When You are Enulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

At a non-fiction workshop I attended a couple of years ago our teacher used an excerpt of Sedaris' 'All the Beauty You Will Ever Need' in class. Though an autobiographical essay, the humorous tone entertained me greatly. I decided to hunt the whole text down. I found it online at The New Yorker (under the name The way we are) and in the book 'When You are Engulfed in Flames', a collection of some of David Sedaris' writings. I got the book of course in order to maximize the dose of fun. And it is funny, very very funny, but not just that. It is also honest, human, and somehow sobering at times. Sedaris has a talent for somehow lining the laughs with sharp and often very serious truths. He is one of those writers who are able describe a hilarious situation and yet remind you that it is in reality quite sad, or enraging, or just weird; to describe other people as silly without seeming mastering or arrogant himself. I was very impressed by many of the texts in this collection, and very entertained of course.