Final expression

After finishing David Sedaris’ Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim I have realized how unusual David’s life is.  Almost everything in his life has gone ary yet he still has had a very successful and liberating life.  He has gone through very unexpected happenings in which I would rather not get into because they are a little inappropriate just as I expected.  My first impression of the book was a little off content wise as I had not expected the book to be as serious yet sarcastic as it was, but the format I had predicted was for the most part correct.  My experience reading this book was mostly a lot of laughing and questioning of Sedaris’ morals, but all in all having a fun time reading his memoir.  Sedaris’ writing style is very unique to himself.  It is the kind of writing that makes you think before you laugh.

In class we have read many other memoirs like Maus, and Night.  Both centered around the Holocaust and both very dark.  I am pleased to say that this book was a lot brighter than both of those memoirs.  In addition, those memoirs were very serious much more so than Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. These memoirs are all similar in the fact that they all deal with a relationship to the author’s families or father.  In summation this book was the fantastic read that I suspected from it and I do look forward to reading more of David Sedaris’ books.

Word Count: 253

Connection

This poem relates to David Sedaris’ memoir on many levels.  For instance, in the first stanza of this poem the poet writes “There’s one in every family,” This quote signifies the uniqueness of someone in a family, in David’s family it’s him.  He is by far the most unique person in his family.  He is a comedian, a radio host, and an author.  In his book all he talks about is how eventful and insane his life is.  Also in the second and third stanza of this poem it says “Who catalogues and makes collections Of family feats, and noble deeds,” This means that the unique one of the family records events of his families craziness and how his family does moral things.  Of course this poem is written with a sarcastic tone so you can tell that this is false and by family feats and noble deeds she means family fights and unsettling issues.  So in Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim the quote can be connected to how David’s memoir is like a recording of all of the misshapes in his family life.  Furthermore, the fourth stanza states “And ancestral recollections,” Which can be compared to the memoir itself and how it is David’s past.  The fifth stanza, “At last when all of the data’s in,” So when the memoir is finished and put into the public for all to read.  Sixth stanza, “The clan has got its pedigree”  Which means like, the family has gained a high classed reputation something is going to happen.  The last two stanzas “(Never mentioning Great Uncle Pete… They hanged him from an old oak tree.)”  These last two stanzas really and truly represent the irony and sarcasm of Sedaris’ memoir and how he and his family are so different from the world.  

The poem’s in general figurative relation to the memoir is how David’s book was written to show all of what he wanted to show and still make fun of everybody.  For example he wrote the memoir with the kind of sarcasm and irony that you would expect from someone who is extremely annoyed at you and is using a very condescending tone.   

Word count: 364

Title Analysis

The title Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim’s literal meaning is that the barbie doll (his family) is being changed or outfitted to his liking.  Also since this book is a memoir, it is David past being told the way David wants to tell it;  so this a direct correlation to how he is dressing his family.  In addition the word dress is to put on a persona almost, or to change the way you appear to others.  So David is telling his past to make his family to appear to others worse than himself.  So he makes them look like “rednecks”: “Back in New York State, we had lived in the country, with no sidewalks or street lights; you could leave the house and still be alone.”(Sedaris 3-4).

Its figurative meaning is how he is changing the way the world looks at him.  Just like how some people hang out with people with worse reputation to make themselves look better, David is making his family look worse in his memoir of his past.  He also states in his book a few times how his family members are crazy and don’t understand him because they’re not as good as him, this is an example of how he tries to make his family look bad to make himself look better.  So sometimes during the novel he especially make fun of his father: “I looked at my father, a man in dirty  shorts who drank his beer from the can rather than pouring it into his tumbler, and I thought, You don’t belong here.”(Sedaris 49).  He may also use the title Dress your family in corduroy and denim because he goes into his past makes his family look bad but in a way to make people laugh when they read.  This way of making his family look bad in order to make the reader laugh is very sly and funny thing.   The title Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim means he’s morphing or setting up his family to make himself look better.  He says hes dressing them in corduroy and denim because generally unfashionable people where only corduroy and denim, so by calling them unfashionable is a way to make the reader laugh and to make himself look better.  A lot of this title is very ironic because his family has money, so saying they’re poor and unfashionable is very ironic and funny.  

Word count: 405

Emotional Reaction

David Sedaris’ book makes me literally laugh out loud.  The way he phrases and puts together chapters his really incredible.  Even the way David creates and details situations and objects is fantastic. For example, in one of the later chapters he talks about how he and Hugh were a very strange couple: “Hugh and I have been together for so long that in order to arouse extraordinary passion, we need to engage in physical combat. Once, he hit me on the back of the head with a broken wineglass, and I fell to the floor pretending to be unconscious. That was romantic, or would have been had he rushed to my side rather than stepping over my body to fetch the dustpan.”(139).  I find it hilarious that the fact that they have to fight each other, to inspire passion.  Also, the fact that after he got hit in the back of the head with a wineglass he pretended to be knocked out in order to be romantic is ridiculous, I mean I started laughing out loud.  In, addition when Hugh instead of helping out David he went to get a dust pan for the glass is insane because he is making fun of Hugh’s priorities.  These are the kind of quotes that make me smile, and be happy.  This quote was written with such irony that I could almost hear David’s voice filled with sarcasm.  This is one of the many quotes within this book that made me fall over laughing.

Word Count: 252

Passage analysis

“Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings.”(Sedaris, pg.140).  

He uses the term real love as in true, full, or literal.  Also, when he says withholding the truth he may mean the truthfulness of the love, or withholding the truth would be telling a lie so as not to hurt their feelings, which is very hard for David because it’s in his nature as he implies with “...offered the perfect opportunity…”.

In addition, the whole statement can be inference to a flashback or a foreshadow.  The statement is clearly a setup for a story he is or already has told about how he had to hold back from telling the truth because it was more important to not hurt someone.  For instance, that fact that he wrote this in the novel means that soon this statement will show his morals or that this statement had already done so.  Furthermore he uses the satire for entertainment and to exaggerate the point he is making.  For example the phrase is used to portray that there is something else that he could do to benefit himself but you shouldn't do it.

Initial impressions

I selected the book Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim because the author David Sedaris is a well-known and well-praised stand up comedian who lives in France and travels to many places like the United States of America and parts of Europe.  He also is often a commentator on National Public Radio.  Given what I already know about him I assume his memoir will be a funny read and I would learn the back-story on his early life. 

I am hesitant to read this book because his comedy is intended for a very mature adult audience, and also on the cover of the book there is a picture of a naked Barbie.  I also know that David has written many other successful books including Me Talk Pretty One Day so that leads me to believe that this novel will be well done and will help me become a better reader.  In addition I think that that format of this book will go back in forth between the earlier and later events in his life seeing that many memoirs are written that way. 

Furthermore, I anticipate that the book will deal with David Sedaris’ early life events and how they changed the way his family acts because the title of the book is Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim so because it’s dress your family I think that throughout the novel he will shape his family.  On the back of the book the review from the New Yorker has made my hopes high for this book.  So all in all I believe that this book will teach more about David Sedaris while making me laugh.

Word count: 276