When You Are Engulfed in Flames
by David Sedaris
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Book Reviews of When You Are Engulfed in Flames
Book Review: Self-Absorption Driven to Laughter
Summary: 4 Stars
Laugh at yourself and the whole world laughs with you. It's hard to write humorous essays that stand the test of time. Will Rogers realized that and just read the newspaper to audiences while adding an occasionally wry quip to get huge laughs. Put those messages into a book, and they wouldn't have lasted.
I haven't heard David Sedaris perform in person (which he does as readings), but I'm told he's marvelous. If you have had that pleasure, you will undoubtedly hear his voice, know his timing, and see his expressions as you read this witty, self-deprecating book. I suspect that such an imagined performance would easily turn this into a five-star book.
Proust waxed poetic about his memories of a madeleine (a shell-shaped cake in the France of his youth) in stream of consciousness prose. Sedaris does the same thing for a painful boil on his derriere, his horrible inability to learn new languages, and his desire to show a little more plumpness in his derriere. The results are equally memorable . . . but much more amusing in the case of Sedaris.
Sedaris likes to put together mosaics of seemingly unconnected memories that when combined show a different image and send a different message. It's a little like a Chuck Close portrait.
Like the best humorists, he takes us into her personal life . . . into the kinds of details that few of us would openly share with the public. In exchange for yielding his privacy, he helps us see ourselves in his experiences. Who hasn't struggled with a foreign language with embarrassing consequences? Who hasn't wanted to be a little more in some aspect of their lives? Who hasn't had trouble getting rid of a bad habit?
These themes and more are explored in well-written, interesting style that lacks only an overriding sense of meaning (other than that we are all a mess) to be important prose. Some of them are hilarious, breaking into images of burlesque skits in your mind. Others are more poignant than funny, using wry humor. But he mostly doesn't stretch; rather, he expresses who he is and how he sees life.
As a former smoker, former heavy drinker, former drug user, and current homosexual with a fascination for feeding spiders, some aspect of his life will intersect with yours. But at the same time, he has exotic tastes (spending a lot of time in Normandy, learning not to smoke in Tokyo, and traveling from city to city reading his essays while staying at the finest hotels) that will make his lens different than yours. You'll never see the world the same way, as Proust changed our perceptions of madeleines.
Is it worth the trip? Yes, but I advise small reading doses. It goes down more smoothly that way.
Book Review: Still Familiar, but Still Funny
Summary: 3 Stars
A few years back word got around that one of Sedaris' first books (Naked) was to be made into a film. The idea seemed impossible. "Naked" is a seemingly random group of short stories. Sporadic but polished diary entrees at best. There was no real story there. Matthew Brodrick was rumored to be attacked to the project and it seemed for a short time that it was actually going to happen, then things, I guess fell apart. Since "Naked" Sedaris has written several other books, "Me Talk Pretty One Day", "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim" and now "When You Are Engulfed in Flames".
The books all follow the same pattern, Sedaris takes notes and entries from his diary and/or life experience, seasons them with humor and slight exaggeration and then presents them as self-depreciating musing about his family, his world, and himself. They are like candy to read (his stories/observations often around a dozen pages or so long) and often bring forth a chuckle or two if not a full blown guffaw. The inherent problem however is that when Sedaris wrote "Naked" (fresh from the success he had with his masterpiece "Santaland Diaries) he seemed to have a gold mind of material or maybe it was that his style seemed so fresh and new; but now there seems to be few surprises. Not that familiarity breeds contempt, but perhaps it breeds a slight bit of boredom. Such excerpts from "...Flames", like "Solutions to Saturday's Puzzle" and "Of Mice and Men" are very funny and biting. Others seem to tread over to familiar territory. "The Smoking Section" (a far too long story about Sedaris quitting smoking in Japan) has us back in a classroom with our hero learning Japanese. Funny, but not unlike "Me Talk Pretty Some Day" when our hero was learning French. There are also more stories about his youth, his hard smoking colorful mother, the cranky father, his boyfriend Hugh. All are enjoyable but all are very familiar.
As I look back on this book as well as his others, the idea of a movie makes more sense now. With each book we get a little more nuance, a little more filler. As a whole the books reflect a sort of non-liner auto -biography and right now that's good enough for me; but it begs the question: Can a David Sedaris movie be made? Maybe if you mined all of his work. If Hollywood were to bite again, what's the worst that could happen? Perhaps it might give David more material for his next book.
Book Review: The most interesting person at the party.
Summary: 4 Stars
When I picked up this book at the library, I knew precisely two things about David Sedaris.
- He occasionally wrote essays for This American Life.
- His sister Amy Sedaris was in a commercial with a lot of rabbits.
Also, I discovered a third fact about him while I was trying to find a digital copy of the cover art for his book.
- White people like him.
