In what has by this point become limp for its predictability, Sedaris moves from the squirm-inducing comedy of this would-be lothario's advances into his favorite minor key: expansive truth. Take for instance "Road Trips," which describes his coming out and a hitchhiking trek that results in his being propositioned by a redneck who drives him down the road a piece.
In the final paragraph, though, he usually forgoes the laughs and aims, not always successfully, for some grand, humane insight.
As each piece proceeds through some sniggeringly gruesome element of Sedaris' North Carolina childhood, or a trifling hiccup in his relationship with his partner, Hugh (to whom his devotion is rather moving), or to the vagaries of living among crusty, French peasants, Sedaris grows increasingly apoplectic or aggrieved or whatever emotion happens to motivate him at the time. Culled largely from the New Yorker and "This American Life," these essays fall into a familiar pattern. "When You Are Engulfed in Flames," while still quite amusing and eminently readable, is a structureless repository of Sedaris' recent work. For those already acquainted, the laughs are smaller and fewer in "When You Are Engulfed in Flames" - particularly when compared with one of Sedaris' past books, the riotous and moving "Naked" - so, too, are the quiet, humane revelations that for so long served as emotional ballast to Sedaris' comic flights. Should you count yourself among the dozen San Franciscans who have managed to avoid National Public Radio, the New Yorker and Borders, Sedaris may seem like something of a small find, a spirited grotesque who plumbs his entire life for alternating series of punch lines and glib self-deprecation. With his sixth book of daffy personal essays, David Sedaris is starting to seem like the odd, amusing man who, despite his absurdist flourishes, has told you all of his best stories several cocktail parties ago.
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