When You Are Engulfed in Flames
Trying to make coffee when the water is shut off, David considers using the water in a vase of flowers and his chain of associations takes him from the French countryside to a hilariously uncomfortable memory of buying drugs in a mobile home in rural North Carolina. In essay after essay, Sedaris proceeds from bizarre conundrums of daily life-having a lozenge fall from your mouth into the lap of a fellow passenger on a plane or armoring the windows with LP covers to protect the house from neurotic songbirds-to the most deeply resonant human truths. Culminating in a brilliant account of his venture to Tokyo in order to quit smoking, David Sedaris's sixth essay collection is a new masterpiece of comic writing from "a writer worth treasuring" (Seattle Times).
Praise for When You Are Engulfed in Flames:
"Older, wiser, smarter and meaner, Sedaris...defies the odds once again by delivering an intelligent take on the banalities of an absurd life." --Kirkus Reviews
This latest collection proves that not only does Sedaris still have it, but he's also getting better....Sedaris's best stuff will still--after all this time--move, surprise, and entertain." --Booklist
Table of Contents:
It's Catching
Keeping Up
The Understudy
This Old House
Buddy, Can You Spare a Tie?
Road Trips
What I Learned
That's Amore
The Monster Mash
In the Waiting Room
Solutions to Saturday's Puzzle
Adult Figures Charging Toward a Concrete Toadstool
Memento Mori
All the Beauty You Will Ever Need
Town and Country
Aerial
The Man in the Hut
Of Mice and Men
April in Paris
Crybaby
Old Faithful
The Smoking Section
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Community Reviews
I've listened to his interviews about this book on NPR and The Daily Show and just love this man. I would have rather listened to this book as read by him but that wasn't feasible at the beach. So I took the new hardback (sans dust jacket) every day to the beach and laughed hysterically while people glanced at me in apparent fear.
I'm still shaking sand from the pages.
Sedaris tells us the stories of Hugh, the worm growing out of his leg, Paris and the spiders in his home, and traveling to Japan just to quit smoking. It is pretty bad when all the good hotels go non-smoking and only a semen covered remote jolts him into realizing that maybe he should just stop smoking.
I particularly loved the line about his finding new snacks in Japan that "tasted like penis". Lord. I can't even comprehend that.
Another good book by Sedaris.
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