Story: 4 stars!Art: 5 stars!I honestly wasn't sure if I was going to like this one. It is called The Alcoholic after all. I read it in one sitting. Apparently I like memoir style comics with good art and writing. Who knew? I really felt for the main character. There were a lot of times I rolled my eyes at him too though. The first half of the book was better, or more interesting to me, but that could be because the second half was more melancholy. I would definitely recommend it. It's a good sto...

He drinks. He stops drinking. He drinks again. He stops drinking again. He does drugs. He stops doing drugs. He does drugs again...and so on and so on and dubby dubby do.but woven in with all that, there are complicated relationships, loss, and confusion that would exsist even if he were always sober.sometimes sad but not crushing.sometimes hopeful but not cheesy.and sometimes funny.

Jonathan Ames, at the moment, is someone who entertain me greatly. In many ways he reminds me of Woody Allen. The character in his fiction is very much the same. Totally self-obsessed and funny. But there is a tragic aspect to this character and the way Ames writes that character and make it funny is what makes him an artist or even... an entertainer.i pick up his books expecting to be entertained or at the very least to be part of his world. What we have here is Ames world in a comic book forma...

I didn't have any expectations about this book, and I still hated it."The Alcoholic," which is actually written by Jonathan Ames and drawn by Dean Haspiel (stupid Web site people), is about Jonathan A., a young man who starts drinking at the age of 15, really enjoys drinking, and becomes (guess what?) an acoholic. The book is about his troubles with alcohol and his visit to rehab and his relapse into alcoholism.I'm sure I'm probably supposed to think that parts of the book are really funny. And

Some spoilers. Fairly compelling and relatable memoir-like tale of a natural born drinker, with plenty of poignant moments and pretty good art work. The writing is simple and straightforward, but it works well with the black and white shadowy illustrations and noirish tempo. The writer throws in a truck-full of drama and heavy themes, including death, mourning, heartbreak, homosexuality, aids, 9/11, coke and heroin use, and lots of spewing bodily fluids, but also keeps a light balance with old l...

How to describe the experience of reading this book? It was like cringing for several hours straight, trapped in a bar booth with a man twice my age who might want to sleep with me but is probably too drunk to pull it off, all the while he's using words like "mid-list" and "self-care." It was like that. Intense like that. But also heartbreaking, and expert at summoning its own inky little claustrophobic world.

EH, but also weirdly hard to stop reading? Yeah.

Since it’s a new year, I decided to do something new. Instead of picking something unread from the bookcase or the hard drive, I dove back into the stack of read books to give one an ol’ reread. Fingers sifted. Closed eyes opened and Jonathan Ames’ lush autobiography was chosen.Under more aged eyes I definitely found more to be critical of yet also found a lot more to enjoy as well. Featuring a highly exposed approach, the author’s transparency is as confessorial as it is painfully honest. Shyin...

When I picked up this graphic novel from the library, I had no idea who Jonathan Ames was. Upon further investigation, I'd never even heard of any of his works, be they book, film, or TV show, save one (Blunt Talk). But even that one show I've never seen and only knew of it because Patrick Stewart played the titular role.I gathered from the liner notes that this was the fictionalized memoir of a writer (Jonathan A.) who struggled with alcohol. Having had my own wanderings down that path over a n...

I love that when you type 'alcoholic' in the search box, two Bukowsi books that don't have the word 'alcoholic' in their titles come up before anything else. Anyway, I like Jonathan Ames. You like Jonathan Ames, right? We all like Jonathan Ames. Just like all of us, he grew up in New Jersey and then moved to New York. (well, maybe not all of us. Most of us though.) I haven't read all his books and, honestly, the most interesting thing to me (well duh) is how trans women continuously pop up in hi...

This graphic novel focused on Jonathan A. (the main character) and his alcoholism, and how his battle with it affected everything in his life. There were so many wonderful, poignant, tragic and even funny details... I loved his devotion to his best friend, even when said friend ditched him for no apparent reason. I loved it when he referred to his ex-girlfriend by the city she happened to be living in at the time and came to refer to himself as "her bitch" because he couldn't let her go. I loved...

This is not an autobiography. But it kind of is. Autor took his two ideas on comics and stitched them together with his own background. Because there is an intention to lell story which would be real, relatable, crude and believable. And that was accomplished well. I expected it to be story mainly about alcoholism, but it actually is a story about a guy who loves it but can handle it - alcohol, life, love, drugs. You can hardly generalize here because this is a specific story of somebody whos in...

Ugh this was okay at first but just didn't care for it.

First off, incredible artwork by Dean Haspiel. He's obviously informed by the superhero genre, which has never been of interest to me personally, but I kept marveling at his mastery of form, interesting perspective and shadow/light. However, as much as I enjoyed the artwork, I think I found it distracted from or lessened the emotional impact of the story. It somehow comes across as inauthentic when a cartoonist tries to heighten your emotions with exaggerated facial expressions and extreme light...

This might be the most pitiful public-humiliation spectacle since Coetzee's Summertime. "J. Ames" is not only a hopeless alcoholic and doper; he is sexually confused, prematurely bald, orphaned, even incontinent. The hell-on-earth of addiction is vividly evoked, and Ames achieves a nice mix of humor and awful honesty. The graphic-novel format (the unfussy art is by Dean Haspiel) suits the material; it's the perfect shorthand for this odyssey. But because the story is not strict memoir, one wonde...

This was sad but definitely as an alcoholic myself -- many years away from my last drink -- I can relate to this kind of life and can tell this is someone's true story. Kind of funny at points and as I said very sad. Unfortunately realistic too as many of us have a similar sort of depressing past. Reading this made me think over and over "thank God I don't drink anymore."

There were some high notes, but this was more often an uninteresting and unimaginative book. To me, it very much felt like reading a first draft.

This was an easy read, great story by Jonathan Ames, really touching, and very awesome art by Dean Haspiel.A true to life almost memoir by Ames, my first read of his. I have been a long time supporter of his show Bored to Death, he always entertains me in his noir sort of way. He does, in his own way, remind me of Woody Allen. He writes humor but there is a great tragic aspect to his characters and the way Ames writes that character is sublime and unique, it truly makes him an artist.The story i...

Though this graphic novel is billed as a fictionalized account of Jonathan Ames struggles with alcohol, I'm gonna go ahead and label it a memoir. Ames story rings true on ever page and Haspiel's art works really well in this sad and painful book. Besides alcoholism, this book also has interesting subplots concerning homosexuality, virility, and death. Of course, there are some great moments of Ames humor as well. And although readers familiar with Ames will recognize parts of his life that he ha...

It's a great story about the life of an Alcoholic in which the alcohol acts as the door for other stronger drugs. The depiction of self-destruction is very accurate and actually moving. I felt sorry for the character, seeing the misery he went down, the self-destruction he was willing to inflict along with the lack of emotional strength he's very aware of.He's simply open to try any drug and forget about his existence, he just wants to scape. There are some very dramatic scenarios depicted:* Whe...