I Love You More Than You Know
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Ames is disgusted by lots of things–the wart on his cock, the itch in his ass, a giant zit that oozes in the night, his cruddy toothbrush, his irritable bowel syndrome, his nose picking. I Love You More Than You Know chronicles those and other bodily, emotional, and material failings in unaffected comic prose. “I am thirty-eight years old,” he writes. “I wear a backpack and have no savings. I console myself with the thought that people live longer nowadays so it makes sense that some of us take longer to mature.” The act of exposing his many small humiliations and existential fears itself provides more fodder. “I should sue myself for libel,” he writes. “Girls may want to meet me, but no one actually takes my writing seriously. My whole oeuvre has become one big dysfunctional personal ad.”
Like David Sedaris, to whom comparisons are frequent and justified, Ames calibrates his work for today’s casual reader: each self-deprecating essay is supershort, may include some gross-out humor, and requires no intellectual work on the reader’s part. Like his other essay collections, What’s Not to Love? and My Less Than Secret Life (he’s also written three novels), this book is perfect for a train commute or short flight.
A handful of pieces in I Love You More Than You Know, including the title essay, about Ames’s visit with his beloved Aunt Doris, are downright sentimental, even saccharine–the last thing you’d expect from a contemporary humorist. They’re hardly representative, but they persuaded me that his neurosis is authentic, that behind the humor lie genuine sincerity and an embattled heart.
Price: $8
