Book Review: When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Note: This is #53 in my 52 Books in 52 Weeks Challenge for 2008.

I’m a bit of a latecomer to the David Sedaris fan club, which is a shame. I kept seeing his When You Are Engulfed in Flames on best seller lists and decided to try the audiobook, which Sedaris reads himself. Immediately upon hearing his voice I realized that I had heard him before doing funny little stories for National Public Radio. I’m now a certified fan.

This book, like his others, is a collection of humorous and largely autobiographical essays dealing with a hodge podge of topics. Kind of like what a blog would be if it were done by someone who was actually talented, ambitious, and living in Paris with his boyfriend. The variety of topics is impressive, ranging from living next door to a crazy mean lady, getting into a fight with a fellow airline passenger, learning Japanese in Japan while trying to give up smoking, brewing coffee without running water, memories of a ghastly baby sitter, buying a human skeleton, coaching his social climbing parents on how to collect “real” art, and a lot more.

What I like about Sedaris’s style is that he’s not only funny, but completely open and without conceit about so many things. He cops to a lot of rude and embarrassing thoughts and reactions of the type that we’ve all probably had but would never admit. How would you really feel if your first class, transcontinental flight paired you with a man who couldn’t stop crying over a death in his family? How do injustices done to you as a child really stack up when viewed through the lens of adult experience? How much at fault are you really when you end up sitting naked in a doctor’s waiting room among other flabbergasted (and clothed) patients? It’s the kind of honesty and open storytelling that makes you feel that at some level you kind of know the guy and you can commiserate with him and appreciate his self deprecation in the name of comedy.

And Sedaris often is pretty funny. Some of the essays really fell flat with me and felt like filler, but there are several in which he really had me rolling. One in particular where he makes use of a crossword puzzle to engage in passive aggressive exercises after refusing to swap seats with another airline passenger was sublime, matched only by another bit where he explains how he uses the French equivalent of “Okay, sure” as a response to every Frenchman’s question he doesn’t understand just to see where things go. It’s funny stuff, thanks in large part to Sedaris’s delivery and perceptive sense of humor. I’m definitely going to go back and read his other essay collections.

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Others doing the 52-in-52 thing this week:

• Jeremy reviews The Good Guy by Dean Koontz
• Heliologue reviews Wrecking Crew by Thomas Frank and The Truth (With Jokes) by Al Franken
• Nick reviews The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell

Lastly, while not part of a 52-in-52 challenge, one of my favorite bloggers over at Defective Yeti is reading Lolita by Vladamir Nabakokv as part of his annual “NaNoReMo” (National Novel Reading Month) project. Some great comments so far here and here. (And my review of Lolita is here.)