Whether by nature or by nurture, Ma and Pa Sedaris certainly knew something about raising funny kids. Amy Sedaris has built a cult following for her Comedy Central character Jerri Blank, and David, the more famous of the two siblings, continues to spin his personal history into comedic gold. A good chunk of the material in Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim debuted in other media outlets, such as The New Yorker, but Sedaris's brilliantly written essays deserve repeat reads.

Based on the author's descriptions, nearly every member of his family is funny, although some (like sister Tiffany, perhaps) in a tragic way. In "The Change in Me," Sedaris remembers that his mother was good at imitating people when it helped drive home her point. High-voiced, lovably plain-spoken brother Paul (aka The Rooster, Silly P) has long been a favorite character for Sedaris readers, though Paul's story takes on a serious note when his wife has a difficult pregnancy. The author doesn't shy away from embarrassing moments in his own life, either, including a childhood poker game that strays into strange, psychological territory. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim provides more evidence that he is a great humorist, memoirist, and raconteur, and readers are lucky to have the opportunity to know him (and his clan) so well. His funny family feels like our own. Perhaps they are luckier still not to know him personally. --Leah Weathersby


From Publishers Weekly
In his latest collection, Sedaris has found his heart. This is not to suggest that the author of Me Talk Pretty One Day and other bestselling books has lost his edge. The 27 essays here (many previously published in Esquire, G.Q. or the New Yorker, or broadcast on PRI's This American Life) include his best and funniest writing yet. Here is Sedaris's family in all its odd glory. Here is his father dragging his mortified son over to the home of one of the most popular boys in school, a boy possessed of "an uncanny ability to please people," demanding that the boy's parents pay for the root canal that Sedaris underwent after the boy hit him in the mouth with a rock. Here is his oldest sister, Lisa, imploring him to keep her beloved Amazon parrot out of a proposed movie based on his writing. ("'Will I have to be fat in the movie?' she asked.") Here is his mother, his muse, locking the kids out of the house after one snow day too many, playing the wry, brilliant commentator on his life until her untimely death from cancer. His mother emerges as one of the most poignant and original female characters in contemporary literature. She balances bitter and sweet, tart and rich—and so does Sedaris, because this is what life is like. "You should look at yourself," his mother says in one piece, as young Sedaris crams Halloween candy into his mouth rather than share it. He does what she says and then some, and what emerges is the deepest kind of humor, the human comedy. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From School Library Journal
Adult/High School - This lighthearted follow-up to Me Talk Pretty One Day(Little, Brown, 2000) contains a selection of personal essays. Some of the pieces appeared previously in magazines or on the NPR radio program This American Life. The first half of the collection focuses on Sedaris's childhood, including his relationship with his supportive mother and "man's man" of a father. Family vacations, snow days from school, and parental conflicts are all rendered in a comic style. Several of the pieces highlight the author's growing up with the knowledge that he is gay. He writes about the mixture of feelings he experienced in a real but funny manner. The second half moves Sedaris into adulthood. Although still dealing chiefly with his family, the focus shifts to his brother and sisters. From Tiffany, who collects and sells junk right from her house, to macho, floor-sanding Paul, Sedaris sets up a family dynamic that's sometimes odd, sometimes sad, but always funny. A handful of pieces include or refer to his life partner, Hugh. Whether it's apartment searching in "Possession" or the clash of personalities in "A Can of Worms," it's refreshing to see a writer portray a gay relationship that's committed and monogamous. Although not as unified as his other books, this collection serves as a touching reminder of how odd, funny, and unique our lives really are. - Matthew L. Moffett, Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Bookmarks Magazine
Critics agree that Corduroy and Denim marks Sedaris’s transition from a humorist and essayist into a full-fledged memoirist. The volume returns to the dysfunctional childhood and adulthood tribulations that made Naked and Me Talk Pretty One Day bestsellers, and contains the same snarky wit, heartbreaking humor, and touch of malice. But this time, melancholy, introspection, and even a bit of sadness create more emotionally wrought stories. Perhaps Sedaris is, as Newsday suggests, finally recognizing the distance he often puts between himself and his subjects. The only complaint? A few pieces add humor in inappropriate places (does Sedaris really covet the Anne Frank house?). A must read for Sedaris fans; for novices, the best introduction to one of the nation’s funniest writers. Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.


