I Pass Like Night

by Jonathan Ames

When Alexander Vine finishes his work day, he leaves his post as a doorman at Manhattan's exclusive Four Seasons restaurant -- and enters a nighttime landscape of chance and danger, excitement and reinvention in the city's erotic underworld. Walking a tightrope between sexual desire and self-extinction, Alexander Vine charts his destructive course -- and his struggle for redemption -- with startling, unadorned clarity.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, LGBT, Literary Fiction, Literature, New York, Contemporary

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Jonathan Ames is an American author who has written a number of novels and comic memoirs, and is the creator of two television series, Bored to Death (HBO) and Blunt Talk (STARZ). In the late '90s and early 2000s, he was a columnist for the New York Press for several years, and became known for self-deprecating tales of his sexual misadventures. He also has a long-time interest in boxing, appearing occasionally in the ring as "The Herring Wonder".
Two of his novels have been adapted into films: The Extra Man in 2010, and You Were Never Really Here in 2017. Ames was a co-screenwriter of the former and an executive producer of the latter.

Reviews

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read some great New York novels in my time, and whilst this doesn't rank anywhere near them, I do like nighthawk characters, and the young Jewish bi-sexual protagonist Alexander Vine, ditching the bourgeois life and instead pursuing a path of wild sexual degradation on the Lower East Side; lurking in the shadows; watching all the night creatures come out to play, sure did make for an interesting one. Whilst amusing in parts and somewhat strange, It's also quite a sad and haunting novel, when you throw AIDS (this is 1989) into the picture.

The Four Seasons restaurant, prostitutes (here its mostly men), and all the murky goings on in the dead of night - although, of course, it's the city that never sleeps so the night is hardly dead - had me thinking in some ways of American Psycho. This is Manhattan at street level - and you can truly feel it. Though underdeveloped, as a first novel at age 25 it was impressive. Some will no doubt be bothered by Vine's misogynistic and racist behaviour (themes of Pedophilia and incest also), so a warning to those who are easily triggered.

[Sam Quixote · Rating 1 out of 5]

A bisexual man documents his sordid sexual escapades with rando hookups and prostitutes in ‘80s New York. I Pass Like Night is Jonathan Ames’ first novel and it certainly reads like it!

The short, tenuously-connected chapters certainly seem like they were written by someone who doesn’t quite know how to write a novel yet while the content is poorly formed and vague in conception. Much of the book reeks of creative-writing classes and thinly-veiled embarrassing autobiography that was better off undisclosed.

Ames was probably shooting for a slightly more modern Bukowski-esque piece but ended up with a completely uninteresting, meandering and unmemorable book instead. Which is a bit disappointing as I’d hoped for better, like his actually good fiction, You Were Never Really Here, Bored to Death and his comic with Dean Haspiel, The Alcoholic. Definitely pass on I Pass Like Night and check those out instead.

[Frankie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nearly a decade ago I was talking to a friend about the film Trainspotting, and I wondered how different the book was. She said she loved Irvine Welsh, and lent me his short story collection Acid House. I barely got through it, and returned it with a teeth-clenching 'thanks'. The content bothered me in the same way the Marquis de Sade did more recently. It was not just shock-value perversion, it was aimlessly vile and ugly. I might even call it evil, but not in the puritanical sense, in the humane sense. I don't mind tagging along with a character that's doing degrading things, but there must be a reason within the plot.

This brings me to Ames' I Pass Like Night, which I believe from some reviews is considered profane and even vindictive. It really is not. Not at all. There are perversions and degrading moments, but they are entirely honest and humane. Alexander Vine is a great character, older and smarter than Holden Caulfield, but similar. The writing style makes an attempt at Hemingwayesque but falls short just a little. Alexander's sexual ambiguity, his kinship to the underground, his fear of commitment and normalcy – these are all cathartic for the reader. He takes things out to their logical if extreme conclusion, and the reader can follow along vicariously. But he's never vindictive.

