When You Are Engulfed In Flames, by David Sedaris

I will not be able to say as much about When You Are Engulfed In Flames as I usually do when I review, because I didn't finish it.

I put it down in disgust.

Not only did I find this book generally unfunny, although it was mildly amusing at times, I found it downright mean. As in, the kind of mean that gives the reader bad karma. Case in point: I stopped reading at the end of an essay about an elderly neighbor who suffered and died after falling from a stepstool while trying to fix something that she had asked Sedaris, who routinely went over there to watch soap operas, to take care of for her. After she died, his partner asked him why on earth she would have been on a stepstool, and he thought something about how people usually feel bad in these situations, even partially responsible, but looked at his partner and said 'beats me'.

I believe that people can be assholes and also be very, very funny, because it's an act, like Dennis Leary. David Sedaris is just an asshole, and this book was nowhere near funny enough for me to finish after that. I know that others who have read his other works have said that he is usually very, very funny, and that he is just 'off' in this book, but I will not be finding out. There are a lot of other things out there to read that don't make me feel like I'm supporting Assholery.

Rating: Zero.