Book Review: When You Are Engulfed in Flames

My favorite thing about reading David Sedaris is that it always feels like I’m spending time hanging out with my faggy, cigarette-smoking best friend, staying up late and making fun of people. Nobody is spared while I’m crankily waving smoke away from my face and begging him to move closer to the window -- crippled people, dead people, old people, Jews, and least of all, ourselves. It may not always be the most stimulating or thought provoking conversation, but it’s something that I desperately need and crave for my own sanity, and likewise I always find myself looking forward to each of Sedaris’s new releases as if this friend was going to be back in New York visiting me after a couple of years away, and in the interim all I had to speak to were a bunch of college professors.

When You Are Engulfed in Flames continues where our last late night bitch-fest left off in 2004 with Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, with both of us seeming a little more tired and old, but still filled with a few good stories and more than a few good bitchy remarks. It’s a little more subtle and less punch line focused than the previous book, and a lot more self-conscious than earlier books like Naked and Me Talk Pretty One Day. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing -- it works really well in stories like That’s Amore, about an elderly woman who lived in his apartment building, and Old Faithful, a surprisingly sweet story about him and his boyfriend’s aging monogamous relationship (it must be nice to have someone be willing to lance your pus-filled boils for you and still want to sleep with you afterwards -- I haven’t quite reached that point in any of my relationships).

One complaint that I’ve noticed a few reviewers bitching about, though, is that he’s fallen victim to the same thing that fucks up most successful essayists after a certain point. Early books have a whole lifetime of material to draw from, while later books seem to have progressively less and less and become a lot more self conscious and talk too much about being famous, money, etc. It makes the stories a lot less approachable, and for whatever reason, a lot less funny. Sedaris does this a little bit here, but I think he’s a good enough writer to make it not matter so much as it did when, say, Michael Moore became a recognizable person and his post-Bowling for Columbine documentaries reeked of celebrity bullshit.

One of the things that has always made David Sedaris so approachable and welcoming is that he’s always almost gleefully shared with us the worst parts of himself -- his selfishness, his vanity, his insecurity, his self-centeredness, and all the other things that most of us normally pretend we don’t think and feel. These strengths lend themselves much better to the transition into self conscious fame-writing than if he had always been writing about what a normal, down to Earth person he was, and how he loved a normal, quiet life. No, this isn’t his best work, but I also don’t think it’s egregiously inferior or horrible like I hear a lot of other people whining about. Think Samantha in the Sex and the City movie getting together with the girls as soon as she gets in from LA -- it’s a little weird at first, but all differences and changes are quickly forgiven when everyone realizes what a good time they’re having.

And if any straight men are reading this, I’m really, really sorry for that reference. I can blow you if it’ll make you feel better.