Jonathan Ames was born in 1964 and raised in New Jersey by a traveling-salesman father and a schoolteacher mother. He was educated at Princeton and at Columbia, where his writing teachers included Joyce Carol Oates and Paul Auster. His senior thesis became his first published novel, which bore a blurb from Philip Roth. (“Mr. Ames’s antisocial young hero comes through as a cross between Jean Genet and Holden Caulfield.”) By 2019, he had written ten books, had a one-man New York stage show (Oedipussy), appeared several times on the David Letterman show, was a frequent participant in The Moth storytelling showcase, wrote and produced two television series (Bored to Death, Blunt Talk) and boxed several times in public billed as “The Herring Wonder.” Most recently, he is the author of three detective novels featuring L.A. private investigator Happy Doll (A Man Named Doll, The Wheel of Doll, Karma Doll). Mr. Ames speaks carefully and gently in a deeply compelling nasal voice which he describes as “affected.”
What drew you to writing crime fiction?
I had been a Chandler lover, and a Hammett lover – and then, later, Ross Macdonald – starting in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s. Finally, in 2007, I wrote my first mystery story: “Bored to Death.” I later published it in McSweeney’s. That short story became the basis for my TV show. For the next 10 years, basically, I was involved in TV and hardly writing prose at all. But in between my two TV series, I went back to write another piece of crime fiction, You Were Never Really Here, which became a movie. When TV sort of ran its course for me, I started writing the Doll novels, in 2019. I’ve managed to write three of them in the last five years. I wish I could write more quickly.
Do you see yourself writing Doll books indefinitely?
I would like to. I love these long series. When I was making Bored to Death, I got introduced to Richard Stark [the hardboiled pseudonym of Donald Westlake]; and I just devoured those 24 Parker novels. Then what Ross Macdonald did: 18 Lew Archer novels, right? And the short stories, and the fragments.
And then of course there’s Michael Connelly. I sort of discovered Connelly after I started writing the Doll books, believe it or not. Also what he’s done, with his intersecting universes – oh my God! I just think it’s brilliant.
How does Happy Doll, patterned on those classic private eye figures, differ from them?
Good question. He’s not necessarily consciously different. It’s a little bit like trying to describe the sound of my own voice, which, when I’ve heard it, is like: “Oh God, who is that guy?” Just ‘cause probably of my affected tone, but –
I think he’s different, like, for example: Jack Reacher, he’s like an indomitable machine, and he almost never really screws up. Or – Lew Archer? Doll’s like a mix, of Lew Archer and [Philip] Marlowe. He has sort of Marlowe’s humor, a little bit. Or — a slightly goofball take on the world.
And – they were much more confident men, Marlowe and Archer. They had a clarity of purpose. They knew who they were. I mean, sometimes Archer has self-doubts, or he would think about his divorce, or he would be a little melancholic about how he had screwed up his love life – but – he had real clarity of purpose, in regard to right and wrong.
Whereas Doll – I think ultimately what makes him different is that there’s just a lot of Introspection, and confusion. And he’s a little bit nuttier; he’s more of a screwup. Though both Marlowe and Archer, whom Doll mimics, invariably get hit on the back of the head, step into a room and get knocked out. So I play with that trope, of them walking into spots where they get hit from behind. Does that make sense to you? Does that sound right to you?
So, sort of an Everyman private eye – who’s also a student of Buddhism.
Yeah, that’s increasingly, obviously, become a theme of the last two books. He’s been trying to apply Buddhist philosophy; he’s not necessarily a Buddhist; he wouldn’t call himself a Buddhist. He’d really need to have a group, what the Buddhists call a sangha. He would need a teacher. He’s kind of like self-taught, just from books, which mirrors my own sort of interest and application of Buddhist philosophies to my life, the last few years. Though I hope that I make it clear in the books – that he might be getting a lot of this stuff wrong. Though the Buddha would say, “It’s up to you, to figure out how to apply these things.” So I hope that if anyone reads the books, and it makes them a little bit interested in Buddhism, that they’re not turned off by Doll not being an expert practitioner.
He has to set it aside in order to start hitting bad guys.
Yeah, the violence. He does come across, in Karma Doll, a Buddhist parable saying that the Buddha, in another life, or in another form, struck down a pirate, to keep the pirate from committing further negative deeds that would cause the pirate bad karma, as well as to protect the people that the pirate was going to hurt. So Buddhists will defend themselves, if need be, if push comes to shove. But for the most part, they want – to quote the New Testament – to turn swords into ploughshares: to transform violence into compassion.
Compassion was certainly one of Lew Archer’s strong suits.
I’ve been rereading Ross Macdonald. My one peeve is, sometimes his clients are so annoying. Which I know is part of it: The first noble truth of Buddhism is, “Life is characterized by suffering.’” I just picked up The Chill. I have all of them, because it helps me to try to write my stuff. And, oh, this annoying husband! I don’t want to deal with him. I mean, I love being with Archer, but – his clients sometimes annoy me too much. Also, sometimes I like him to be – I like it when he battles tough guys, like in that really great one, one of my favorites, when he goes to see that mother in Santa Monica .
