Humor to burn

Sardonic Sedaris lights up new book with funny tales

By Mike Pearson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published June 12, 2008 at 7 p.m.

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Photo by Little, Brown

In his new book, David Sedaris writes about skeletons, cigarette smokers and a myriad of other topics, all treated to his trademark wry spin.

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When David Sedaris chose Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim as the title of his last collection of essays, his publisher accused him of being "willfully obtuse."

He's no less obtuse in choosing When You Are Engulfed in Flames to title his new collection, but he's much less willful about it. The title comes from a list of instructions in case of a fire in his Japanese hotel room, a country to which he had escaped to stop smoking.

Sedaris finds the mangled context (and strained English) of the phrase amusing. In fact, he finds much of everyday life amusing, which is what readers have come to expect from the sardonic writer who first made a name for himself with his essays on National Public Radio and has since become a staple in the pages of The New Yorker and in lecture halls around the world.

When You Are Engulfed in Flames is a funny book, but it's not all fun and games. Sedaris can be tender, touching and sad, as exemplified by a visit to the memorial in Hiroshima marking the aftermath of the atomic bomb the U.S. dropped on Japan.

"We did a lot during our time in Hiroshima, especially at the memorial museum, which was torturous," he writes. "Just when you'd think that it couldn't get any sadder, you'd come upon another display case, one in particular with a tag reading, 'Nails and skin left by a twelve-year-old boy.'"

Most of the book leans toward the anecdotal, whether it be Sedaris sitting next to a man on a plane who won't stop crying, spitting a lozenge into the lap of a woman who turns evil when he won't give up his seat so her husband can sit next to her, or the author's attempts to stop smoking. He's at his best when detailing the disgust smoking engenders in others, at the expense of what he considers more pressing evils in the world.

"It's safe to assume that by 2025 guns will be sold in vending machines but you won't be able to smoke anywhere in America."

Sedaris is a writer whose conversational humor can cause you to laugh out loud, whether you're on a bus, in a bar or in a confessional. Consider this passage from when his elderly mother-in-law (he lives with partner Hugh Hamrick) comes to visit and insists on helping clean the house:

" 'Did you tell my mother to crawl on her hands and knees across the living room floor?' Hugh asks, and I say, 'Well, no, not exactly. I just suggested that if she was going to dust the baseboards, that would be the best way to do it.' "

The essays run the gamut from his parents' taste in artwork to life in France, where he has lived with Hugh for nine years. Other topics include a monstrous baby sitter when he was a kid (she insisted that the children scratch her back with a plastic monkey hand); a crusty old neighbor in New York who once had Sedaris search for her dentures in the shrubs below her window; buying his boyfriend a human skeleton for Christmas, and old people who don't act their age, yet expect you to give up your seat on a city bus.

Writes Sedaris: "In my book, if you want to be treated like an old person you have to look like one. That means no face-lift, no blonde hair and definitely no fishnet stockings. I think it's a perfectly valid rule, but it wouldn't have killed me to take her crutches into consideration."

How much of what Sedaris writes is true? A valid question in light of the James Frey controversy and other memoirists lately accused of making things up.

Sedaris recently told The Boston Globe that 97 percent of his stories are true, and that, yes, he embellishes a little for comic effect. The stories ring true enough, although you wonder whether everything can be this funny.

Because Sedaris reads his stories to audiences for months before they go to press, his writing has a beautiful cadence, as if he's telling them to you rather than committing words to paper.

Sedaris also revels in some of his own quirks, such as his love of spiders. When at home, he routinely feeds the spiders in his windowsill, and he relates the time he tried to take one back to Paris as a pet.

He takes pride in finding beauty where others don't. "Most people would have found it (the insect) grotesque, but when you're in love nothing is so abstract or horrible that it can't be thought of as cute. It slayed me that she had eight eyes and that none of them seemed to do her any good . . ."

The best thing about Sedaris is that he can be read in easily digestible chunks; few of his essays run more than four pages, and when they do, they're broken into sections that run only five to 15 paragraphs.

The second-best thing about Sedaris? His humor inevitably leaves you feeling better about yourself. You can shake your head and say with certainty, "At least, I'm more normal than that."

Prose by any other name

The title of Sedaris' book went through three revisions:

* Title 1: All the Beauty You will Ever Need (Sedaris told The New York Observer this was never a serious title, just something he rushed for the Little, Brown catalog).

* Title 2: Indefinite Leave to Remain (this was written at the top of his much-awaited Green Card, but discarded because, he said, "Whenever I said the name to people they just blinked. They had no reaction to it whatsoever.")

* Title 3: Bingo. He decided to stick with the incendiary When You Are Engulfed in Flames.

More Sedaris

Stay tuned for Rocky staffer Mike Pearson's interview with David Sedaris in next Friday's Spotlight. Meanwhile, mark your calendar for the author's upcoming local appearance:

* When: Noon, June 22 at the Tattered Cover in LoDo, 1628 16th St.

* Cost: Free, but seats for the event hall have all been taken. Tickets for the overflow area will be available beginning at 11 a.m. June 22. (Patrons will be able to hear but not see Sedaris and can get their books signed.)

* Information: 303-436-1070.

When You Are Engulfed in Flames

* By David Sedaris. Little, Brown, 323 pages, $25.99.

* Grade: B

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