In books such as Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, and Me Talk Pretty One Day, he introduces us to his wildly eccentric family, seemingly benign yet strange adventures, and his endless internal monologue. When You are Engulfed in Flames [(c) 2008, Little, Brown and Company ISBN-13: 978-0-316-14347-9] digs deeper into his fascinating and comical life.
As always, Sedaris is able to pull laughs from the macabre to the just plain weird, while his much more low-key partner, Hugh, seems to just be along for the ride. We meet Hugh's mother-in-law, who, like everyone in Sedaris' world, is more of a character than an ordinary flesh and blood person. His descriptions are so evocative, we feel we know these quirky and unusual people. His dialogue positively crackles and you find yourself realizing that nobody could make this up. His life is truly stranger than fiction.
When You are Engulfed in Flames chronicles his adventures wearing a false derriere, and his drama with a boil on his tailbone. These are topics you just won't find in popular essayists' collections. He is not afraid to write about humiliation. Few writers are.
Rage and Humour
This is what makes Sedaris so enjoyable in all of his works: he has the ability to speak the unspeakable in ways both creepy and hilarious. He has a marvelous sense of comic rage laced with desperate self-deprecation. We love his work because we see, with horror and humor, ourselves.
While the frequent ramblings about his brilliantly eccentric family members are missing from this collection, he introduces us to more of his own: in "That's Amore," we meet his neighbor Helen, the most foul-mouthed senior citizen in the five boroughs. We also meet Becky in "Solution to Saturday's Puzzle," the angry and bitter passenger sitting next to him on flight that went on for far too long.
As an ex-pat spending most of his time in France, he always has some great drama in dealing with a second language. Even after so long in France, he still makes hilarious blunders. "In the Waiting Room" tells the story of the time Sedaris ends up at his doctor's office sitting in the aforementioned room in his underwear because he didn't understand the nurse's instructions about the option of a robe.
When You are Engulfed in Flames features something somewhat different from Sedaris' other books. Usually his essays are stand-alone pieces and run a wide range from talking worms in outer space to his family's attempt to buy a summer house. Each piece brings another individual slice of Sedaris' life to the rest of us.
Kicking the Habit
What he does in this latest collection is pursue a goal regular readers would never have predicted: quitting smoking. For the last portion of the book, he goes to Japan for a month with the solitary goal of stopping his decades long love affair with cigarettes, chronicling the ups and downs of his addiction. Along the way, we learn a lot about Sedaris' take on Japan, and how difficult it is for him to learn yet another foreign language, not to mention the whole non-smoking thing.
When You are Engulfed in Flames is classic Sedaris, but there's something different in his work this time. By spending the last third of his book on one topic, we are permitted to delve deeper into his brilliant and scary mind, and once again, find the humanity we all share.
