6.9/10
It’s hard to talk about Jonathan Ames now without mentioning his new HBO series, “Bored to Death.” The series is growing in popularity, nearing the start of its third season, and Jason Schwartzman plays the main character—aptly named after the producer himself—Jonathan Ames. “Bored to Death” is also the opening short story of The Double Life is Twice as Good, a collection of journalism, non-fiction essays and fictional short stories, being the seventh and newest addition to Ames’ published repertoire.

Ames has never been afraid to show the world who really is: an old, balding, Jewish pervert (but undoubtedly a kind pervert). Considering that this is a collection of different types of writing that were written for different publications at different points in time, it feels like Ames has never been so desperate to show the world exactly what kind of person he is, to get as personal with the reader as possible. It’s as if the reader is standing right next to him as he spends drunken nights with rock stars Marilyn Manson and Lenny Kravitz, as he sticks out like a sore thumb in a gothic music festival, as he takes a class, “Sex Tips to Drive Women Wild,” sucking on balloons and peaches, and as he foolishly chases two virgins across the world only to end up with no action and a downtrodden self image. Even in Ames’ fiction he uses himself as the first-person narrator, throwing himself into wild, exciting and pathetic situations. It’s all very voyeuristic. It’s all very Jonathan Ames.

But while a self-implicating narrator is generally a good tactic for a writer to use—especially in non-fiction—The Double Life has this way of moving past self-implication and jumping headfirst into beating-a-dead-horse territory. His harsh self analysis is very much needed and appreciated in the beginning of the collection but becomes laborious by the end. When he begins nearly every essay with a detailed description of his appearance or explanation for his periodic alcoholism, it feels monotonous. I know you’re forty-something with a balding head and an endless sex drive; I figured that out by the second article.

Still, Ames has some fantastic stories, and there’s a real thrill to being able to experience it all with him. When he interviews Marilyn Manson, for example, he doesn’t see him as a nihilistic freak—he sees him fondly as a romantic. In the short story “A Walk Home,” the narrator is mugged by two black men. This causes him to reflect on his view of racism and his own prejudices. He acknowledges that he can’t stand the black women he sees on the subway as they abusively reprimand their children, but he says, “I don’t think poorly of the blacks . . . . I think poorly of man, of economics, of society, of America.” It’s moments like these when Ames shines the most, and shows us the deep connections he’s able to make in his colorful life.

The Double Life can feel a little shallow at times, though, like a hasty cut-and-paste project. He has two six-word memoirs, a foreword he wrote for a friend’s book and the collection ends with a dark-humor comic. It’s exciting but maybe a little unrealized at times. This Brooklyn-based writer, journalist, essayist, boxer and producer has a sort of Hunter-S-Thompson style to him. He’s living in the moment; he’s living in the middle of the action. He’s giving a keynote address to “The Corduroy Appreciation Club” at one time, then boxing fellow writers under the moniker “The Herring Wonder” at another, and then traveling the world as a nineteen-year-old Princeton student. He sort of seems absorbed into the idea of his own multiple personalities. The title of the collection seems to even revel in his dichotomized self. And by the end, readers will most likely love and enjoy the journeys they’ve taken through his stories and essays, although they may feel a little dizzy from its uneven and rushed structure.