David Sedaris – Dress your family in corduroy and denim (five)

If Dress your family had been written in it’s entirety with the clarity and rhythm of the last chapter, it would have been good. Not great, but good. And the fact is the bulk of the book isn’t. Not great, not good. It’s just ok. The cover of the book states it is extremely funny. I had expected something hilarious but in the end it was disappointingly amusing. You see, the most important clue to the book is written in small print, on the back, just above the bar code. One word. Autobiography. Autobiography is great when it’s larger than life, when fiction is ficked in the ass by reality. Sedaris writes about reality as it is in your own world. Funny, quirky, tedious. It should be anecdotal but often lacks the punch-lines of anecdote. The confusing humour is undeniably autobiographical and suffers from the lack of definition that purely fictional humour possesses. Reality is full of holes and loose ends. It’s a leaking glass that, once it reaches your lips, is half empty.

I am glad to have read it, because I get to use one of my favourite words. Fragmentary. His chronology is out of joint. It becomes first confusing, next distancing. He’s eight, he’s 12, he’s 10, he’s 22, he’s 17. It’s the nineties, it’s the present, it’s the seventies. Fine, if you can’t even put your own life in sequence, maybe keep to writing witty columns. Sorry David.