Internet
celebrity/entrepreneur Tucker Max shares some qualities with political
consultant Robert Shrum. Both are self-employed memoirists who like to name
things after themselves. But where Shrum was an advisor and speechwriter for
world leaders, Max just wants to get drunk and screw. Which one has committed
the greater crime against humanity is an open question.
In 2002, Max posted a
casually snide dating application on his website. To his surprise, women
actually applied to date him, so he began posting stories from his debauched
life as well. His site became popular enough to spawn an upcoming film
adaptation and the 2006 New York Times bestseller I Hope They Serve Beer In
Hell,
which is being reissued with new material.
Max's tales are arranged
in chronological order, with notes explaining when Max wrote it all down. Most
of the stories are variations on a theme—get drunk, find a woman, vomit,
black out, awaken in a strange place, lather, rinse, repeat. Though Max isn't
in the league of great storytellers who can make even mundane events
entertaining, his prose is spare and usually witty. (He attended Duke Law
School on scholarship, so he's no moron.) His eye for detail is limited to what
interests him—what he was drinking, a woman's breast size, and which
friends were there. (They're identified by funnier-if-you-know-them nicknames
like El Bingeroso and Credit.) It's when Max actually goes somewhere, becoming
a kind of frat-boy gonzo journalist, that the book inches close to National
Lampoon's Vacation
instead of hovering above Van Wilder. A trip to Midland, Texas is particularly well
described; Max is even respectful of the locals, describing them as not stupid,
just "country." And a night out at a gay bar is refreshingly low on homophobia.
Max is much less
respectful of "idiots and poseurs" (wine-drinkers and anyone who dislikes him)
and also most women, whom he says he only treats like hos if they deserve it.
The logic is flawed, and yet it's difficult to feel sympathy for a woman who
contacts Max via his website and asks him to urinate on her after sex. Parts of
the book were probably funnier when they appeared online, and may play better
onscreen. The new material, mostly from Max's 2006 book tour, is repetitive and
meant for hardcore fans. Max may be destroying his liver and the egos of many
insecure women, but as long as he stays out of politics, his damage to the rest
of the world will be limited to anyone who tries to emulate his bad behavior.