Jonathan Ames: Addiction for the Recovery Era

Thoughts on Wake Up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames...

We all know that some authors go before readers, whether in tiny bookshops or grand auditoriums, out of necessity, while others do it with relish. I’m reminded of the very first reading I attended, when Margaret Atwood appeared visibly exhausted, with heavy eyelids and a constrained voice that said promoting books was not one of her favorite aspects of the job. In that case, weariness actually accentuated Atwood’s dry wit, but there have been other readings—we’ve all seen them—when the author clearly wished to be somewhere else.

However I have also noticed that often, when writers speak, the larger the venue, the more likely the relish, and this was certainly the case when Jonathan Ames appeared in October at Litquake, San Francisco’s Fall Literary Festival. In his appearance at the opening-night event, “Suckered: Writers Confess a Profound Lack of Judgment,” which was presented in conjunction with Porchlight Storytelling, Ames showed the timing and self-assurance of a stand-up comedian on a roll as he delivered a riotous tale of adolescent penis envy to a packed house of splitting guts. I had had no exposure to Ames until then, but my wife and I both walked out of Herbst Theatre that night determined to read his written work, and a few days later I picked up Wake Up, Sir!, his 2004 homage to P.G. Wodehouse.

The back cover promo copy on the book was predictable:

“Hilarious.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Hilarious.” —Slate
“Hilarious.” —New York
“Hilarious.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Hilarious.” —Albany Times-Union
“Hilarious.” —Time Out New York
“Hilarious.” —Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

I certainly agree that the book is hysterically funny, but I think this critical drumbeat is a bit reductive: Like Ames’s anecdote at Litquake, this story dives in deep from the start to expose the haunts of human dereliction. While the 10-minute Litquake monologue succinctly addressed adolescence and our fixation on the phallus, the novel form allows much broader explorations in Wake Up, Sir! Family, love, sexuality (homo-,hetero-, and some in-between), Jewish identity, and most of all, addiction, are all examined and tested with uncommon candor. In short, the book is much more than just a farcical romp.

Ames’s protagonist, Alan Blair, a fragile, failing writer and a teetering alcoholic, comes into a windfall and decides to hire a valet. The valet service sends a British man whose name, to Alan’s amazement, is actually Jeeves, and we are taken along to spend an unusual week with the pair as Alan is granted a stay at a prominent upstate artist’s colony. Throughout, Ames remains faithful to the Wodehouse style, replacing Bertie with the hapless Alan and peppering the narrative with witty and cogent exchanges. One morning, after Alan relates a dream he has had of a beautiful woman, Jeeves lends an ear:

“Perhaps you will dream of her again, sir.”

“You know, I was in love once, Jeeves. My heart still hurts sometimes. It’s like sciatica…I think, ‘Why didn’t she love me?’ And then I get this pain…But I wish I were in love again. I’d like to have a new someone. You know that song, ‘Good Night My Someone’? It was in some musical I saw on TV. According to the song, that’s what you say at night to the person you love when you haven’t met them yet. They’re just out there somewhere. Maybe this blonde is out there.…I’d like to tell someone I love them, Jeeves.”

“A very human longing, sir.”

“Hard facing life by myself, Jeeves.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You, of course, cushion the blow considerably.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Sorry to start the day with such talk, Jeeves.”

“Perfectly all right, sir.”

“I’m not being very stoic,” I said, and inwardly I chastised myself—get moving, Blair! So I stored the memory of the girl from the dream in my mind, like a picture in a wallet. “My towel, Jeeves?” I said, rallying bravely.

“Yes, sir.” (pp. 32–33)

Jeeves remains just this sort of rocklike presence as Alan perpetrates one foible after another and sinks more and more deeply into his alcoholism.

Which calls up the primary theme of the book, addressed on the front cover promo copy:

“Laugh-out-loud funny…[A] Wodehouse novel for the recovery era.”
—The New York Times Book Review

Here, the term recovery era suggests—to me, anyway, and I have some experience with the topic—that we humans are coming to grips with both the effects and the sources of our addictions, and are now figuring out ways to recover. But one shouldn’t read too much into the term and its appearance in the promo copy because this story, poignant and entertaining as it is, and penetrating as it is in its humorous treatment of both causes and effects, actually says very little about recovery. Alan speaks disparagingly of his brief in-patient experience and admits his problem in a free and unabashed way that reveals how clearly he understands it:

The Steps of Alcoholism that I was following went like this:

(1) Have honest intention to stay sober.

(2) Do nothing to stay sober.

(3) Drink.

He is an alcoholic who understands his problem, has every opportunity and advantage in trying to address it—financial resources, creative outlet, supportive family, even a personal valet who is also understanding and supportive—and yet does little to nothing to begin addressing it. The particular corner of the recovery era that Alan Blair exemplifies has little to do with recovery and everything to do with addiction. By giving him to us, Ames exposes through contrast the perplexing obstacles to recovery and the awkwardness and adversity that alcoholics and other addicts face each and every day. Amazingly, as ominous and weighty as that all sounds, it can actually be quite funny in the hands of the skilled artist.