Pick up a glass and cheers or maybe don't as we discuss this month's Do You Even Comic: The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames. The 2008 Vertigo (sister company to DC) book chronicles the drunken misadventures of Jonathan A.
Jonathan A. is a drunken, coked-up, sexually curious and hopelessly romatic, he is only a coincidentally a warped mirror reflection of the aurthur Jonathan Ames.
The Story
The intoxicating story we follow is one of hearbreak and relationships, it's about how far a person can fall and deal with tradegy. Starting on August 2001 Jonathan gets drunken with a friend every weekend and we see how he reacts to the events of 9/11 and his delusion of granduer as a writer. Yet continue to endure and find something to keep us going. I found the book to not be HA-HA funny but more a inside laugh funny as you can't help but laugh at the bizzare things that happen to Jonathan A.
Why this book?
But I think what has me sitting down and writing about this book is the universal message it has for everyone as a person who finds struggles navigating careers, relationships and battling our personal demons. Jonathan Ames and Dean Haspiel capture struggle in a way that hasn't left me. This was the next slice of life book I read after Essex County. It is books like these that can open your eyes to more amazing stories that aren't superheroes or fantasy.
I am also embarrassed to admit that I had no idea Jonathan Ames was the writer behind the book Extra Man and Bored to Death both of which have been adapted to the screen.
If this sounded like a book for you then get it here: