The Tucker Max Family Values

With all the talk about values lately – family and American and moral and what not, it’s easy to forget what a crock of shit that whole dialogue is. When I was a kid my dad used to whine on and on about how the present generation (my friends and I) had lost our moral compass; he longed for the good old days when there were standards of decency, and sex was reserved for the sacrament of marriage. I told him to go back and revisit
Winesburg, Ohio. There were never any good, innocent old days, there are just a bunch of blind hypocrites who think there were.

The people who clamor the loudest for the return of some elusive halcyon era – and especially those who try to legislate it – are those most likely to have some huge demon they’re trying to shove under the rug. If you want to find a closet homosexual, deviant, pederast – name your kink – look for the person who’s out in front, screaming about censoring that particular vice. Think I exaggerate? Let’s put it to the Larry Craig, Elliot Spitzer, Jimmy Swaggart test. There may have been a day when mankind wasn’t ruled by their collective appetites, but just in case you’re thinking it was sometime in the last century or two, read Devil in the White City or Sin in the Second City and you’ll cast a different eye on the Victorian age. People simply like to imagine there was a time when sex and money weren’t the primary focus of everyone’s private obsessions. It ain’t so. As the good book says: The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done, and there is no new thing under the sun.

When you want to get past the political pontificating and know how 98.7% of all men in the United States really think, at least those under forty, get thee to www.tuckermax.com and click around. Whether you want to accept it or not, the behavior recorded here is the norm, not the exception. I own a tavern in Chicago, I know this to be true. Stop in any bar on North Clark Street on a warm summer afternoon and you will find crowds of Taylor Max wannabes guzzling booze and leering at anything in a skirt. The difference between them and Mr. Max is that he has less restraint and a better game.

Of course Tucker doesn’t get laid as much as he claims, but he’s a guy – that he lies is a given. And probably, in his published stories, there is dramatic license taken with timeline, and there’s a blending of characterizations to achieve a revelatory composite; he’s a writer, that’s allowed too. What is important is to realize that when polls show that thirty percent of college students binge drink by consuming three to six drinks at a time, once a week, the polls are complete and utter horseshit. Ninety percent of young American urban males consume between three and six drinks an hour on weekends, and not significantly less the rest of the week. And that same average male will stick his penis into any quasi-sentient female or female-like creature at any given opportunity. The stories and statistics that you read to the contrary are lies that guys tell to interviewers to create a façade, and are constructed to deceive parents, wives and girlfriends and everyone else, often including the person providing the data.

What’s this got to do with writing? Tucker Max is a lout and a whore but he’s brutally honest in a Charles Bukowski kind of way. His website has a link to his ideas about good writing and they are surprisingly coherent and well constructed. The guy may be a slut but he’s not an idiot.

I don’t care whether you like him or not; the point is he’s not afraid to talk about himself and his life in a way that’s sure to attract criticism. Tucker Max talks about the size of his dick, about his bowels, about his misogynistic attempts to fuck everyone that sits down to pee. And sometimes he’s funny. Not to mention that he’s a published author and has a production deal to create a movie based on his book, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. He’s not unique, of course. Chelsea Handler is the female Tucker Max and she’s carved out a successful niche for herself using the same approach: reveal each glaring flaw of your character, each obsession and compulsion, and hold them up without reserve for the world to inspect. David Sedaris does it by exploiting his family’s quirks and his homosexuality and he’s funny as hell, not to mention much more literate. Honesty works.

Writing is about telling the truth. Maybe not always the literal, biographical truth, but some version of the truth as the author perceives that to be. Writing is getting down to where you expose the hypocrisy and society’s chamber of commerce spin and let it all hang out. When you try to pull your punches and start worrying about what people who know you might think (and people who don’t know you but might, and people who you’ll never even meet in this lifetime) your writing looses an essential edge and slides toward pabulum. Don’t write with an eye over your shoulder, write your story as truly as possible and you’ll be writing something worthwhile.

My dad would have hated Tucker Max, which gives me reason enough to like the guy, at least a little. My father was also the most hypocritical man I have ever met. That fact alone has made my truth radar especially sensitive. Give me some asshole who presents a public face that conflicts with his true nature and I can spot it a mile away. It’s also made me especially hard on myself, and most of the time, when I’m proofing something that I’ve written, I can see the line where the crap starts, where I start to self-edit based on my perceived audience; that doesn’t work.

Writers tell stories, and stories resonate with readers because they relate feelings and ideas that let us know that there are kindred spirits in the world, that we are not alone. They also reveal fundamental truths that we sometimes haven’t discovered for ourselves, or that we’ve determinedly tried not to hear. And sometimes those truths come from unexpected corners, surprising us when they arrive; often those are the moments that capture our attention with the most force.

So Tucker, you go right ahead, doing what you do. That you’re a spoiled rich kid with issues doesn’t make your anecdotes any less effective. That your issues are transparent isn’t a problem either. You’ve managed to make a career out of your foibles and that’s more than most can say. What you do takes a certain amount of courage; even if you have to drink a bottle of vodka to get there.

— Ric Hess, Aug 5, 05:33 PM

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