When You Are Engulfed In Flames is a collection of essays. Each one is a short and fascinating story from Sedaris's life, sparsely embellished with digressions from the topic at hand. It's easy to see how Sedaris got his start in public radio, and it's even easier to imagine him reading the essays aloud as you're reading them, if you have ever heard his voice on the radio. Reading the book is a bit like being next to a very interesting person at a party, the sort of gifted soul who can keep a monologue going for fifteen minutes without boring anyone in the room.
Sedaris is generally billed as a humorist and there are widespread reports of folks finding his work milk-out-the-nose funny. I am not in this group. Sedaris is funny, but this is a sort of subtle humor that is rather more under the surface and it keeps the text from feeling like it belongs in a joke book. What Sedaris really has a knack for is observation and a particularly effective way of relating stories and thoughts. A lot of these essays touch on deep topics, but Sedaris resists the urge to pontificate heavily and seems content to relate the details in a way that lets the reader draw their own conclusions. After you read about, say, the author's self-doubt concerning whether his umbrage at a fellow airline passenger is justified, or confess to not knowing what a dingo is, you can't help but feel like you've had the same experience.
This book earns my recommendation. It's light reading, to be sure, but not the sort that you feel like you have to hide under a colorful book jacket, because every now and again you'll get a beautiful little pop of insight about life, or death, or whether you should wear a bowtie. 4/5.
(A word of warning-this is definitely a book for adults due to its language and content.)
Book Review: Need a good laugh? Then read Sedaris
Summary: 4 Stars
In an interview with David Sedaris on the book's website the interviewer asks Mr. Sedaris, "How do you describe yourself as an author to someone who has never read your books before?" Mr. Sedaris answers quite simply, "Do you know what narcissist means?"
I am one of these well-read individuals who have never read a David Sedaris book. I received When in Engulfed in Flames to review around my birthday and knew instinctively I was receiving a gift. I quickly learned two things about this gifted author's books. Number one: be careful about reading them in public because some of his essays will make you laugh out loud so hard you will embarrass yourself. Number two: you don't have to finish this book in one sitting. Savor the writing and read one every few days or simply at your own pace.
I did have to enlist a few friends who are David Sedaris junkies and get a quick update on his family and friends. I knew Amy Sedaris was his sister but didn't know that Hugh was his partner. My friend gave me a quick rundown of his family, where David has been living and a quick analysis of his mother and father. That was all I needed to be instantly hooked and part of an elite group of David Sedaris followers.
There were some essays I found tedious such as "That's Amore." This essay tells the story of the love/hate relationship between David and his elderly neighbor Helen. At 27 pages long, I found myself saying out loud, "I've heard enough." He is so quick witted you want to stop him before he gets unfunny.
The essay in his book that literally brought me to tears was, "The Understudy." Back in the day, parents would go out of town and leave their children with practically strangers. Nowadays we do FBI background checks before leaving a kid with a babysitter while we run to Target. Sedaris describes this experience of being left with a stranger while his parents were on vacation with such humor and absurdity you are left with the sensation of: did that really happen. Yes of course it did and that is why this book is so funny.
Armchair Interviews says: Sly and quiet humor you expect from Sedaris.
Book Review: "Naked" meets "Me Talk Pretty One Day"?
Summary: 4 Stars
When You Are Engulfed In Flames is a solid four-stars and damn near close to five; we'll settle for 4.5. But then again, I'm a serious Sedaris fiend.
By now, you (dear reader) have already made up your mind about David Sedaris and have either worked your way through this collection or else long ago discarded him, irrelevant as an expended filter tip.
So if you find yourself in the former category then by all means, read on.
When You Are Engulfed In Flames makes Sedaris' previous collection, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, seem like a disaster, a complete train wreck. Which is unfair because I think that Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is a strong collection with some exemplary essays. And also because I get the feeling that it was a more personal werk for him, that he's a bit more exposed and vulnerable in those essays.
Thematically, When You Are Engulfed In Flames is a reprise of Me Talk Pretty One Day -- highly focused on language and style, on the humanity of humiliation and (to echo some other reviewers) those dark places where our sentimentality tends to get the best of us. But it's a counterpoint melody to Me Talk Pretty One Day -- arrogant where the other was modest, chagrined where the other took delight.
Structurally, this collection is an echo of Naked, though perhaps a bit more mature. As I wrote of DFW's Consider the Lobster, the essays are arranged well, jokes from earlier essays recurring, serving to inform your later tittering. That said, the individual essays seem to follow a rhythm that is new for Sedaris. If this were an elementary school music class, I would say that his earlier essays have a rhyme scheme that goes ABAB, these are turned more toward ABCA.
It seems a cop-out to recommend this collection. Those that are already turned on to Sedaris are unlikely to be disappointed; those that didn't much care for him in the first place won't find anything to change their opinions. Anyone with previous exposure is likely to see symptoms of his previous werks; I suppose the difference is whether you carry the antibodies?