The true test for books like this is whether or not they define an era, place or people in a unique way, without alienating readers with jargon or difficult language. For me, this passes those tests, and though this isn't how we may like to remember NYC in the 80s, this book could well be regarded as a classic record of that time.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5*

[Bryan Cebulski]

Solitude in New York City during the generation of AIDS. The underground of sexual depravity and wretched introverts. Porn theaters full of men seeking euphoria no woman will give them, riverside bonfires where bums drink away their rotting insides, sketchy parks where good-natured prostitutes roam look for tricks to turn. The world of Jonathan Ames’ first novel I Pass Like Night is something familiar yet entirely alien, where darkness and perversion are uncorked in an oppressive and overwhelming loneliness.

Jonathan Ames may now be best known for his HBO TV show Bored to Death. The two certainly share similar characteristics. However the novel illustrates NYC with a darker, much less whimsical perspective.
Our narrator Alex Vine works as a doorman at an exclusive Manhattan Four Seasons restaurant. When he clocks out he wanders into the depths of this harsh world. He has a tendency to sleep with men when he gets drunk. He is fond of a fat black prostitute named Goldie who once gave him oral sex over a condom. He reminisces about his past, of his father’s awkward and traumatic attempts to be a comfort, of the scars he has left behind in a childhood friend. He falls in love with a despondent woman, only to despise her the next moment.

“It was one of those days when every time I went to go out the door, something grabbed me in the back of the brain and said, lie down and masturbate one more time.”

Indeed, Alex is a complicated and profound protagonist.

These stories are chronicled in brief disconnected vignettes. The image is of Alex in his apartment after work some night, writing them down on bits of scrap paper and placing them face down in a pile. Almost all the stories can be told separately and exclusively. It is nonlinear but in the end the collection of snapshots manage to form a unified whole.

Between the stories are haiku-like descriptions, distinct moments of city life. The style is unapologetically lifted from Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time, but the replication is used effectively, making some particularly comical and resonating scenes. He seems to borrow from many authors. A little Carver there, a little Kerouac here, and why not some Selby while we’re at it? These authors are all smudged together into something new. It is lean and fast and uncomfortable in an all-too-candid poker-faced kind of way.

Unfortunately the vignette style comes off as repetitious if one is to read the novel for extended periods, but then again it does seem to be designed as a quick pick-up for a few minutes every now and then. All the same, it is an easy read and it sheds light on a life unknown to most. It may seem depraved and cruel and cold, because it is, but there exists some heart and humanity within it as well. Even through a narrator like Alex, who we never seem to understand even slightly, a sense of sympathy and better understanding arises in the reader.

[Greg · Rating 2 out of 5]

If I'd read this book back in the 90's when I was in my twenties I probably would have liked (but not loved) it.

Or maybe it didn't age very well and the charm has disappeared like the neighborhoods this book takes place in.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I realized while I was reading this book that I had somehow confused Jonathan Ames and Stephen Elliott and combined them into one person. I have no idea why. I like Jonathan Ames better.

[Fede La Lettrice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un po' raccolta di racconti e un po' romanzo, un po' lacrime e un po' sorrisi, piacevolissima lettura.

[Sara Hoge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extra star for the experience of reading it on the floor of used book store, strung out on a man I’ve known for 22 days ✌🏻 dark, disgusting, erotic, beautiful

[Nick LeBlanc · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’d read “You We’re Never Really Here,” I’d seen Bored to Death, and I’d heard a few interviews with Jonathan Ames before so I had a good idea about the scope and skill of his writing, but this collection, his first, really drives that point home. It’s a collection of micro-stories and reminiscences from a neurotic, queer, and most likely bipolar narrator. More of a character study than a proper novel with a plot, the only real beats of the story being sordid tales of sexual dalliances and complicated family memories. I like his style, his dialogue is great, the writing is frank, and he wastes no time getting to the meat of a situation. Besides a bad habit of ending each piece with stinger sentences—which is endearing at first but becomes grating once you notice it, I have nothing but good things to say about the prose. I think this collection was about exploring the inner life of someone clearly suffering from bipolar disorder and a sex addiction. The narrator, Alexander, overthinks and lets irrational worries cloud his mind, like his eyelids getting burnt from squinting on a sunny day. Then, he’ll spend a day compulsively masturbating, getting out of bed at night, buying himself an onion roll at a deli and talking with bums in the street until the next morning. In one section he hates his old alcoholic grandfather and prays for his death while he sits at the side of his hospital bed, and in another he beams and tells people proudly that he is wearing his grandfather’s old hat. Some of the stories read like thinly veiled nonfiction, and it feels a little icky at times, but his writing is so charming and funny you quickly forgive it. It’s sort of like a light beer version of early William Burroughs novels, but in a good way. A good quick and dirty read. I’ll check our more of his stuff, enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. -
-
tl;dr—Confessional fiction about a troubled guy, written in such a way to make it relatable. You’ll find bits of your own thinking throughout the book—especially the type of private thinking you do when no one else is around, they type of stuff you generally don’t share with anyone. Good stuff.

