Buy new:
$13.50$13.50
FREE delivery: Wednesday, Nov 9 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon.
Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com
Buy used:: $12.81
Other Sellers on Amazon
FREE Shipping
90% positive over last 12 months
& FREE Shipping
94% positive over last 12 months
& FREE Shipping
98% positive over last 12 months
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Learn more
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle Cloud Reader.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
When You Are Engulfed in Flames Paperback – June 2, 2009
| David Sedaris (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
| Price | New from | Used from |
|
Audible Audiobook, Unabridged
"Please retry" |
$0.00
| Free with your Audible trial | |
|
Mass Market Paperback
"Please retry" | $39.95 | $1.49 |
|
Audio CD, Unabridged
"Please retry" | $19.32 | $1.48 |
- Kindle
$9.99 Read with Our Free App -
Audiobook
$0.00 Free with your Audible trial - Hardcover
$11.401 New from $11.40 - Paperback
$13.50159 Used from $1.46 41 New from $7.33 4 Collectible from $19.95 - Mass Market Paperback
$39.9517 Used from $1.49 2 New from $39.95 - Audio CD
$25.2342 Used from $1.48 8 New from $19.32
Enhance your purchase
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
- Print length336 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBack Bay Books
- Publication dateJune 2, 2009
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.88 x 8.25 inches
- ISBN-100316154687
- ISBN-13978-0316154680
Frequently bought together

More items to explore
Editorial Reviews
Review
"The Sedaris genius is to be incredibly particular, not to mention peculiar, and yet take fantastic and rapid leaps to the universal. . . . He'll be telling some weird story, and all of a sudden, just at the end, it turns out not only to be about him, but also about you. He's a master at evoking fellow feeling."―Nancy Dalva, New York Observer
"David Sedaris is horribly observant. He sees things as they are.... He'll be telling some weird story, and all of a sudden, just at the end, it turns out not only to be about him, but also about you."―Nancy Dalva, New York Observer
"What makes Sedaris's work transcendent is its humanity: He adores some truly awful people, yet he invests them with dignity and even grace.... He's the best there is."―Judith Newman, People
"The preeminent humorist of his generation...His reluctant charm and talent for observing every inch of the human condition remain intact." ―Whitney Pastorek, Entertainment Weekly
"Sedaris is certainly worthy of hero worship-he so breezily translates the landscape through his bent, prismatic view that he makes you forget what a skillful narrator he is."―Mark Washburn, Charlotte Observer
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Back Bay Books; Reprint edition (June 2, 2009)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0316154687
- ISBN-13 : 978-0316154680
- Item Weight : 10.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.88 x 8.25 inches
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

David Sedaris lives in Paris. Raised in North Carolina, he has worked as a housecleaner and most famously, as a part-time elf for Macy's. Several of his plays have been produced, and he is a regular contributor to ESQUIRE and Public Radio International's 'This American Life'.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonReviewed in the United States on August 22, 2020
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
The thing is though we seem to have absolutely nothing in common we do have one thing, tiny as it may be, we the commanality of being human and living during this particular era. That is what connects me to him and his writing, his humble humanity. He knows he isn't a beauty queen, he consistently blunders through life making mistakes, playing the fool even and yet he has this amazing ability to WRITE about it, to share it with thw world and make fun of himself OUT LOUD to millions of readers. I love him for that, I love him for the fact academia hasn't sapped the humanity out of him and made him feel blunder proof or at least made him a blunder snob, hiding behind eight letter words that no one knows the true meaning of, ducking behind an Ivy league education.
I picked this particular book up because my best friend is in the hospital, has been, will be, for a while. I have learned that he CANNOT handle being alone so I sit there, hour upon hour and try to read him to sleep. Sedaris' short stories and essays are perfect hospital food right? The problem is reading them aloud for the first time is hard because he makes laugh out loud (and not many do)so in the quiet hospital corridors one room is bellowing with laughter, from me, from my sick friend who really shouldn't be laughing right now, it hurts him, but he won't let me stop. A nurse cruises in inevitably when I am reading something that out of context seems dirty, it becomes even funnier.
