The Double Life Is Twice as Good
Essays and Fiction
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4.5 • 6 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Wildly original novelist, essayist, and performance artist Jonathan Ames delivers a hilarious, risqué, and loveable selection of articles, essays, and fiction, including several previously unpublished pieces.
In The Double Life Is Twice as Good, fans will be treated to a deft and charming compilation of Ames’s journalism, personal essays, and short fiction. Featuring illuminating profiles of Marilyn Manson and Lenny Kravitz, his adventures at a goth festival in the Midwest, a story written for Esquire on a napkin, as well as a comic strip collaboration with graphic artist Nick Bertozzi, Ames’s unique style and personality-driven humor shines throughout this wickedly funny collection. Also included is the short story, “Bored to Death,” a Raymond Chandler–esque tale about a struggling writer-turned-detective who becomes quickly embroiled in the search for a missing college co-ed, which inspired the HBO series of the same name. Described by The Portland Oregonian as “an edgier David Sedaris,” Ames will have you hooked with this brilliant collection.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The double life of the writer the doggedly functional outer persona surrounding the neurotic inner core comes through in this sparkling if scattershot collection from New York's gonzo scribe. In his forays into lifestyle journalism, Ames (Wake Up, Sir) is perennially out of place whether among scary teens at a suburban gothic fest or vapid club hoppers in Manhattan's glitzy meatpacking district. He's ill at ease just being himself in memoiristic essays, from a European travelogue to an account of recent boxing stunts. His fictional alter egos are similarly out of their comfort zones; in the sly anti-noir "Bored to Death," an Amesian writer poses as a PI and flounders when the lark becomes too real. As always, Ames's own bodily functions, baldness and angst take center stage "Am I darker than Marilyn Manson?" he broods in a profile of the goth pied piper along with his graphic sex scenes, which play out as detached procedurals in which he self-consciously monitors his partners for signs of orgasm This miscellany contains some weak items college diary entries? dredged out of a bottom drawer. But at his best, Ames still beguiles with his offbeat, defiantly hangdog sensibility. Photos.
