If Gabby: Confessions of a Hockey Lifer represents outstanding and uplifting reading for the hockey family, Tucker Max’s I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell represents the opposite extreme. It’s positively toxic. Designed to offend. Put another way: Tucker won’t soon be appearing on Oprah to discuss this work. It is a Red Line wreck of letters, and it speaks most poorly of my formal training in the arts that I couldn’t put it down.
A colleague handed me a copy of the book a couple of weeks ago; I read it on outbound and returning West Coast flights last week; when I finished it deep into last Friday night I made a beeline for an Eastern shore Catholic church and was first in line for Saturday confession. After I left confession and made my contrition I went back into confession just to make sure I had God’s forgiveness.
This book will make atheists want to make formal confessions.
Tucker Max represents the ultimate predator: elite intelligence (U of Chicago; Duke Law; able to skip entire semesters and ace exams), elite good looks, insatiable sexual appetite, chronic alcoholic. He’s the very embodiment of the boy your father and mother most fear . . . meaning, of course, he’s the very boy a good many inebriated girls (and apparently perfectly sober, married female law firm partners) hook up with. Here’s who’s offended in I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, one of the most aptly titled books in the history of English letters:
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All women
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The law abiding
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Humanity
Tucker got his first whiff of fame from his web site, tuckermax.com (not particularly safe for work), where the home page greets visitors with: “I get excessively drunk at inappropriate times, disregard social norms, indulge every whim, ignore the consequences of my actions, mock idiots and posers, sleep with more women than is safe or reasonable, and just generally act like a raging [bleep].”
Really, I need to make an explicit pleading for all of my female friends and readers: do anything with the rest of your lives but open this book. To say that Tucker Max debases women is to say that ‘Southpark’ occasionally indulges in the irreverent.
Of course there is no defense for Tucker Max’s behavior, but part of the allure of this book (for male readers), beyond the obvious fact that this deeply troubled young man can write like hell, is the sociological underbelly the work reveals: it isn’t just that a good many women like bad boys, it’s that it appears that most are defenseless when confronted by the worst.
Consider page 196, the start of a chapter titled ‘The Most Disturbing Conversation Ever,’ which recounts Tucker’s drunk-dialing of an MTV producer already hot on his story in 2003:
Tucker “So when you film me, are you going to follow me everywhere?”
Serena “Yeah, that’s the plan.”
Tucker “Well, what if I hook up and the condom breaks. Are you going to follow me to Walgreen’s to get some Ru-486?”
Serena “We’ll have to see about that.”
Tucker “You have a sexy voice. What are you wearing?”
Serena “A muumuu.”
Tucker “What?”
Serena “Tucker, I’m like 250 pounds.”
Tucker [Long, drunken pause] “MTV better send a hotter producer.”
Tucker’s flights of fornication while life-threateningly intoxicated enjoy a brief pause one evening when he takes in an American League hockey game in Chicago. He avoided assaulting an Ice Girl that night, but not the Wolves’ mascot. In one of the Wolves’ more luckless moments, Tucker that night was selected to appear out on the intermission ice and shoot at the mascot. Nearing the cage, he attacked the mascot.
For worse or for worse, soon the whole world will know about Tucker Max — Hollywood has made a movie about this book and is releasing it late next month. This should ignite congressional outrage and perhaps inaugurate a discussion about V chips for movie theaters.
8 Comments
Too bad his stories are all bullshit.
The “Tucker fighting a hockey mascot” story was totally debunked. The team mentioned that if any attempting to assault a mascot would be arrested, and there were no records of anyone assaulting a mascot that night, or ever. There were thousands of witnesses according to Tucker, and yet no one has come forward corroborating the story.
Same with his other stories: All lies. No police report after he claims he drove a car through a donut shop window during what would be operating hours, his “sushi pants story” was debunked by a newspaper journalist who interviewed the restaurant owner, and his Austin road trip story about being banned by Embassy Suites was exposed as not having ever happened… by Embassy Suites no less. Sex with a midget story? Nope, Tucker’s own friends were there, and denied it happened.
If you want to see Tucker tear up and look ashamed, try YouTube. He was on the Opie & Anthony radio show doing a live interview, and got caught on separate lies about his “butt sex” story and donut shop story.
Although I’m not one to speak in absolutist terms, my hunch is that no more than 10 percent of his stories could humanly be true. Problem is, that 10 percent would be walking mayhem enough.
It will be interesting to see if Hollywood markets Tucker’s story as facts or full-on fiction. No doubt the studio attorneys have been busy during the film’s making.
I read this book a few years ago and I thought it was great…in a sick sort of way. Our generation –the college kids that is– envy (fake?) stories like this. Now I would NEVER do anything like this, some of the stories are probably embellished, yet this is the kind of book that teenagers who never read will buy off the shelf in a second once a friend tells them a story from the book.
Don’t get me wrong, I completely agree with everything you said, I’m just disappointed it’s being turned into a movie.
Some books just get ruined once they are turned into moving pictures.
ALSO, I have a vague memory of a Tucker story when he ventured into the Ballston neighborhood for a late night trip to IHOP.
I must say I picked up Tucker’s book a few years ago, and I never laughed so hard in my life. I don’t care if the stories are real or fake; all I know is that it was absolutely hysterical.
And MPL is right, a movie will never do this book justice.
VT,
I located a trailer for the film on YouTube today, and my initial reaction mirrors yours — the flick ain’t gonna cut it. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong, but for so many book-to-screen transitions, where the original is written in often dazzling prose, the screenplay just can’t keep up.
I just checked out the trailer. It should go straight to video. It looks flat out bad.
I hate that you made me look at this website. Shame on you P&B. Shame on me too.
I have to echo – my son passed me the book almost two years ago, I read it and laughed my a$$ off. It is irreverant to say the least and you have to have a sick sense of humour but I’m glad to see I’m not unique in thinking it funny.
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