[Maggie Wiggins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ames is one of those oft-overlooked snarky male memoirists that I just can't get enough of. In one of his novels, and I can't remember which one it is, because in my head they're all a big ball of awesome, he just comes right out and says, "BTW, I'm not a dead-beat dad. Here's the situation, and my son and I are actually BFFs". I love that! Because I'm usually the one who stops reading and does math to figure out how old someone was when they had a baby, and why the baby isn't with them now, and who else the baby belongs to.

Readalikes: Anything by Jonathan Ames, David Sedaris, Augusten Burroughs, Chuck Klosternman

[r. fay · Rating 5 out of 5]

third time reading this since i first read it seven years ago. every time my life circles the block, I Pass Like Night is waiting for me on the corner, ready to make me feel like home in the best and worst ways.

"It was very quiet and I listened and my body was like a house and I could hear different doors slamming." (p. 103, and the epigraph of my most recent chapbook)

[Blanca · Rating 1 out of 5]

Self-indulgent and boring. It is as though the author's pleasure lies in making his reader uncomfortable. Worse, he is a storyteller, not a writer. No plot, crisis or resolution follows.

[Gretchen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know, I really really want to like Jonathan Ames...I'm committed to liking him. But I didn't love this. Gonna try some more.

[Simone Subliminalpop · Rating 3 out of 5]

Romanzo breve o raccolta di racconti come istantanee, semplicemente un pugno nello stomaco, forte e sincero, come lo è il primo libro di Ames.

[Eden Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Visit JetBlackDragonfly (The Man Who Read Too Much) at www.edenthompson.ca/blog

This debut novel from Jonathan Ames was published in 1989 - I still have my first edition copy. In the mid-80's, a swirl of new novelists were hailed the 'literary brat pack' by The Village Voice. A group which included Jay McInerney (Bright Lights, Big City 1984), Tama Janowitz (Slaves Of New York 1986), Bret Easton Ellis (Less Than Zero 1985), lesser known Emily Listfield (It Was Gonna Be Like Paris 1988), and I add this novel.
"Disturbing and funny...a striking debut" Joyce Carol Oates

This is an adult book, with sexual content not for every taste. Our narrator is a young Jewish man hustling for tips as number-two doorman at the Four Seasons. He knows how to defer to rich clients, catch the cabs, and get a free dinner in the kitchen. On Friday nights he travels to the suburbs for dinner with his parents - his travelling salesman father a curmudgeon who starts every meal with "I don't feel right." They are just happy he isn't driving a cab in Brooklyn.

In short recollections about his live-in girlfriend, and childhood friends long since drifted away, he negotiates the pitfalls of New York at street level, buddies with the homeless winos, the disturbed Veterans slowly dying off to make space for the addicts.
On the lower East side, he chooses streetwalkers, ever-aware of the patrolling police, for quick encounters in the local park. He frequents Show World in Times Square, a variety of experiences collected in one place - the magazines, the adult movies, and the peep booths where the girl hands you a paper towel before the private show. Slowly, the drunken nights of picking up girls includes cruising for guys.
Very youthful, very downtown. At that volatile time, going to the clinic to check for herpes was turning into an AIDS check. But, if the next bus to Friday night dinner was still an hour away, he finds himself giving in to the tempting advertising "Live Girls, Incredible Shows".

His quirky sense of humour and the openness to discovery intrigued me back then, as did all the Brat Pack writers. This is not for everyone, but if you have an open mind and remember the 80's, there is a lot to like in his writing. I kept my 1989 Vintage Contemporaries edition, right alongside my Janowitz and McInerney.

