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1-Page Summary of Corduroy
Overall Summary
The book Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is a collection of twenty-two autobiographical essays by David Sedaris. Each essay focuses on one aspect of his life, such as his dysfunctional family or the peculiarities of suburban American life. The book received positive reviews for its vivid portrayal of many aspects that are often overlooked in American culture.
The author tells us about his childhood in the beginning of the book. He describes his family as people who stand out no matter where they are, and how he was able to observe this from a young age. The first essay is called “Us and Them”, which talks about Mr. Tomkey’s family and their lack of television that Sedaris felt pity for them because he couldn’t imagine not having TV at home.
In the essay “The Ship Shape,” David Sedaris recalls his family’s interest in buying a beach house. He talks about how they never actually bought one and left him hanging with unfinished idealizations of their beach house. The experience teaches him not to rely on adults who often make hapless decisions. At the same time, he relates that his is not the kind of family that would have derived happiness from a beach house anyway. Another essay, “Full House,” touches on David Sedaris’s difficulties as a gay teenager when his father tells him to go to Walt’s all-male sleepover party where he struggles with being in the closet around a group of boys at first but then decides to play strip poker with them and sits in one boy’s lap while nude after realizing it might cause years of ostracism if he shows affection for another male classmate but does it just for temporary relief.
“Hejira” deals with the author’s life after his father kicks him out of the house. He was kicked out for being gay, rather than unemployed and unmotivated as he had thought. In “The Girl Next Door”, Sedaris tries to help a neglected child named Brandi by educating her about a better way of life but fails when she robs him and her mother blames him for trusting her in the first place. These experiences teach Sedaris that there are people worse off than he ever was who cannot even conceive of a parent as nurturing figure.
When he was a young adult, David Sedaris lived with his partner in France. He would often get scared at night and imagine that zombies were coming to attack him. To calm himself down, he stayed up all night talking out loud about the mice in the attic. Soon, he became fixated on the mice and even killed one of them by drowning it in a bucket of water when a lost family knocked on his door for directions. When his partner came back home from being away, everything went back to normal again.
The ending of Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim summarizes the ambivalence of each essay. The essays never arrive at an ultimate thesis, but rather capture a lot of anxiety about the world today.
