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    Bored to Death: A Noir-otic Story
    Bored to Death: A Noir-otic Story
    Bored to Death: A Noir-otic Story
    Ebook48 pages44 minutes

    Bored to Death: A Noir-otic Story

    By Jonathan Ames

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    About this ebook

    The basis for the HBO® Original Series starring Jason Schwartzman (Rushmore), Zach Galifianakis (The Hangover), and Ted Danson, Bored to Death is a Raymond Chandleresque tale of a struggling Brooklyn writer—curiously named Jonathan Ames—who, in a moment of odd whimsy and boredom, becomes a private detective after spontaneously posting an ad on craigslist. As a rank amateur who just thinks he can help, this Ames alter ego quickly becomes embroiled in the search for a missing NYU coed. He moves from one scrape to the next, all while trying to escape a life of periodic alcoholism, dead-end relationships, writer’s block, and hours of Internet backgammon. Bored to Death was originally published in McSweeney’s Issue 24 and is the centerpiece of Ames’s collection of essays and fiction, The Double Life Is Twice as Good.

    Bored to Death Artwork © 2009 Home Box Office, Inc. All rights reserved. HBO® and related channels and service marks are the property of Home Box Office, Inc.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherScribner
    Release dateOct 6, 2009
    ISBN9781439184035
    Author

    Jonathan Ames

    Jonathan Ames is the author of I Pass Like Night; The Extra Man; What’s Not to Love?; My Less Than Secret Life; Wake Up, Sir!; I Love You More Than You Know; The Alcoholic; and The Double Life Is Twice As Good. He’s the creator of the HBO® Original Series Bored to Death and has had two amateur boxing matches, fighting as “The Herring Wonder.” His most recent work is the detective novel A Man Named Doll. 

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      Book preview

      Bored to Death - Jonathan Ames

      Bored to Death

      The Origin Story

      By

      Jonathan Ames

      Scribner

      New York London Toronto Sydney

      Also by Jonathan Ames

      I Pass Like Night

      The Extra Man

      What’s Not to Love?

      My Less Than Secret Life

      Wake Up, Sir!

      I Love You More Than You Know

      The Alcoholic

      As Editor

      Sexual Metamorphosis

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

      Bored to Death copyright © 2009 by Jonathan Ames

      Originally published in The Double Life is Twice as Good in 2009 by Scribner

      All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Scribner Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

      First Scribner electronic books edition September 2009

      SCRIBNER and design are registered trademarks of The Gale Group, Inc. used under license by Simon & Schuster, Inc., the publisher of this work.

      For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-800-456-6798 or business@simonandschuster.com

      The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event.  For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

      Designed by

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      ISBN 978-1-4391-8403-5

      BORED TO DEATH

      The trouble happened because I was bored. At the time, I was twenty-eight days sober. I was spending my nights playing Internet backgammon. I should have been going to AA meetings, but I wasn’t.

      I had been going to AA meetings for twenty years, ever since college. I like AA meetings. My problem is that I’m a periodic alcoholic, even with going to AA. Every few years, I try drinking again. Or, rather, drinking tries me. It tries me on for size and finds out I don’t fit and throws me to the ground. And so I go crawling back to AA. Or at least I should. This last go-round, I was skipping meetings and just staying home and, like I said, playing Internet backgammon.

      I was also reading a lot of crime fiction and private detective fiction, writers like Hammett, Goodis, Chandler, Thompson. The usual suspects, as it were. Since my own life was so dull, I needed the charge that came from their books—the danger, the violence, the despair.

      So that’s all I was doing—reading and playing backgammon. I can afford such a lifestyle because I’m a writer. I’m not a hugely successful writer, but I’m my own boss. I’ve written six books—three novels and three essay collections—and at the time of the trouble I had roughly six thousand dollars in the bank, which is a lot for me. I also had a few checks for movie work coming in down the road.

      By my economic standards it was a flush time. I had even paid my taxes early, at the end of March—it was now mid-April—and I was just trying to stay sober and keep a low profile in

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