My Less Than Secret Life: A review

My Less Than Secret Life: A Diary, Fiction, Essays by Jonathan Ames
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ames’ best and worst quality is his honesty. His absolute, brutal, not-afraid-to-embarrass-himself honesty. He vocalizes thoughts that most of us keep private, which probably should be kept private. While some may look at his many adventures with transvestites/transsexuals and his stories about pooping and nose picking and masturbation as being somewhat vulgar and unnecessary, at least you can say that he is not full of shit. He is far too open to be considered shady or dishonest.
And for me, at least, this works.
My Less than Secret Life is a compilation of much of his late ‘90s/early 2000’s work. It’s a hodgepodge of essays, short stories, letters, what have you, that serve as a very complete (some might think overly complete) picture of the author as a middle aged man.
As with any such compilation, some of it works and some of it doesn’t. I believe the two strongest pieces are the one about how two chapters of his novel were stolen in an elaborate plot by a misguided friend, and the one about visiting a porno movie set with his father. Both stories are riveting, wickedly funny accounts of things that just don’t happen to most people.
In fact, these things and many other things he writes about, including his training for and participating in a boxing match with a stage performer, just don’t happen to anyone. Yet these things happen to Ames on a regular basis. And for the most part, he welcomes the adventure. Because as a true creative non-fiction writer, in the tradition of hunter Thompson and Hemingway, Ames throws himself into the story, to hilarious effect.
I loved most everything about this book: I can’t even count the number of times I laughed out loud at something I’d read. This is a great lead-in to Ames’ fiction (read The Extra Man!), which, as this book shows, isn’t very far from the truth.
#JonathanAmes





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