When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Rating All Ages Genre collection Author David Sedaris Publisher Little, Brown

I knew the name David Sedaris before I read When You Are Engulfed in Flames. I even knew that he was a writer. If pressed, I might have told you that he wrote memoirs. But this is truly my first experience with a Sedaris book. This book is a collection of essays, which, to the uninformed reader, might sound boring, conjuring up memories of late-night, last-minute marathon writing sessions in college. But Sedaris doesn't work like that. These are thoughtful, interesting, funny pieces, and though they sometimes seem to lack focus, overall the experience is an enjoyable one.

I'll touch on the one aspect of the book that, from a writing perspective, I have a hard time swallowing. Sedaris tells his stories as one might when sitting around a campfire with close friends. That is to say, he has a tendency to ramble off on tangents. These tangents, I will say, do nothing to injure the stories he's telling. On the contrary, sometimes these tangents become the stories. But a friend of mine picked up the book, read an essay, and told me he had no idea what it was about. I know what he means. Sedaris condenses his life and experiences and puts them on the page. They don't always come out in perfect chronological order. And I'm sure that's as he intends. Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing -- it's a different choice than the one I would've made, but then again, I'm not a famous author. He must be doing something right.

These stories are a lot of fun. He makes some good points, and while I don't agree with everything he says, I will allow that Sedaris is extremely intelligent and often very funny. There is a depth to his prose that is refreshing. He is able to take a simple, if comedic situation -- not understanding French as well as he should, and finding himself sitting in the waiting room of a doctor's office in his underwear because of it -- and turn it into something that speaks powerfully on memory and humiliation.

Elements of his life are a bit hard to swallow; this could be the classic case of memoir bending the truth to make a good story, or maybe Sedaris' life is just more interesting and insane than mine. Hearing about his obsession with spiders, his depressive babysitter, and his trip to Tokyo to quit smoking makes me wish that I had something more interesting to tell people about. And then I think, maybe I do. Maybe Sedaris' real genius is his ability to pull these stories from his life and make them so interesting to us.

One essay in particular deserves special attention. Not only is it very fun to read, but it takes up a good percentage of the book. It is called The Smoking Section and it deals with, as I mentioned above, Sedaris' attempts to quit smoking while traveling to Tokyo. Oh, to have that sort of freedom. "I want to quit smoking. I think I'll do it in a foreign country!" That would be fantastic. But his story is not simple, and it deals with far more than just his cravings for cigarettes, issues like his self-esteem, which comes out as he tries to learn Japanese and does not have terrific success doing so.

If you're a lover of memoir, or a lover of good, insightful, and funny prose, When You Are Engulfed in Flames comes recommended.