Jonathan Ames
Jonathan Ames
Jonathan Ames is an American author who has written a number of novels and comic memoirs. He was a columnist for the New York Press for several years, and became known for self-deprecating tales of his sexual misadventures. He also has a long-time interest in boxing, appearing occasionally in the ring as "The Herring Wonder". In 2009, he created the HBO television series Bored to Death...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth23 March 1964
CountryUnited States of America
I don't mind being ridiculed - well, I guess I would mind a little, but it would only last a few minutes - it's all very ephemeral; it doesn't really matter what people think of me.
Mostly I have to try to censor myself so as not to write things that will hurt other people, or that will go too far.
I'm also not sure that I look up to others as knowing what the hell is going on, except maybe Andre Agassi, who, when I interviewed him, while covering the U.S. Open, seemed to know what was going on. My basic assumption is that we're all confused all the time. Some people do act more confident, though. Maybe they aren't confused. I am. I'm confused.
I'm actually much more shy and self-conscious than people's perception of me.
I wondered where the person was who had taken my place, who wanted to know what news people had been told. I'm always looking for the person who replaces me, who thinks the things I do, who fills in for me when I'm not there. I know there is someone younger than me doing what I did and someone older doing what I will do, and someone my age being just like me.
I am part of a vast generation of people who perpetually live as if they just graduated from college.
People don't expect too much from literature. They just want to know they're not alone with being confused.
I've always liked police-blotter kind of writing, or the writing of a policeman, right to the point and hardboiled. That's how I see at least the prose elements of scriptwriting.
I wish I was the kind of writer who would go to a war zone and write about something that's meaningful and important to people, but that's not my area of coverage.
I might have some sort of personality disorder. I might not have proper filters; it might be some kind of version of Asperger's meets Tourettes meets prose.
I don't know that I've gotten much feedback directly from the literary world; sometimes I doubt even the notion that there is a literary world, though I guess there is or was.
I don't have ADD, but I only like to pay attention to the things I like to pay attention to, and things like getting a TV and getting the cable working are beyond me, and so I let such things lapse, sometimes for years. This applies to keeping my apartment clean.
(S)ex scenes and bathroom jokes are my bread and butter.
Twitter is so severe, you know? And it's completely for free, it's scattershot, and it's very easy to feel embarrassed. It's hard to be artful with it. It's like a ticker tape. It's not a forum that's worth mastering, you know?