Reading this new collection of memoir-essay-stories by the master US humourist David Sedaris is like being tickled on the ribs by someone you love: you laugh hysterically, feel a mixture of excitement and irritation, and instinctively wriggle away as exhaustion sets in ... Every one of these 22 essays has something unique and extraordinary to offer ... These are dark, visceral essays that look unflinchingly at the vulnerable ageing body and at death. It's amazing that Sedaris manages to make witnessing an autopsy so funny ... Many stories have a loose, associative structure more akin to the diary or daydream than the perfectly crafted jewels of his other collections ... you're left with a much more colourful picture of the little tragedies at work in the everyday.
Flames reads like a hit-and-miss set; some selections simply run out of ideas before they’re over ... The best pieces, as ever, are the most closely observed, including those about his boyfriend, Hugh, that resolve into bittersweet comments about their mutual love and dependency ... When You Are Engulfed in Flames isn’t the best way to introduce a new reader to Sedaris. But for fans, it’s good just to be back at the table, hearing that unforgettable voice chatting away. Kind of like catching up with one of your best friends. It’s not always what they have to say, but the endearingly entertaining way they say it.
There are sidesplitting essays here, like the baccalaureate address he gave at Princeton University in 2006 and a primer on masculine style that includes wearing an external catheter called the 'Stadium Pal' ... It’s hard not to feel a tiny pang of regret as the family retreats into the background, replaced by Sedaris’s partner, Hugh Hamrick, a happy homemaker who has never provided the same comedic mileage ... Here the 83-page story is cut into three parts — before, during and after — and while the first section zooms off the page, once Sedaris stops smoking it’s as if he has lost his muse ... It would take more than quitting cigarettes to make Sedaris bland — he’s not ready to chill out and open a yoga studio yet.
For those already acquainted, the laughs are smaller and fewer in When You Are Engulfed in Flames - particularly when compared with one of Sedaris' past books, the riotous and moving Naked - so, too, are the quiet, humane revelations that for so long served as emotional ballast to Sedaris' comic flights ... As each piece proceeds through some sniggeringly gruesome element of Sedaris' North Carolina childhood, or a trifling hiccup in his relationship with his partner, Hugh (to whom his devotion is rather moving), or to the vagaries of living among crusty, French peasants, Sedaris grows increasingly apoplectic or aggrieved or whatever emotion happens to motivate him at the time. In the final paragraph, though, he usually forgoes the laughs and aims, not always successfully, for some grand, humane insight ... When taking on the mores of his set - that is the educated, contrary and profoundly nervous - Sedaris is strongest. The only real complaint with this enjoyable read is the seemingly tacked-on, cheaply wrought sentimentality of some of these essays.
It's much easier to laugh at a nudist colony than at death itself — which is essentially what Sedaris is doing in his latest collection, When You Are Engulfed in Flames ... Eventually, Sedaris does what every death-o-phobe ought to do: He quits smoking. It's a final goodbye in a book full of farewells, always funny, occasionally bittersweet ... Sedaris survived his mortifying childhood, of course — using his diary and sense of humor as crutches. They will probably carry him right to the end, too.
There is little of that sort of Chekhovian introspection in When You Are Engulfed in Flames, however. And little of the charming, self-deprecating humor that’s made a lot of his earlier work so popular among NPR listeners and New Yorker readers ... As the cover illustration for this book (which depicts a skull smoking a cigarette) suggests, a lot of these pieces have a distinctly distasteful — even downright creepy — aroma ... For that matter, many of the acquaintances Mr. Sedaris writes about in this book — and writes about sketchily, as though he were in too much of a rush to provide any nuance or emotional detail — are decidedly unpleasant company ... With many of these tales, the reader has the sense that Mr. Sedaris is scraping the bottom of the barrel for material, writing for the sake of producing another book ... Happily for the Sedaris fan, there are a few gems in this volume, most notably 'Crybaby' ... These pieces not only stand out in an incredibly mediocre volume, but they also remind the reader of what Mr. Sedaris can do at his best.
In his sixth collection of personal essays, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Sedaris continues to play the bemused outsider, the man poking his head through the doorway, looking askance at his own and other lives ... While past collections featured more childhood stories about Sedaris’ family, this one more than holds its own with tales of his current life: domestic disasters, his boyfriend Hugh, his travels ... As always, the merely odd and the icky-grotesque mingle here. But Sedaris is looking at his life from a newly crossed threshold: middle-age. And there is a bittersweet quality to his professed anxiety. It’s no less funny, but in these pages, his take on it all may have emerged from somewhere a little deeper.
When You Are Engulfed in Flames is David Sedaris‘ weakest collection to date ... Sedaris seems awfully close to exhausting his material. These stories strain to reach their natty little endings ... But hey, the guy ain’t the preeminent humorist of his generation by accident, and his reluctant charm and talent for observing every inch of the human condition remain intact. Flames is perfect for newcomers, and fans can read it as a retrospective — while desperately wondering what comes next.
When You Are Engulfed in Flames presents 20-some story/essays about Sedaris' life and it would be no small task for me to single out any piece in this collection which did not incite audible laughter in this reader, much to the dismay of the other patrons of the local coffeehouse I periodically pollute with my guffawing ... In fact, Sedaris does his job too well. So well, in fact, that when one is reading Flames they cannot help but cringe imagining the legions of bloggers, fan fictionistas, freshmen comp majors, et al. who are currently scrambling to emulate the style which Sedaris lays out time and time again ... Sedaris is so consistent that he nears literary machinery but never loses an ounce of warmth or humanity.
There is less focus here on the Sedaris clan as a whole, though the various members make memorable and often hilarious appearances ... Sedaris records in 'Buddy, Can You Spare a Tie?' his more glaring mistakes in life, but he should be satisfied with the knowledge that this latest endeavor is anything but.
Older, wiser, smarter and meaner, Sedaris defies the odds once again by delivering an intelligent take on the banalities of an absurd life ... A highpoint is 'All the Beauty You Will Ever Need,' which starts as a rant about his boyfriend’s ludicrous self-sufficiency ('Hugh beats underpants against river rocks or decides that it might be fun to grind his own flour') but twists into a sharp declaration of love that’s all the more touching for its lack of sentimentality ... Just when Sedaris seems to have disappeared down the rabbit hole of ironic introspection, he delivers a cracking blow of insight that leaves you reeling.
When You Are Engulfed in Flames continues the author’s saga, never straying from the biting style that has served him so well in his previous books ... Sedaris makes us laugh at his own expense, as well as of those closest to him. The usual cast of characters are back along with a new crop lunatics ... What makes Sedaris’ writing captivating is his ability to take everyday events and spin them into a yarn long enough to knit a bulky sweater.
...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.
