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dress your family in corduroy and denim
• by david sedaris • little, brown • 2004

review: For me, a David Sedaris book makes me feel like a kid on Halloween. You have this big bag stuffed with candy. You come home and think, "Okay, if I only eat one piece of candy a day, I can probably spread this out and have candy for months to come!" But then you eat one piece and it's so damn tasty, the next thing you know, you're scooping fistfuls of treats from that plastic pumpkin-head. Pretty soon, all the candy is gone and you're left sprawled out on the living room floor, floatin' on a sugar rush.

That's how I felt when I opened up David's latest collection of twenty-two essays, his first since 2001's acclaimed Me Talk Pretty One Day. After reading each story, I would close the book on my lap, close my eyes, and just sigh with happiness. "I should savor that story and read a new one tomorrow," I'd think. But when it comes to his sharp, funny writing, I couldn't stop gorging, and I had the whole book read that afternoon. And then I read it again the next day! It's just that damn good.

The impish, infamous star of NPR does not disappoint with this collection. In fact, I dare say it's my favorite collection yet: while I've mentioned in the past, David's humor could be "dark and twisted", this time around, he's softer, kinder. The title is appropriate as the majority of these stories revolve around his childhood and his family. His stories have a wistful nostalgic feel, a sort-of gentle longing that's introduced with one of the first pieces, "Ship Shape", a flashback story about the family's vacation home that never was. Even the more coarse essays in this book have a softer feel: in "Baby Einstein", David tells of the birth of his niece, and even when his youngest brother Paul says in his familiar offensive style, "That's just your Uncle Faggot...", well, even David remarks that he found it "comforting". Even at its most foul, it's still all very warm-hearted and affectionate.

However, if you are a hardcore Sedaris fanatic, such as myself, some of these stories might seem familiar from the first time they were published in magazines like Esquire, G.Q. or The New Yorker. Or perhaps you might've heard him reading them on NPR's "This American Life". Frankly, I didn't care. I never wanted to dish out the money for an issue of some cheesy men's magazine, so even though I read his essays online at their websites, I like having them all in one nice hardbound collection. And even though I'd already read some of these essays, they still made me laugh out loud at his dead-on descriptions of family life, or cry...at his dead-on descriptions of family life. Like I did in "Repeat After Me" and "Hejira", the latter of which is only four pages long! Four pages, and David is able to compact so much emotion into those words that my lip quivers and teardrops roll down my face. Boy, whatta writer... (janice.05.04)

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