Book Review: The Extra Man

The following is my review of Jonathan Ames's novel,The Extra Man, now a major motion picture (opening July 30), starring Kevin Kline, Paul Dano, and Katie Holmes. It originally appeared in the Lambda Book Report, October 1998:


The Extra Man by Jonathan Ames (Scribner's)
Reviewed by Charles Michael Smith


The back jacket copy of The Extra Man, Jonathan Ames's second novel, describes it as a book that's "destined to become an instant classic among lovers of smart comic fiction and adventurous New York stories." Whether or not it becomes a classic, instant or otherwise, is anybody's guess. But there is no doubt that this is a truly hilarious, and often risque, tale about two bachelors, one young and Jewish, the other old and WASP, who are Odd Couple-like roommates.

When Louis Ives--who is obsessed with women's breasts, women's lingerie (especially bras), and cross dressing (as well as cross dressers)--loses his teaching job at an upscale Princeton, New Jersey private school after being discovered trying on a colleague's bra, he makes a life-altering decision--"Move to New York City and live!"

Whereupon he answers an ad for an Upper East Side apartment to share placed by an elderly playwright/college instructor named Henry Harrison, " who despite the poor condition of his clothes and strange apartment, had the air of the upper class and of England." Since Ives aspires to be "a young gentleman," he sees Harrison as "a fellow gentleman" and immediately agrees to move in. Shortly thereafter Ives lands a telemarketing job at Terra, an environmental magazine, where his "assignment was to contact all the natural history museums and nature centers ,in the country and try to get them to buy bulk subscriptions of the magazine for their memberships."

Ives likes his new job and he likes rooming with Harrison despite his eccentric behavior and the fact that "we lived like two bums shacked up together." But appearances aside, Harrison is socially well-connected and escorts rich elderly widows to the opera, expensive restaurants, and parties. And from time to time he fills the role of the extra man at the dinner table to keep "Boy-girl, boy-girl" arrangement intact.

A self-described freeloader (but one who has "the most integrity"), Harrison introduces Ives to this lifestyle of looking for free meals and sneaking into the opera.

Meanwhile, Ives has a secret life that he dares not divulge to Harrison that involves hanging out at a Times Square bar for transvestites and transsexuals and seeking the services of a spankologist and make-over artist for cross dressers. At the bar, Ives picks up a "date" who escorts him to her place in Queens (where his great-aunt lives). Ives--a guilt-ridden, insecure, sexually conflicted nerd--immediately feels "a stab of guilt" because he "hadn't called her since moving to Manhattan." On top of it all, Ives is a hypochondriac. When he sees a "red, scabbed over" cut on the right breast of his "date", he panics. Has he exposed himself to AIDS? But then he calms down when he realizes that "it was only a little cut, really, maybe an inch, and it wasn't bleeding. I'm all right."

Throughout The Extra Man, the reader is introduced to a bizarre but delightful cast of characters, including Gershon Gruen, Harrison's personal auto mechanic from the third floor, who follows Harrison's advice to ride a bicycle and read the dictionary as a way to control his sex drive, thereby eliminating his need for prostitutes and Meredith Lagerfeld, another Harrison crony "in search of free meals and drinks and gaiety," who, despite a swollen knee and 200 plus pounds, "struggled up the stairs" at an antique auction fueled by the thought of all the "pates and meats and shrimps and cheeses" laid out on the buffet table.

But the most interesting, the most memorable character of all is Henry Harrison himself, uttering without fail the most off-the-wall comments you will ever read. In fact, some of his comments would make excellent slogans on a T-shirt, a bumper sticker, or a billboard: "If one day doesn't work, try another"; "filth is the privilege of the aristocracy"; "Underwear is fattening"; "Men face reality, women don't. That's why men need to drink." And if The Extra Man becomes a Hollywood movie, Harrison's sign-off statement "So there we are. Where are we?" might catch on.

More importantly, I hope this won't be the last appearance of Harrison and Ives between the covers of a book.