Introversion versus Extroversion

Throughout When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Sedaris as essayist carefully delineates his own inner states of mood, thinking and feeling versus the outside world which is often busy, self-distracted and without much in the way of meaning for the author save to remind him of how he doesn't fit it.

Sedaris accomplishes this tone in large part by using an introverted narrator (himself) and an extroverted outside world of busy sights, sounds and motions which threaten to intrude into the author's quiet, inner space. It's not that David Sedaris is aloof entirely or uninterested in the outside world. Indeed, Sedaris is a world traveler and constantly encountering new people and places as a writer and a human being. Rather, Sedaris prefers the world of the writer, a space inside his own brain wherein he can contemplate the absurdities and cruelties he observes, rather...