My context of reading this particular Sedaris book aside it is really a very funny, charming piece of literature that connects with the reader on many levels. The parts that others seem to be offended or put off by, I say read them with zeal, be happy that someone out there is making enough money off being a boob, off proudly being a boob to travel to Japan and France and across the U.S. and is taking the time (for money maybe but whatever) to share his experiences as a pretty much average Joe with us. Be happy to read from someone who relishes in the oddities, who isn't always tring to make you sympathetic and tearful. It really is a rare quality. You will find that most contemporary memoir(ish) literature relies on human empathy and sad, sad, sad, SAD parts of life. It's nice to take a break and read from someone who can tell you abot his mother dying of lung cancer in one paragraph and have you giggling in the next.Comedy or Tragedy, life is what you make of it. Trust me I have my own fair share of the comedically tragic, but when my friends can laugh at the crazy things I say and do when I am hallucinating because Lupus is attacking my brain I am way better than when they are crying over it.
David Sedaris has the ability to make you laugh over things that put another way might make you cry. AND he has inspired me to REALLY quit smoking, I am done with cigarettes.
By now, you (dear reader) have already made up your mind about David Sedaris and have either worked your way through this collection or else long ago discarded him, irrelevant as an expended filter tip.
So if you find yourself in the former category then by all means, read on.
When You Are Engulfed In Flames makes Sedaris' previous collection, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, seem like a disaster, a complete train wreck. Which is unfair because I think that Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is a strong collection with some exemplary essays. And also because I get the feeling that it was a more personal werk for him, that he's a bit more exposed and vulnerable in those essays.
Thematically, When You Are Engulfed In Flames is a reprise of Me Talk Pretty One Day -- highly focused on language and style, on the humanity of humiliation and (to echo some other reviewers) those dark places where our sentimentality tends to get the best of us. But it's a counterpoint melody to Me Talk Pretty One Day -- arrogant where the other was modest, chagrined where the other took delight.
Structurally, this collection is an echo of Naked, though perhaps a bit more mature. As I wrote of DFW's Consider the Lobster, the essays are arranged well, jokes from earlier essays recurring, serving to inform your later tittering. That said, the individual essays seem to follow a rhythm that is new for Sedaris. If this were an elementary school music class, I would say that his earlier essays have a rhyme scheme that goes ABAB, these are turned more toward ABCA.
It seems a cop-out to recommend this collection. Those that are already turned on to Sedaris are unlikely to be disappointed; those that didn't much care for him in the first place won't find anything to change their opinions. Anyone with previous exposure is likely to see symptoms of his previous werks; I suppose the difference is whether you carry the antibodies?
Most of my favorite stories involve his family, especially stories from his youth. He adds one such gem here - "The Understudy," which features one of the worst babysitters in history, the corpulent and itchy, Mrs. Peacock. This story has more laugh-out-loud moments than anything I've read since....well since Sedaris' last book. I tend to enjoy less his essays about his years when he was an active drug user, although "All the Beauty You Will Ever Need" is one of the better of this genre.
Alas, this collection is a bit thin on stories about his family; perhaps as he gets older he will focus more on recent events filtered through his observational humor style; "Crybaby" is a good example from this collection. The longest section of the book details his attempt to stop smoking in Tokyo, which is not the strongest ending to this otherwise solid collection. Overall, "When You Are Engulfed in Flames" is average work for Sedaris; not as good "Naked" but still likely to keep his fans entertained and better than most humor essayists.
Top reviews from other countries
David Sedaris fans don't need to be told what a pleasure he is to read. If you haven't read him, and are looking for a little light reading for the summer, any of his books will do the trick. I especially recommend this one though.
My only complaint about Mr Sedaris is that he doesn't write more books, faster. Also, if you're listening David, I'd rather like them to be longer. See what you can do about that will you?










