Oscar described how Saint Nicholas "arrives by boat and then transfers to a white horse." (p160) The author asked if he were alone or in the company of elves. "Maybe I'm overly sensitive, but I couldn't help but feel personally insulted when Oscar denounced the very idea as grotesque and unrealistic. 'Elves,' he said. 'They are just so silly.'" (p160)

The author speaks of meeting the future wife of his brother. "I finally met the girlfriend, a licensed hairdresser named Kathy. Erase the tattoos and the nicotine patch and she resembled one of those tranquil Flemish Madonnas, the ubiquitous Christ child replaced by a hacking pug. Her grace, her humor, her fur-matted sweaters--we loved her immediately." (p169)

David Sedaris' manner of interpreting the world is thoroughly enjoyable.