The Way Some People Die?
The young woman who’s the nurse?
Galley Lawrence.
Galatea. For some reason, that’s one of my favorites. He goes up against tough guys in that one I think. I like when he goes up against tough guys; just my thing. ‘Cause I like to see him best them. There’s a short story, set in Palm Springs? In which he takes a terrible beating. I love Archer.
Doll has a dog, with whom he enjoys an unusually strong bond.
Yeah. A lot of people talk about that. I have a dog, so –
The Buddhism, and the dog – these are reflections of my inner life. And it’s funny: I saw a quote from [Donald]) Westlake, when he was talking about [Richard Stark’s criminal protagonist] Parker. And Westlake is like my big hero. Though I tend to prefer Stark to Westlake. He said about Parker: “I didn’t give him a dog; I didn’t give him anything to make him more likeable, or loveable.’” And I was, “Oh – he’s –” I felt like in a way, from beyond, he was calling me out for giving this guy a dog! But I didn’t do it to make him more loveable; it’s just a reflection of my love for my dog.
It’s a unique relationship; it’s way beyond Asta and Nick Charles
Yeah, I guess Asta would probably be the closest, in The Thin Man. But Nick Charles – he seems to tolerate Asta. You know what I mean? Asta seems to be more Nora’s dog, perhaps; and he always has to walk it, or –
Hammett was so big, although he only wrote about, what, four or five books? You can see, obviously, how influenced Chandler was by Hammett. And then Ross Macdonald sort of picked up the baton from both of them.
One thing I try to do, as Ross Macdonald does, is, I try to write about nature. The beauty of L.A., or the sea. He’ll have these passages about the water, and the color of the water. His eye for nature, and also, even in the ‘50s and ‘60s, his sadness, about the smog, and how things are getting wrecked. And oil spills. Oh yeah, and then his great fire novel: [The] Underground Man, I think.
I also try to have environmental themes in the Doll books. In the first book, it’s kind of post-fires, and – all these butterflies, ‘cause a few years ago, there was that Monarch butterfly migration. The second book, there were maybe fewer references to nature. Then the third book, there’s an atmospheric river, a storm, which we’re about to have here again. And the fourth book: my plan, and I had started it before the fires, was to have a fire novel, kind of like Ross Macdonald, ‘cause I love his – kind of dark, but his descriptions in Underground Man of fires on the ridge, advancing like an army. Umm.
I can’t believe – I mean, I can, but – the Archer novels, the plotting is so intense.
Two things – I love how he’s always running all over the place. He’s driving here, he’s Driving there; he’s in San Franciso, he’s hopping on a plane, he’s gone to Mexico. I just reread the Mexico one: The Zebra-Striped Hearse. That was a great one.
I was going to try to do that also, like in The Underground Man: he’s zigzagging here, he’s zigzagging there; he’s almost getting the kid, but then – he’s out of his grasp. Because, for the reader – it kind of keeps you always in tension.
And you know when I reread them, because I’ve forgotten so much, I don’t totally remember who the killer is. You suspect so many people.
He wrote them so you couldn’t know in advance; he would write them so he wouldn’t know, or choose, who the guilty one was until late in the text. He made it so that almost any of the characters might be the murderer.
So, I kind of try to learn from all these guys. It’s like listening to music. What about their stories compels me as a reader? And then: how can I recreate that effect?
There’s a noticeably gruesome aspect to your books, don’t you think? One young woman’s legs are amputated. A man receives a kidney transplant. Someone receives a complete facelift.
Yeah. That’s true. I know; Doll’s sort of like a cartoon figure, in that sense, but hopefully, believable enough that someone could persevere through these things: the blows to the head, the illnesses, the physical suffering he has. One of the writers who blurbed the first book said , “This is a book about being in the human body, and the horror of the body.’” I don’t want to overly disturb the reader, but – yeah, I guess there’s a gruesomeness to the books. There is death and mayhem.
In the second book, the woman – she’s had her legs amputated, because she’s homeless, and she’s a junkie, and keeps having frostbite and gets gangrene. And it is a real issue for homeless populations in colder areas, to have a lot of amputations, because they get these terrible infections, and frostbite, and gangrene, and use intravenous drugs. But Doll feels great tenderness towards this character; it’s his ex-lover who’s lost her legs.
You’re at work on the fourth Doll book now?
I’m a little bit on a pause, at the moment. What with everything going on in the world. When you write novels you’re sort of a year behind, and it’s like: holy cow! If I write a new Doll novel, I mean, we might be living in a total authoritarian state by the fall; I mean we’re very close to it now. And so – will Doll be navigating that world? Even if he’s in his own mysteries, you’re still set in the now.
Separate from that, I’m just so overwhelmed – as so many people are – with anxiety and dread.
It’s hard to ignore the news.
Part of the problem is, we carry around these phones, which are like Times Square ticker-tape machines. I guess it’s sort of like: with food, you have to be careful with what you put in your mouth. We have to be careful not to poison our minds, too much.
