My Less Than Secret Life: A Diary, Fiction, Essays

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Summary: My Less Than Secret Life
Review: Often beset by existential and sexual angst, Jonathan Ames personifies a postmodernist and Beat version of what the German sociologist Georg Simmel termed "the stranger," a marginal urban man who by his alienation from the mainstream social and moral orders can have an unusual perspective and objectivity on the absurdities of life. Ames' conundrums draw him both to introverted self-absorption and outward to a variety of extroverted escapades which often seem to be based in a longing for some kind of meaning but which tend to end at their starting points of emptiness and absurdity. He tells his stories with great humor while sometimes stumbling upon profound sociological and psychological insights which are expressed with artful simplicity. That a writer of Ames' talent and wit has not by now gained greater notoriety reflects poorly on a society which puts premiums on complacency but in which nonconformity and humorous introspection are in relatively short supply and little demand.

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Summary: High, Wide, and Handsome
Review: The Jonathan Ames that I most relate to is the man courtside at a woman's tennis match looking for flashes of panties under the short skirts. His columns, which filled what is now a gaping void in the NY Press, are collected here and they remind me of how much fun it was to read them every week. His persona is kaleidoscopic. He's the man in the trenchcoat and Fedora at the porn shop, the witty gentleman at the opera in a tweed coat and tie, Bernie Wooster with a prediliction for booze, drugs, and sexual depravity. It goes on and on. He's as brilliantly funny as Love and Death-era Woody Allen, S.J. Perelman, and Charles Bukowski. The book is a gem.

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Summary: Steller Sequel!
Review: This companion book to "What's Not To Love" collects more of Ames'New York Press columns and shows why Ames is one of the finest, and funniest, writers of his generation. His brutally honest sagas of nearly attending an orgy and his exploits as the boxer known as "The Herring Wonder" will keep you in stitches. This compelling collection is ideal for the prurient, neurotic underdog which Ames champions.

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Summary: ames comes through yet again
Review: with this collection fo writings, jonathan ames has proven, yet again, that he is one of the brightest, most talented young writers in America. funny, honest, disturbing, eloquent... what more can you ask for?

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Summary: SLINGS AND EROS OF OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE
Review: Your average reader may never find him/herself participating in a backyard animal sacrifice, attending a support group for S&M enthusiasts, or being brow-beaten by a Jamaican customs official. Self-described "comic-depressive" Jonathan Ames has endured all these adventures and many more and--luckily for us--has chronicled them with astonishing candor, wit and humility in his latest collection. Ames makes you empathize with every scenario, from the most seemingly mundane indignities to the most fantastic (or phantasmagoric). His brilliantly self-deprecating prose is laugh-out-loud funny--I found myself chuckling inappropriately in public as I read how he has been dubiously appointed the expert-in-residence on venereal afflictions to his friends--but extremely poignant, too. He often gives voice to the marginalized of society--prostitutes, transsexuals, porn stars and derelicts--but never in a condescending or exploitative way. I only wish I hadn't devoured it so quickly--next time I read it, and I most definitely will--I'll try to time-release my doses of hilarity. All in all, a highly addictive, moving and oddly reassuring book.