Wednesday Mini Book Review: Diary of Indignities

The Wednesday mini book review returns, to Wednesday. Some past mini book reviews.

Diary of Indignities by Patrick Hughes. (M Press, 2007). I'm the first person thanked in the acknowledgements of the book, and the author, Patrick Hughes (who blogs at Bad News Hughes) is an old friend, though one I haven't seen in over five years (and don't talk to much anymore either). However, I was, as I keep repeating, the first editor to give him professional writing work as a columnist at the Independent Florida Alligator back in 1990 or thereabouts. So, consider this more of a friendly recommendation than a formal book review.

That said, damn, what a joy this book is. Short memoiristic essays about Hughes's life and the strange and somehow barely lovable people he's known in his years in Gainesville, Fla, my own old hometown and one I've found resisted literary capture, until Hughes came along and gets it all right: the effortless absurdist strangeness, the gasping good humor, the troubled and troubling attempts to keep ourselves amused and connected in a place where you really had to rely on your own resources, and relentless self-abuse and tasteless behavioral excess—artistic, romantic, even culinary–seemed inexpressibly vital to that task.

Through all the accounts of questionable behavior, you get the impression that the only one he's trying to make a fool of is himself. While a fair number of his memories involve butt plugs, Q-tips in his penis, or psoriasis, he's never going for gross-out humor for the sake of it—it's just that the human body we have always with us, late and soon, and coping with its endlessly unpredictable travails is one of the things a sense of humor is best suited for.

Hughes is a thorough and heroic bard of hypochondria, Friend of the Library sales, late night drives to the next county where they're still selling beer, his own superegoless redneck family's celebrations and madnesses, mixing noise music and food poisoning, and Gainesville's peculiar combination of inventive ways to stave off madness and poignant attempts to make even the most ridiculous of our efforts at fellowship matter and last.

Amid all the hilarity, the chapter "Butterfly-Knife Romance" is for real one of the truest, sweetest, and saddest tales of confused teen love I've ever seen. And the one that ends with Fessie telling Pat "You don't respect women" really makes every teen dramedy ever made superfluous, especially the ones that are supposed to help you really understand the emotional travails of teen freaks and geeks. Every story where I know who he's writing about—sometimes he protects identities, sometimes he doesn't—are perfect evocations of exactly what is hopelessly peculiar about the person while still making them as big a human character as they really are, not just props for the writer's amusement.

In general, he tells perfectly framed and perfectly timed comedies that, as he puts it regarding his ex-roommate Dirty Mike, frame his characters, including Hughes himself, "somewhere between 'genius comedian' and 'brave martyr.' 'Subhuman asshole' didn't get added to the mix until after I had lived with him for a few weeks and my precious Samhain tapes ended up stolen and sold to support his drug habit."

But without an ounce of mawkishness, Hughes shows this collection of drunken dickweeds and performance art maniacs and shit-frying existential pranksters the most tender love they'll ever receive: getting every detail right and true, with head-shaking understanding of the inexplicable and forgiveness of the unforgivable in every line. And it's hard to get through any given page without a laugh, not only from the incidents described but Hughes' perfectly balanced, perfectly timed prose.