From AudioFile
David Sedaris's latest collection of essays is his most intimate, made even more so by his keen delivery. They reflect a writing maturity: His insecurities and compulsions are more apparent than ever, which just makes the stories of awkward childhood, awkward adolescence, and awkward adulthood that much more eminently relatable. Which is not to say that you won't be laughing out loud at his impression of his redneck brother in "Rooster at the Hitchin' Post" or any of the other small absurdities of life that he captures so memorably. One of Sedaris's gifts is that he can be hilarious and heartrending (but never maudlin) in the same sentence. Three of the live performances, including "Six to Eight Black Men," will be familiar from last year's LIVE AT CARNEGIE HALL, but they're no less funny on second listening. Sedaris's essays are written to be heard, so listen up--he just keeps getting better. J.M.D. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Sedaris' piquant essays are as meticulously honed and precisely timed as the best stand-up comic routines, which is, of course, what they are. A National Public Radio star, the author of five best-sellers, including Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000), and a hall-filling performer, Sedaris--openly gay, nervy as a tightrope walker, sharply hilarious, teasingly misanthropic yet genuinely compassionate--has a unique ability to supply exactly the right details to bring every funny, awkward, ludicrous, painful, horrible real-life moment into harrowingly crisp focus. But given all that he has already revealed about his childhood, family, and bizarre adventures, one wonders how he can continue to mine his life to create fresh and arresting essays, and, indeed, a few pieces do feel strained. It stretches one's credulity, for instance, to envision young Sedaris panhandling or taking erotic advantage of a strip poker game. But when he muses over his parents' "slumlord" phase, remembers a rich aunt and a neglected nine-year-old girl, and profiles his over-the-top brother, he is mesmerizing, and his ability to make the reader gasp, laugh out loud, or grow teary is undiminished. At the same time, there's an increased edginess to his work, reminding readers that beneath the brio, Sedaris, gifted connoisseur of the absurd, is deadly serious. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
With Dress Your Family in Courduroy and Denim, David Sedaris returns to his deliriously twisted domain, hilarious childhood dramas infused with melancholy; the gulf of misunderstanding that exists betwen people of different nations or members of the same family; and the poignant divide between one's best hopes and most common deeds.


Download Description
David Sedaris plays in the snow with his sisters.
He goes on vacation with his family.
He gets a job selling drinks.
He attends his brother's wedding.
He mops his sister's floor.
He gives directions to a lost traveler.
He eats a hamburger.
He has his blood sugar tested.

It all sounds so normal, doesn't it?
In his newest collection of essays, David Sedaris lifts the corner of ordinary life, revealing the absurdity teeming below its surface. His world is alive with obscure desires and hidden motives—a world where forgiveness is automatic and an argument can be the highest form of love. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is another unforgettable collection from one of the wittiest and most original writers at work today.


From the Publisher
The desperately anticipated new collection by the beloved and bestselling writer Time Magazine named America's Favorite Humorist.


About the Author
David Sedaris is also the author of Me Talk Pretty One Day, Barrel Fever, Naked, and Holidays on Ice. He is a regular contributor tp Public Radio International's This American Life and to the New Yorker.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

David Sedaris returns to his deliriously twisted domain: hilarious childhood dramas infused with melancholy; the gulf of misunderstanding that exists between people of different nations or members of the same family; and the poignant divide between one's best hopes and most common deeds. The family characters his readers love are all here, as well as the unique terrain they inhabit, strewn with comic landmines.

"The Rooster" is back, and getting married in the funniest wedding ever described.

David attends a slumber party and gets the upper hand in a unique version of strip poker.

"Rubber or plastic?" The strangest questions can tear people apart.

A skinny guy from Spain, wearing a bishop's hat and accompanied by six to eight men, invades your house and pretends to kick you. Is this any way to spend Christmas?

With this new book, Sedaris's prose reaches breathtaking new heights and marks off a territory that is unmistakably his own. Read it and weep tears of humane laughter.

FROM THE CRITICS

Chris Lehmann - The Washington Post

Do yourself a favor and rush out to read the damn book for yourself. It's already shaping up to be a summer starved for good laughs and, familiar though they may seem, you'll find few better than the ones on offer in Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim.

USA Today

Sedaris, humorist and author of the best-selling Me Talk Pretty One Day, once again exhibits his knack for spinning unsettling experiences into pure comic gold.—Allison Block

The New York Times

Like his earlier performances, the essays are sardonic, funny and wry, but at the same time there is a new strain of introspection that makes for a book with more emotional resonance, a more complex aftertaste. The embarrassments of adolescence, the difficulties of connecting, the sense of being a perpetual outsider—these perennial themes of the author are not simply played for self-deprecating laughs in this volume, but are made to yield a more Chekhovian brand of comedy.—Michiko Kakutani

Publishers Weekly

In his latest collection, Sedaris has found his heart. This is not to suggest that the author of Me Talk Pretty One Day and other bestselling books has lost his edge. The 27 essays here (many previously published in Esquire, G.Q. or the New Yorker, or broadcast on NPR's This American Life) include his best and funniest writing yet. Here is Sedaris's family in all its odd glory. Here is his father dragging his mortified son over to the home of one of the most popular boys in school, a boy possessed of "an uncanny ability to please people," demanding that the boy's parents pay for the root canal that Sedaris underwent after the boy hit him in the mouth with a rock. Here is his oldest sister, Lisa, imploring him to keep her beloved Amazon parrot out of a proposed movie based on his writing. (" `Will I have to be fat in the movie?' she asked.") Here is his mother, his muse, locking the kids out of the house after one snow day too many, playing the wry, brilliant commentator on his life until her untimely death from cancer. His mother emerges as one of the most poignant and original female characters in contemporary literature. She balances bitter and sweet, tart and rich-and so does Sedaris, because this is what life is like. "You should look at yourself," his mother says in one piece, as young Sedaris crams Halloween candy into his mouth rather than share it. He does what she says and then some, and what emerges is the deepest kind of humor, the human comedy. Author tour. (June) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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