There are many words one can use to describe the anomaly known as James Inman. ‘Stand-up Comic’ is one such phrase, ‘Rural Punk Gen-X Anti-Hero’ is another. One might also refer to him as a ‘Recurring Alcoholic’ or ‘Angry Middle-Aged Man’ - yet whatever James is he certainly loves to torture himself, and in so doing can occasionally manifest “Genius”.
I first met James at the Edinburgh Festival in 2004. After his show we went for drinks where he proceeded to knock back a number of large shots in what seemed like some peculiar mission to rid himself of the evils of abstinence.
“Don’t tell Father Luke,” he whispers to me through the haze of some alcohol induced exorcism, “I just fell off the wagon last week in Amsterdam.”
I nod in agreement, not quite sure how else to react.
“Mortimer, you’re an alien...” he remarks at the end of the evening, “and I’m watching you very closely.” His eyes narrow into paranoid slits before he staggers off into the night.
Fast-forward several months and I find myself sitting with this madman in the middle of Death Valley, listening to him tell me why he hates taking drugs.
“I just swallowed a stem!” he exclaims angrily, “why will I never learn?”
One can see tears of frustration build up in his eyes as he leaps to his feet to vomit. His friend Emery looks bemused having clearly witnessed this sort of thing many times previously.
“For two years he pretended to be a cripple!” yells James pointing at Emery. “Two goddamned years I wheeled that fucker around just because he wanted to write a book about the disabled!”
Emery shrugs and raises his eyebrows.
“I genuinely felt sorry for you!” screams Inman before staggering and then spinning around in a plume of desert dust. More tears well up in his eyes before he spews forth an ungodly amount of stomach bile. He’s now sitting on the ground in a cloud of dust, crying and still pointing at Emery. “Saraaaahhhhh!” he suddenly wails raising his arms up to the sky, “I loved her and my friends betray me!”
Now, some of you might be questioning why I’m writing all this in what should be a straightforward book review. Good creeping god, it should be straightforward but then we aren’t dealing with a straightforward man. You see, it’s my contention that the self-flagellation that Inman puts himself through is the main driving force behind his talent.
For example, here’s a man who’s very existence is acted out like a Shakespeare play. There’s tragedy, comedy and torturous romance. Is it any wonder, then, that when Inman decided to put pen to paper he should write a modern American masterpiece?
And I’m being completely serious when I state that the Greyhound Diary is a fine work of genius. It’s place belongs rightfully up there with Thompson’s Fear & Loathing. It is humorous, quirky and very intelligently written. Much of its quirkiness is admittedly down to it having began life as a slideshow - complete with comic narration - however, it transcribes into book form exceptionally well and Inman’s descriptive content more than makes up for the lack of slides that are the focal point of his stand-up show.
Wittily subtitled ‘A Travel Guide’, the Greyhound Diary will resonate perfectly with anyone who has been stuck on a bus with members of the public for longer that 12 hours at a time. As Inman writes in his Introduction: “This is not a novel disguised as a diary; it’s more like an exorcism.”
Here’s an extract:
‘The indoor port-o-potty on this bus smells like heated urine boiling on a campfire fueled by human waste. The door’s shut and it still seeps out. And blue water is not natural. A blue turd smells the same as a regular turd, it’s just blue now, and I can’t inhale. Worst stink imaginable. I spot a Styrofoam hamburger box swimming around the blue piss aquarium. I want to reach in, pull it out and show the driver. He’ll stop the goddamn bus and we’ll sit on the side of the highway till we get a confession: “Final boarding call! What is this Styrofoam hamburger box doing in the bathroom hole? Who eats food while they take a dump? This is a violation! Is there a turd inside of this? What in the Wide World of Sports is going on here, people?”
Inman’s fluid and yet gracefully erratic writing style never lets up for the entire book. Like all good pieces of literature this work grabs you by the balls from the very first sentence and makes for exceptionally easy and enjoyable reading. Some writers try to be too clever with their use of vernacular, as though they’re trying to impress the reader by bamboozling them with perplexing word play. Not so with this book. Inman has clearly realised the art of writing a good novel, by understanding that people want to be entertained. By writing the same way as he speaks, Inman forces the reader to get absorbed in the story, captivating their attention, and keeping them holding on in anticipation for the next paragraph.
Here’s another excerpt:
‘Who let Amelia Earhart’s retard brother at the controls? We’re lost again! Even the kid with rickets is wondering out loud where the hell we’re going. Where are the goddamn comment cards? I want a stack of five hundred to pass out to every passenger and their extended families. Where are we? He must be driving by sense of smell. That’s why we’re going in circles. He’s chasing our own toilet breeze, out in the middle of nowhere, crawling around at 10 mph like a headless fucking diseased turtle. If there ever was a driver who needed a vodka bottle upside the head, it’s this guy. We had to actually pull over and ask for directions. I’ve never seen anything so funny in my life: a Greyhound bus driver, stepping out of a bus, in full Greyhound uniform, asking a group of people where the Greyhound bus stop is. We finally find it after an hour. Drop one person off. Roll back onto the highway at 10 mph. Incredible.’
Every paragraph of this book is wonderful. Every paragraph makes me laugh out loud. I could easily quote them all, but that would be fucking stupid so just go and buy this book. Greyhound Diary deserves a mainstream publisher to take it on board and Inman deserves recognition as a writer of note. He also deserves recognition as a paranoid schizophrenic, but who cares when the fine line between genius and insanity is bridged so many times in one novel. Inman sees a grassy knoll on every corner but this is what makes him a trip. By Chapter 9 he is already theorising about the connections between Greyhound, the Vatican, the Freemasons, Nazi Germany, and the Dog Star Sirius:
‘There’s a swastika on the tiles of the marbled floor! Someone should call Nuremberg and have this entire terminal burned to the ground. All of my worst fears have been realized. The Freemason who’s been following me is laughing as I stare in horror at this symbol of evil. I want to scream: “There’s a fucking swastika on the floor in permanent mortar! How clear does it have to be? Does anyone see this?” Am I being paranoid? Did the Nazis invent the bus like they invented the jet engine? When the trains were full, did they haul Jews on Greyhound to the Holocaust? I’m afraid to get back on. Are those smokestacks in the distance? Is this our last stop?’
The entire book reads exactly how James acts in real life, and ultimately the final page sums up perfectly this work and the writer’s state of mental health. It is a section entitled ‘About The Author’ and I will quote it in full:
‘James Inman is an award winning comedian living in Kansas City. He has performed at the prestigious Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Montreal Just For Laughs Festival and is the 1997 winner of the San Francisco Comedy Competition. James divides his time between used book stores, a computer and the occasional retreat to a psychiatric hospital.’
Greyhound Diary is available from Lulu.com priced $9.94.
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