Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (Chapters 1-6)

The tone of Sedaris’s humor-writing is just right.  It doesn’t have the over-the-top silliness of Dave Berry, the subtlety of Mark Twain, the philosophical underpinning of George Carlin, or the snide smirkiness of Ann Coulter, but it does have a nice comic twist that permeates a smooth story-telling flow.  I’m reminded most of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, of which I count myself a loyal fan.  The first page or two warms up slowly, with just the mildest fun poked at his mom when he was a young boy.  But by the fourth page or so, I was smiling broadly, and not long after that I was stifling chuckles.  Again, not “laugh-out-loud funny” but very clever and entertaining – just what I was in the mood for. 

His account of the social significance of television-watching really hits a chord with me.  My family when I was growing up wasn’t as addicted to the TV as most were, but it was on for a least a little while almost every day.  In my house today we sometimes go for weeks without having the TV on and then only to play DVDs or videos.  Sedaris points up the fact that we run the risk of being socially marginalized – to the point of backwardness – if we don’t keep up with the latest shows.  As a child, he felt pity for the children of the neighborhood family that “didn’t believe in” TV, almost as if it was a form of child abuse.  But the social commentary never trumps the humor here – it never gets preachy, and you sense that it never comes close. 

I had known before reading Sedaris that he is very upfront among gay authors regarding his gayness, and I expected to read at least minor references to it here.  The chapter where he is coerced into playing strip poker with a group of boys at a sleepover is brilliant:  “To the rest of the group, a naked boy was like a lamp or a bath mat, something so familiar and uninteresting that it faded into the background, but for me it was different.  A naked boy was what I desired more than anything on earth, and when you were both watching and desiring, things came up, one thing in particular that was bound to stand out and ruin your life forever.”  If you’re not squeamish about such things, this is hilarious.  I have only had a handful (excuse me!) of gay friends over the years, but I have always found them to be very good company, especially if they are comfortable enough with you to talk about such things openly. 

Sedaris has a lot of really meaningful things to say about school-age social structures, popularity, cliques, and what it’s like to be on the outside.  He’s not trying to enlighten us; the humor is still at the forefront.  But his powers of observation are keen, as the best humorists’ are, and his analysis leads me to realize just how oblivious to that whole scene I was at that age.  I hadn’t realized how unusual that made me, then, and I still pretty much ignore the social subtleties that I have no control over.  The young Sedaris was painfully aware of his “shortcomings.” 

His father is depicted in the brutal light of reality as a callous, blustering blowhard.  I’m gradually becoming more aware that there are a lot of people who viewed their fathers that way growing up.  Again, I feel like the unusual one, unable to relate to this image due to the fact that my own father was one of those kind souls that are loved by everyone, and deservedly so.  The father depicted here is one that embarrasses his children by his behavior and glaring inconsistencies: “In the coming years our father would continue to promise what he couldn’t deliver, and in time, we grew to think of him as an actor auditioning for the role of a benevolent millionaire.”  Ouch.  Parenting is a skill that most parents never develop to any great degree.

 

 

 

 

 

Next week's chapters: 7-11.