Country: USA
Genre: Non-Fiction/Essays/Comedy
Pages: 323
Why do I have to be such an original asshole? Why, when I am being recommended a writer, can't I go with the book I'm being told to read? Apparently, Me Talk Pretty One Day and Naked are the two books I should have read. But of course I didn't. I wanted to have my own little David Sedaris experience because I'm this intellectual-male-badass-walks-to-his-own-drum and blah blah, fucking blah. When You Are Engulfed In Flames is a killer title, considering this is a collection of essays, but I should have taken the clue from the Sedaris fans that told me he didn't make any new readers with this one. His long time followers forgave him this book and found it rather cute, but I thought it was fucking terrible. It's not a hundred percent bad, but it's by far the most irritating reading I have taken since I picked up a Paulo Coelho novel last year. I've been told David Sedaris was witty. Well, this is not witty at all. It's everything but that.
"Hello, my name is David Sedaris. I am filthy rich and famous, and I live a gay Harlequin romance with my painter boyfriend Hugh".
That right there, is the main statement of When You Are Engulfed In Flames. And I don't mean to be intolerant here, but Sedaris sounds like he has a serious chip on his shoulder about being gay. Or being little, I don't know. But his inferiority complex is overbearing in most of his essays. I can understand that to a certain extent. Homosexuality is something that is not well accepted today. It still attracts its fair share of flexed eyebrows and judgmental whispers. But geeze, get over it. In almost every essay, it's a story about how cute Hugh and him are as a couple, how they love each other so much. How they are cosmopolite, well-traveled, thoughtful and artistic. And really, really, reeeeaaalllly rich. When You Are Engulfed In Flames is a collection of essays about how awesome it is to be David Sedaris.
I can dig a good story of rediscovery of the simple life. But such a story, that happens to be narrated by a rich american in Normandy, who two stories ago told me he had an apartment in Paris and one in London and a cutie pie family house in North Carolina, loses its steam. The only reason why him and Hugh went to Normandy in the first place was for a romantic/artistic getaway. I guess it's fantastic that he can shave with chicken broth and feel so fulfilled by it, but some people in the same region that do this, wish they would be shaving with some clear water and not smell of chicken for days. And don't get me started on that essay about how he quit smoking. His main argument is that he spent twenty thousand dollars to stop smoking and save approximatively one thousand in duty free cigarettes. What is that? A rich, cheap people joke? I don't think it's any fun to people who can't afford to LOSE money by stopping to smoke.
I would have probably stopped before the end if it wasn't sometimes funny. There are quick peek-a-boos of David Sedaris' legendary wit. The story of his Princeton education "What I Learned" (surprisingly enough), where he ends up writing a story about his father taking a dump in his neighbor's well and his essay where he coughs a lemon drop on a woman's lap and gets anxious about how he's going to retrieve it. But those bits are few and far between. When You Are Engulfed In Flames consists mainly in slow, self-indulgent navel gazing from a write who "made it". It's not about writing, it's not about difficulties and obstacles, it's not very funny and there are a shitload of thoughtful, cute observations from a guy who travels in "business elite" class and flashes his money whenever he can. I'm not too sure what he was trying to compensate for, Sedaris is obviously more tormented that he would like to admit, but please don't repeat my mistake and don't pick up When You Are Engulfed In Flames first if you've never read Sedaris before. It sucks.