Jonathan Ames is an actor, writer, comic, producer, screenwriter, and creator of three seasons of HBO's Bored To Death. His novels The Extra Man and his terrific thriller You Were Never Really Here were filmed. His New York Press column (collected in four nonfiction books) reflected his childhood neuroses and unusual experiences, which seems very much this book.

[Chiara F. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uno tra i più illustri sostenitori di questo volume d’esordio di Jonathan Ames è stato Philiph Roth che si è persino scomodato a scriverne un’introduzione per la versione statunitense.
Non è un caso.
Visto che il romanzo sembra una rivisitazione de “Il lamento di Portnoy” a cui sono ispirate (oserei dire a piene mani) le scene di onanismo del protagonista, un portiere ebreo del Four Seasons che incarna al contempo l’insensatezza dell’Arturo Bandini di John Fante!
La fortuna del romanzo sta probabilmente nello stile e nel fatto che sia stato ambientato nei tardi anni Ottanta, l’epoca dello yuppismo ben descritta da Bret Eston Ellis, contrapposta all’inettitudine della classe media del Lower East Side di cui si è appunto fatto portavoce Ames. Eppure, se non fosse per certi riferimenti al virus dell’Hiv, questo volume potrebbe sembrare ambientato anni prima, tanto che in certi passi ho avuto dei veri e propri dejavu ricordando scene dei romanzi Rothiani (e non solo legati a Alexander Portnoy da cui viene copiato persino il nome -che qui si presenta come Alexander Vine-ma anche nella descrizione delle vivide sensazioni del protagonista che ripensa al suicidio dell’amico e che mi hanno subito riportata tra le pagine del Complotto contro l’America)...

Insomma non ci fossero stati così tanti riferimenti avrei avuto un giudizio meno severo, ma così c’è troppo sentore di scopiazzamento dal più famoso predecessore per parlare di capolavoro!

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve owned this book for a couple decades and just randomly picked it up yesterday. I got it at a gay bookstore in the early 2000s and assumed today that I’d Google it when I finish and find the author died of AIDS in the early 90s. I had absolutely no idea.

So even though it was dumped in the “Used - Gay” category at that store, it’s probably not a big shocker to learn it’s ambiguously gay. In that sense, I found it a delightful surprise.

It’s essentially a series of very short vignettes. What I liked about them is that most end with a sort of literary twist at the end. Nothing that makes you rethink everything you’ve read, but just something that forces you to kinda tilt your head and appreciate the poetic “flip” in perspective or reflection before moving on.

It’s a satisfying book, more a late 80s tale of the Manhattan of late-night streetwalkers and 24-hour peep shows/adult movie houses that doesn’t exist anymore. Given that all of this was still very real at the time of publication, I can’t tell what made it so great back then; I suppose there weren’t many people writing about it then?

[chantel nouseforaname · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bruh.. this is what was passing for work in 1989? BRUH! Pain. I was expecting more thoughtfulness, more emotional depravity, but it was mundane and miserable, and the meandering but lacking, lacking so much depth!

I bought this book on a recent trip to NYC from one of my fave bookstores P&T Knitwear. I bought it based on the shelf talker and it's description, but the staff didn't share that it was pointless, aimless. That was missing from the description. It was doing too much, it couldn't be who it wanted to be. It was mildly offensive, not in a clutching my pearls sort of way, but in a no one means anything to you, because you can't even see yourself sort of way. Waste, all around.

I'm excited to read my next pick from the store because I know it will be much better: Is It My Body? by Kim Gordon. I'm very excited for that one. This one is going in the bin!

[chiara_librofilia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I presupposti per renderlo un buon libro c'erano davvero tutti e anche la trama lo era: una New York frenetica e caotica, un giovane ansioso, confuso e attratto dall'autodistruzione e capace di spingersi continuamente oltre il limite attraverso la droga, l'alcol, il sesso promiscuo e qualche scazzottata contrapposti però alla sua profonda solitudine, al continuo desiderio di amare e di essere amato, alla necessità di imprimere alcuni passaggi fondamentali della sua esistenza quasi come a voler fermare il tempo e alla paura costante di aver contratto l'AIDS.

