Wake Up, Sir!
Jonathan Ames (Scribner), reading at Powell’s City of Books, July 21, 7:30 pm
S ince stumbling upon Toby Young’s memoir How To Lose Friends and Alienate People, I’ve been desperately searching for a writer who’s similarly funny, obnoxious, self-loathing and drunk, and finally, I’ve found someone better. Jonathan Ames’ books My Less than Secret Life and What’s Not to Love?–both collections of his column in the New York Press–are completely hilarious. Ames spends time discussing his erections, his phobias, his obsession with memorizing the sports page, his depression, his empty fridge, his son, his lovers, and winds up with utterly relatable and addictive pieces of writing that I wish would never, ever run out.
Sometimes, when a writer depicts his real life with such mesmerizing charm and eloquence, his made-up stories pale in comparison. Thankfully, Ames avoids this conundrum in his new novel, Wake Up, Sir!, by sticking to what he knows. A loving tribute to the short stories of P.G. Wodehouse, the book follows a week in the life of a young man, Alan, who’s half-heartedly trying to stay off booze (a test of will Ames often discusses in his columns), and his faithful travelling companion and valet, Jeeves. Alan has recently come into a lot of money from a lawsuit settlement, which is why he can afford a faithful valet.
After Alan is simultaneously kicked out of his aunt and uncle’s house for being a drunk, and accepted to a prestigious writer’s colony, the two gentleman take off for Saratoga Springs, New York, home of the exquisite Rose Colony. Here Alan gets into various levels of trouble that might be ripped directly from Ames’ actual experiences: being drunk and hungover, failing to work on his novel, trying to bag women, smoking pot, stealing, lying, contracting STDs, etc.
Despite its similar subject matter, however, Wake Up, Sir! isn’t as witty or sardonic as Ames’ columns. It does, however, have a lovable bizarreness that makes it utterly worth reading. As in the Wodehouse stories, Jeeves the butler is a wonderful muse for the protagonist, who waxes philosophically throughout the book on the meaning of life and the people they encounter. I don’t necessarily believe that any of Ames’ characters could actually exist–they’re just too weird–but I’m glad to have heard about them anyway. KATIE SHIMER