toronto, montreal, and rimouski; dress your family in corduroy and denim

Alright, I swear this is the last David Sedaris book I'll review for awhile, especially as I accidentally re-bought Barrel Fever, rather than one I haven't already read/don't already own. It would seem, I'm sure, that Sedaris has been the only author I've been reading since I got here, but bear with me, as I'm hoping to submit a fair few posts today. No promises, though, since they will virtually (hyuk) guarantee non-posting.

I'm hoping that writing these will inspire me to get back to work; it's been a crazy few weeks in that mythical realm, The Real World, that cares nothing for my assignments or Plan of Study, and as a result, I've been finding it difficult to motivate myself back into the world I normally exist in. So I was reading Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim¹ on the way to my grandmother's funeral in an insane 35-hours-in-transit-less-than-20-in-the-city trip, and found it to be a remarkably apt choice. After all, Sedaris does perspective absurdly, and absurdly well, and he turned what might normally be an overwhelmingly depressing and uncomfortable sprint into learning to grieve and engage with the grief of others I haven't seen in at least ten years in my functional second language (despite its initial predominance, it's been years since I was actively fluent) with a wry self-consciousness and a recognition of the potential for transience. So neither of the trips felt too horrifically long, and I emerged on the other side mostly unscathed.

But enough about me. To the text! This collection is much more similar to other books I'd read of Sedaris's than Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, which is certainly not meant as a criticism one way or another. It was particularly appropriate, though, for when I was reading it, because the experience was a much more familiar and comfortingly hilarious one. As Chelsea Cain puts it in the back cover snippet, "It's laugh-out-loud funny, outrageous, and sad, which is just another way of saying it is vintage Sedaris." The darkness, or sadness, is one I have come to recognize, and his autobiographical anecdotes enable the kind of self-consciousness mentioned above, which I needed.

The essay "Repeat After Me," for example, was exceptionally cathartic. His relationship with his sister, Lisa, is framed by her parrot, Henry, whose comic relief allows Sedaris to confront both his own and his family's qualms with his use of their characters and relationships, foibles and fragilities, for the consumption of what has become a fairly international (though not global) audience. Hannah Simpson's acclaim is perhaps almost too appropriate for this collection, and in [articular this essay and the one about his sister Tiffany: "Thank God for the maladjusted lives of Lou and Sharon Sedaris. Their home may have been frenzied and their six children destined for therapy, but they gave us the shrewd and unconventional Davis Sedaris." After Lisa hears of the impending film to be made from her brother's work, she balks, turning to Henry as an initial outlet for her frustration:

"So now we have to be in a movie?" She picked her sneakers off the floor and tossed them into the laundry room. "Well," she said, "I can tell you right now that you are not dragging my bird into this." The movie was to be based on our pre-parrot years, but the moment she put her foot down I started wondering who we might get to play the role of Henry. "I know what you're thinking," she said. "And the answer is no." (148)

From this, Sedaris moves to another parrot-related anecdote, leaving a pause in the family drama for the reader to process Lisa's frustration and setting the scene for further development of one of his two lesser-mentioned sisters (Amy and Gretchen occupy much of Sedaris's attention, while Lisa and especially Tiffany are less frequently engaged, particularly as adults):

Once, at a dinner party, I met a woman whose parrot had learned to imitate the automatic icemaker on her new refrigerator. "That's what happens when they're left alone," she'd said. It was the most depressing bit of information I'd heard in quite a while, and it stuck with me for weeks. Here was this creature, born to mock its jungle neighbors, and it wound up doing impressions of man-made kitchen appliances. (148-49)

Sedaris weaves this story in with the narrative of Henry and his relationship with his family in such a way as to suggest that Sedaris himself might be the parrot, mocking his Lou, Hugh, and Sharon junglemates.

Sedaris is continually disappointed by Henry's mindless repetition, expecting him to respond with opinions to his mutual babbling with Lisa, then transitions to describing a lecture where the author "read stories about [his] family" and "answered questions about them, thinking all the while how odd it was that these strangers seemed to know so much about [his] brothers and sisters" (150). He affirms, "in order to sleep at night, I have to remove myself from the equation....I'm not the conduit, but just a poor typist stuck in the middle." But Lisa's presence in the audience, and her reaction to the idea of a movie, makes this "delusion much harder to maintain." The effect of her presence is compounded by her self-consciousness, faithfully repeated by Sedaris in the next few pages. He also emphasizes Lisa's affinity for animals, her emotional connection with and unwavering trust in them, both coming to a head in a story that he's expressly forbidden to share:

The incident began with a quick trip to the grocery store and ended, unexpectedly, with a wounded animal stuffed into a pillowcase and held to the tailpipe of her car. Like most of my sister's stories, it provoked a startling mental picture, capturing a moment in time when one's actions seem both unimaginably cruel and completely natural. Details were carefully chosen and the pace built gradually, punctuated by a series of well-timed pauses. "And then...And then..." She reached the inevitable conclusion and just as I started to laugh, she put her head against the steering wheel and fell apart. It wasn't the gentle flow of tears you might release when recalling an isolated action or event, but the violent explosion that comes when you realize that all such events are connected, forming an endless chain of guilt and suffering.

I instinctively reached for the notebook I keep in my pocket and she grabbed my hand to stop me. "If you ever," she said, "ever repeat that story, I will never talk to you again." (154-55)

Sedaris, in catching himself trying to convince his sister to change her mind and let him use it, is suddenly horrified by his own persistence. He, too, is haunted by the impending film, not for its potential to extremity in character, but to accuracy. His self-reflection is troubling, and the essay finds Sedaris in the kitchen with Henry, who repeats only Lisa's happiest stories:
From his own mouth, the words are meaningless, and so he pulls up a chair. The clock reads three a.m., then four, then five, as he sits before the brilliant bird, repeating slowly and clearly the words, "Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me." (156)

I'm aware that blockquotes are dominating this "review," and that it's only one of the many riveting stories in this collection. Really, I agree with Chris Lehmann's acclaim: "Do yourself a favour and rush out to read the damn book for yourself." Then, sit down and write a letter to someone you haven't seen in awhile. And another. Maybe a third.

¹Fairly unrelated, but I rather enjoy the quasi-pornographic homogeneity of images that appear on the Google search (where it suggests you try Google Images).