Jonathan Ames is no stranger to the absurd. As a columnist for the New York Press, his popular "City Slicker" column told of antics so strange and fantastic it's amazing to think they'd been experienced by a single man, much less in the course of a few short years. A sort of deviant Forrest Gump, Ames's essays found him stumbling into once-in-a-lifetime adventures on a weekly basis. From witnessing a live animal sacrifice in a Brooklyn backyard to searching for a female partner to join him at an orgy (no single men allowed for obvious reasons) to a less-than-illustrious 0-1 boxing career under the nom de guerre "The Herring Wonder," Mr. Ames's nonfiction is so surreal, one can only imagine what he can come up with when not shackled to the chains of reality.
Ames's latest novel (his third) is a wildly eccentric tale of a well-to-do young novelist struggling to follow up on his mildly successful debut novel. Wake Up, Sir! opens with the author, Alan Blair, stewing away, and not doing so much writing at a self-imposed retreat at the home of his very patient aunt, and mildly psychotic uncle. A neurotic nebbish all dressed up for a starring role in a Woody Allen screenplay, the New Jersey hiatus has done nothing to help Alan's writing. It has, in fact, only driven him deeper into isolation, his only day-to-day human contact coming in the person of his manservant Jeeves. Jeeves, acting as much as Alan's muse as his caretaker, is a balancing force in Alan's life, and the person who keeps alcoholism and depression from getting the best of him.
A recent run-in involving a cup of hot coffee and his uncle Irwin's chest, coupled with his aunt's insistence that Alan recommit himself to AA, sends our two heroes out of the Garden State destined for the Upstate New York resort town of Sharon Springs, where Alan hopes to connect with his Jewish roots. Only problem is, he is a couple of decades too late. As Alan and Jeeves arrive at Sharon Springs, they find a ghost town of abandoned spas and hotels. So desolate is the town, and so gullible is Alan, that he decides the only way to find companionship on his stay is to answer a lewd personal ad scrawled in a gas station telephone book. Alan, the trusting sort, responds to the ad not thinking it odd that a woman has written her name, phone number, and deepest desires in a pubic phone book. Much to Alan's chagrin, when the woman shows up for their prospective tryst she is accompanied by her hulking boyfriend. A hilarious slapstick battle ensues resulting in a grotesquely distended knee for the boyfriend and a mashed nose for Alan, who hustles back to his hotel to collect his possessions and scoot out of town with Jeeves in tow.
It is once Alan and Jeeves reach their third and final destination that Ames's novel really picks up. Act III takes place at the prestigious, and very secret Rose Colony artist's resort. During the Sharon Springs hiatus, Alan received word from Uncle Irwin that the colony called, accepting him for a summer residency. With nerves aflutter from his recent brouhaha with the Sharon Springs welcoming committee, Alan is thrilled to accept the Rose Colony invitation, though his broken nose, coupled with a vow to stop drinking, make him incredibly nervous about meeting his fellow colonists. The nose is the easier of the two to take care of as Blair, who had been growing a Douglas Fairbanks Jr.-moustache to disguise a blemish on his upper lip, hopes his facial accoutrement will distract attention from his crooked nose and blackened eyes. The drinking, however, will not be so easy. A writer's colony, you see, is apparently not the best place to go when trying to break up with the bottle.
