MixedCulture Vulture...far too many of the remaining twenty-two essays in When You Are Engulfed similarly read like mere diary entries or notebook jottings: either their content amounts to no more than banal, everyday occurrences peppered with shreds of generic-sounding dialogue or they lack any emotional depth or introspection on the part of the author ... Very little in the book resembles Sedaris’ earlier stories ... One can’t help but wonder, judging by the sheer pointlessness of a few of the book’s inclusions, if Sedaris ended up offloading old, previously unusable material to fill out this book’s pages ... There are a couple gems hidden amongst the book’s noise, each one teasing the reader with a small taste of how well Sedaris can write and how much better this collection could’ve been ... Sedaris’ new book represents an even greater attempt to capture the more emotionally complex or ambiguous aspects of his life. And, with a handful of the inclusions in When You Are Engulfed, he succeeds. Yet too much of the writing in this hit-or-miss collection skims over certain meaningful themes that reappear...in favor of casual observation or ill-timed humor.
