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JOYOUS ESSAYS & MORE
Because it's easy, it's therefore tempting to lump Jonathan
Ames in with “This American Life's" wee kaffee-klatch of Sarah
Vowell and the Davids Sedans and Rakoff. Yes, Ames has a dis
tinct voice and an unconventionally attractive appearance (tall,
receding reddish hair, don't ask me how it works, it just does)
and writes mostly about himself. His humor is dry, and sometimes
gross. So what if he's never actually been on “This American Life"?
But Ames is really in a class all his own. I Love You More
Than You Know (Black Cat, New York, 2006), his new collection
of essays, journalism and invented words—don't ask, it's for
McSweeneys—is moving to the point of tears and silly to the point
of incontinence. In short, this is a deeply joyous book.
Ames' prose has a simple clarity that's contrasted by his adven
tures, which are usually depraved, always original and a lot more
tender than one might imagine. He jumps from personal essays
about hypochondria to a reported piece on a man who cleans up
crime scenes for a living. He even tramps around Memphis for the
2002 Mike Tyson-Lennox Lewis
fight, where he meets Budd
Schulberg and David Remnick,
goes to a swingers' club, and
gets stuck by the crotch of his
pants on a chain-link fence
(though not in that order).
Many who peddle in the
first person bank on a hu
mor wrought from perpetual
self-deprecation or an over
reliance on the shocking
confessional. Ames confesses
to many things—visiting a
French hooker and chronic
anal itch—yet you never get
the sense he's divulging such
things to impress. The details
on the anal itch, which I'm
quite willing to spare, are too
obsessively detailed to be embellished. Ames makes fun of himself,
sure, but such things come naturally when you've convinced your
self, among other things, that new underwear and toothbrushes
are luxury items.
One of the most endearing aspects of Ames is his ability to
make his readers accomplices to his bad behavior. Whether it's
getting trashed at the house of a now engaged ex-girlfnend, or
visiting a suburban dominatrix while his mother baby-sits his son,
we're completely on his side even though we probably shouldn't
be. And that's part of the fun. wondering why it is you're rooting
for him. •
I Love You More Than You Know is better than I'm making it
out to be, because in so much as its author traffics in booze,
hookers and unwanted erections, he also has the heart for life's
simple, dare I say pure, pleasures. One of these is recounted in “I
Called Myself El Cid," about his collegiate obsession with defeat
ing an archrival in fencing. Reading about this young, Princeton
boy psyching himself up by being intentionally punched in the
face by a teammate, well, it's hard to buy David Brooks' conten
tion that college students haven't had character since the Wilson
Administration.
Besides that, the story sets up for a pity party and then takes a
sharp turn somewhere else. No shocking twist, but a pure celebra
tory moment: a bulwark against other delightfully sad and honest
assessments made throughout this collection. Though it's a throw
away from another story, it's worth repeating here:
“I am part of a vast generation of people who live perpetually
as if they have just graduated from college. I am thirty-eight years
old. I wear a backpack and have no savings." Maybe this doesn't
totally capture what Ames does so well, which is acknowledge
seemingly dismal realities, take ownership of them and then move
forward. Neither doom and gloom, nor obfuscation.
In “My Weiner is Damaged," Ames recounts his quasi-parental,
quasi-12-year-old son, from whom he's always able to get a good
laugh via fart noises and dick jokes. But it's a different kind of
dick joke—seriously—desexualized, and it's a different kind of
pleasure than he finds with, say, his various hookers. The last
thing to praise about this book is how it jumps from personal es
says to reported pieces about the late George Plimpton and then
back to a Club Med diary. Ames creates his own joy in these 30
essays—most previously published in The New York Press, Slote and
The Omon—with his unashamed curiosity about almost any topic.
Shit, even his mash notes to widely over-praised icons like Kurt
Cobain and Jack Kerouac manage to duck cliche. With a less gifted
writer, we might need a reprieve from such an array of stunts. With
Ames, we don't even ask, except perhaps for more.
John Dicker iohn_dicker@hotmail.com
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