THE EXTRA MAN
By Jonathan Ames

The young man paired with the eccentric man of letters is a comic formula running from Boswell's Life of Johnson to last year's hit movie As Good As It Gets.

Recently, however, the ambiguity in these relationships has been exploded (for no good reason, I think), along with the irony that the straight young man is not so straight.

The narrator of The Extra Man is Louis Ives, a fellow in his mid-20s who has come to live in Manhattan as a "young gentleman" after being fired from his job at a private school for cross-dressing in the teacher's lounge. With little money in his pocket, he ends up sharing a dirty apartment with Henry Harrison, an elderly playwright who makes a bare living as an "extra man" - a semi-professional escort for rich old ladies.

The novel is built around episodes in the lives of Louis and Henry, without having any main plot or structure. And, while it is never hilariously funny, it has a sort of feel-good charm that it manages to maintain through some wildly off-colour escapades.

The most remarkable thing about the book is the way it upsets the usual buddy formula. Typically in books like these everything that happens is just a set-up to see the comic original, in this case Henry, do his thing. But in The Extra Man it is Louis who ends up stealing the show.

In the character of Louis Ives, Ames shows a real insight into the confused psychology of sex and the strange effects of loneliness. The frequently asked question of who is or isn't gay, for example, is finally lost in Louis's multifaceted sexuality, which includes getting spanked by a woman old enough to be his grandmother, having sex with numerous transsexual prostitutes, and being made over into a ravishing redhead by a grunge makeup artist.

The same forces that compel Louis to this bizarre (and dangerous) lifestyle draw him to Henry. Both men are, at bottom, terribly lonely people in search of a companionship that goes deeper than sex. Together, they make a wonderful couple.

While this is not a deep book, and it suffers from a lack of direction and focus, Jonathan Ames has succeeded in creating a new voice that is both confident and engaging.

Notes:
Review first published August 1, 1998.

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