When You Are Engulfed in Flames
by David Sedaris
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Book Reviews of When You Are Engulfed in Flames
Book Review: Sedaris phones it in
Summary: 1 Stars
As a huge Sedaris fan, I was excited to pick this book up when it came out in hardcover, about a year ago. While I generally 'inhale' Sedaris, trying to read one story a day so I don't go through it too quickly, this one I found to be a major chore to read. I kept putting it away for weeks at a time, and then struggled to get through a story.
If you've never read Sedaris, I highly recommend 'Naked' and 'Me Talk Pretty One Day.' Those are masterpieces. So funny.
This one is just not funny. Maybe there were two or three mildly funny stories. The rest were just boring. I guess that his two great works were based on 30 years of funny things happening to him while this one was based on one year.
I almost decided to just not finish it, but I saw there was a long essay about his quitting smoking at the end. I figured this would be great, but it turned out to be mostly about his time trying to quit in Tokyo. This enabled him to write a less funny version of 'Me Talk Pretty One Day' where he struggles through language classes. There's a lot about the culture there, but it's just mildly amusing.
I still love Sedaris. I just wish I had spent my time rereading 'Naked' or 'Me Talk Pretty One Day.'
Book Review: Very Gay
Summary: 5 Stars
David Sedaris reminds me of two other American essayists who wrote with sly, self-deprecating humor: Robert Benchley and James Thurber. But Sedaris has a way of engaging a wide range of human emotions: disgust at the parasite boring out of one's skin, nostalgia for a past before one's own time, embarrassment at the truck driver's indecent proposal, stoicism in the struggle to quit smoking, etc.
Sedaris has a talent for making us laugh at him and through him at the larger absurdity of modern life. He's very matter of fact about being gay and being gay in a monogamous relationship. Like Benchley and Thurber, he indulges in "married" jokes. If he's a little bent, I think that's necessary for his form of mind-bending humor.
It's good to bend your mind a little. Otherwise it becomes inflexible.
I bought the book because I had heard Sedaris reading one of his essays on NPR. Some might think that the only thing better than reading it is listening to the author read it aloud. I'm not sure. Some of the subject matter seems too private. I liked being able to pick up the book and put it down. Like a determined seducer, Sedaris made me laugh every time. I think I'm in love with Hugh, too.
Book Review: Uneven
Summary: 2 Stars
In "When You are Engulfed in Flames," as well as in "Naked," the first of David Sedaris's books I've read, I continually marveled how how he spun hilarity from the mundane. Although I laughed my socks off at bedtime reading two or three chapters an evening, I'd wake up the next day and not recall scarcely a thread. Unlike reading Augusten Burrough's memoir, Magical Thinking, in which some of Burrough's stories will live with me forever. I absolutely love Hugh -- I want a friend just like him. He's the best sidekick for Sedaris.
My biggest gripe about "When You are Engulfed in Flames" is that the entire section entitled, The Smoking Section, felt unequal, in terms of editing, humor, and enthusiasm, to the rest of the book. It felt like Sedaris needed another 80 pages to complete a book-length collection, so he took his I'm Trying to Quit Smoking journal and clipped it the other manuscript pages and shipped the lot off to his publisher hoping they wouldn't notice it didn't quite work. Other than that, it was an enjoyable (but not memorable) read.
Marie Estorge
author of STORKBITES: A MEMOIR
and CONFESSIONS OF A BI-POLAR MARDI GRAS QUEEN
[...]
Book Review: less great
Summary: 2 Stars
About 7 years or so ago, a friend handed me a copy of "Me Talk Pretty One Day," insisting it was hilarious. I read it and concur: it was hilarious.
Thus it was I picked this up without checking these reviews first.
I'm not sure if Sedaris creatively exhausted himself with his first couple of books, but this book is nowhere near as funny or as memorable as that other one. It's not really remarkable at all.
It's true that occasionally his essays take a turn that makes you sit bolt upright, such as the trucker's creepy and unexpected digression (p. 66), but for the most part, Sedaris and I have little in common, so, since he lacks true genius, it's only occasionally that he can connect. Maybe this is a little too harsh: the book is not AWFUL. But any way you cut it, I certainly won't be reading another Sedaris book.
One thing that does constantly annoy me about Sedaris: before reading any of his essays, you're expected to know that he's gay and has been living with his partner, Hugh, for many years in the north of France. You're just supposed to know things like that.
Book Review: Relies too much on his perfected style
Summary: 2 Stars
I've loved Sedaris' essays in the past. His ability to mix the poignant and hilarious in a brilliantly unique voice has always captivated me.
But with this book, while the well-honed voice is still there, the depth and rawness (the heart?) were gone. It was as if he had run out of things to say, but couldn't stop talking.
One of his best tools has always been the lacerating way that he writes about those around him, and in the process reveals more about himself than his subjects. But I found myself wondering if perhaps he had hurt too many loved-ones with his previous books, and was trying to minimize the damage to his personal life this time around.
Attempting to find replacement material, he tries to write bitingly about people like taxi drivers and airplane passengers, but the contact is too brief to result in anything but roughed out charactures.
These essays come across as a set of cocktail-hour anecdotes. Well-polished anecdotes.