Tom Lynch

One would be considerably hard-pressed if asked to find a negative review of a David Sedaris piece, or even a person with a less than enthusiastic thing to say about the country's uber-popular humorist. His books have sold millions; his last, 2001's "Me Talk Pretty One Day," even hit number one on one of those important book charts. Sedaris is not simply a good writer, that would be too easy--his ability to infect the reading minds of America with his shark-tail wit and almost abrasive stutter-and-start sentences feels like a shot to the rib cage and tickle under the foot simultaneously. He understands why something as domestic as eating food is funny, and he's not afraid to laugh. That's why everyone reads him. He's a leader.

His newest, "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim," follows the Sedaris-patented formula--twenty-two separate stories, almost all recollections of a basic childhood and adolescence made nutty with the addition of an adult's sarcasm. Most people have these stories in their head, this history of oddities, but no one thinks to tell the tales. Sedaris beats the world to the punch. Who hasn't had "the weirdo" neighbors, those who own a TV and take top billing in the book's opener, "Us and Them"? Who hasn't tried to convince his or her younger sibling to lie down in the middle of traffic, like in "Let It Snow"?

Maybe not everyone has had a fat, bald stranger masturbate to gay porn in front of them while they tried to clean his house, but Sedaris is a veteran in this line of work now, so there is no such thing as a misfire. Even when he relaxes the humor, like in the small and beautifully crafted "Hejira," about being kicked out of the house by his father at 22 because of his homosexuality, Sedaris holds the reader tight with both hands and glides his or her eyes over the words, like a person gently transported by a pedway at an airport. Then the jokes come back with bite, to welcoming arms and mouths agape.

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

By David Sedaris

Little, Brown and Company, 257 pages, $24.95

(2004-06-02)

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