Eppure non mi ha convinto nonostante il linguaggio esplicito e sboccato e il masochismo iperrealistico che trasuda delle pagine, probabilmente per la brevità delle pagine o perché la vera personalità del protagonista fuoriesce poco ma soprattutto perché qualche altro autore lo ha fatto prima e decisamente meglio di Jonathan Ames.

[Claude Bouchard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good story, but not something to read if you're depressed or sad. This is not a cheerful tale. Unable to love anyone (except one special person, revealed at the end), Alex finds himself fascinated by female prostitutes, quick gay hook-ups, and possessed with a certain admiration for the drunk and the homeless living in New York City in the late 80s.

This is not a novel in the true sense of the word, but more of a collection of vignettes, each one offering a quick glimpse into the void and pain that this man is experiencing.

At first, I was uncertain whether this story would really hold my attention, but it did. Alex is not someone you find yourself rooting for, or for whom you have any admiration. Instead, you only feel pity.

[rebeca · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reminiscent of John Rechy's The City of Night with its clandestine sexual encounters in a city where everyone is hustling in one way or another, but missing Rechy's rich prose. I loved the stories of the prostitutes best, but while Mr. Ames's prose was almost-powerful and poetic at times, he never quite made it there especially with the interludes in italics. Maybe there was too much of the protagonist pointing out what a despicable character he was in being cruel to Joy (pun intended) and finding his father so disgusting and loathsome.

[Tanya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ames’ first book with many of the same stories as featured in The Alcoholic. Gritty, gross, but truthful. You wish you could talk sense into Alexander Vine and help him see he doesn’t have to live in the streets and shadows with bums and prostitutes. This isn’t really a novel as much as a series of vignettes about a self-destructive man who loathes his own desires. There is no growth, arc, or resolution, but this is a good read if you want something fast and edgy and, like I said, gross.

[Brad · Rating 4 out of 5]

The pure Jonathan Ames stuff in here is visceral, disturbing, and well-crafted, but, since this is his early work, it shares too many similarities with his influences--the lesser (unpopular opinion) authors Hemingway, Kerouac, and, worst of all, Salinger. The structure of this book is a little odd at first, but really resonates by its conclusion. The writing is solid, though, even if it can be graphic at times.

[Ronnie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not sure why this has spawned so many (or any) comparisons to Holden Caulfield and Catcher in the Rye; for me, it was reminiscent of Bukowski and William Kennedy, without being as well written as any books I've read by either of those authors. (And if you're sensitive to comma splices, you, too, might be bugged here.) I think the first chapter is the best. Things sort of go gradually downhill after that. But at least the book is extremely short.

First line:
"I like this one whore on the lower East Side, her name is Goldie because of her teeth, and she's really sweet."

[Miranda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Snapshots in the life of a man living in Lower East Side. The narrator, Alexander Vine, allows the reader into a confessional style account of his nights in the city, as well as the aimless angst of his mind. He doesn’t know whether to hate or love those closest to him.

This novelette had some really heartbreaking lines. I definitely would like to read more by Ames.

[H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tight, concise book that pulls you along on a dark journey of introspection. Hemingway, Chandler and Carver come to mind as antecedents. An urban psycho-sexual journey of discovery. Immersive and a can't put down read.

[Daniel Eastman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short novel told through vignettes. Like Carver without a filter, a young man navigates the NYC nightlife during the AIDS epidemic. Graphic depictions of grimy sexual encounters both homo and hetero. A how to in how to write a sex scene. It doesn’t have to be tasteful. Great sex seldom is.

[Smiley III · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why aren't my editions available?? I swear this is driving me crazy. GET THE COVER!!!

DIDN'T EVERYONE READ THESE AT BARNES & NOBLE OR BORDERS AT THE TIME??

Sheesh!!!

🤔

#falloffthePLANETorsomething

😉

👍

#YEAH

[Simone Volponi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Più raccolta di racconti con lo stesso protagonista che romanzo. Spinto, poetico, umano.
Non è che se un altro scrittore, più famoso, ha descritto l'arte dell'onanismo allora si deve parlare di scopiazzatura. I draghi de Il Trono di Spade c'erano già in Tolkien e in altri autori fantasy, per dire.