Hilarity Ensues [Hardcover]

I'll give him this: Tucker entertains. His stories are for the most part well written, and his third book is a fun and easy, albeit frivolous read. As usual, a good chunk of the book is just emails to and from his friends, some dating back years. That, coupled with multiple pages dedicated to his "sexting" with his core fan base, i.e. immature and insecure teenage girls, sort of undermines his claim of being a prolific writer.

Tucker is at his best when he writes about his friends' various idiosyncrasies. The chapter about his friend Hate was by far the funniest, containing some exemplary wit.

He is absolutely at his worst when he gives life advice. The "wisdom" he imparts is shallow, hackneyed, and hardly conducive to forming good character. At one point in the book, he suggests that kids shouldn't listen to anything their parents say, that they should just follow their own rules and the hell with the norm. So, when your dad preaches the importance of virtues such as loyalty, honor, fortitude, and honesty, just ignore the old man. Very rebellious, Tucker! This is painfully cliched and unenlightened advice.

By far the most disturbing chapter is on Miss Vermont.

It reveals a vindictive, pathologically narcissistic, and petty side of Tucker. He takes extreme pride in destroying a young, innocent girl for absolutely no good reason. He comes off as border-line sadistic in challenging Miss Vermont to write her version of events. Miss Vermont didn't want stories about her private sexual encounters published on the internet (who would?), yet Tucker takes delight in revealing intimate details about their relationship. Worse, he hides under the first amendment to justify his actions. Tucker fancies himself as a champion of free speech, when the real story is Tucker's cowardice in continuing to taunt a girl, whose privacy he had already shamelessly violated. Tucker feigns indignation at Miss Vermont's hypocrisy--her preaching chastity on the one hand, and not living up to it on the other. And that is apparently good enough reason for Tucker to go after her with a religious like fervor. He almost exudes moral righteousness that comes off as incredibly petty, creepy and vengeful. In short, the Miss Vermont story makes him look really small, vindictive and cowardly.

Hilarity Ensues is a fun read--with the salient exception of the Miss Vermont chapter--but it belies Tucker's delusion that he has grown or that he is an exceptional writer. He is still petty, at times bitter, and never particularly insightful.

Very obviously the last of his books, Tucker Max pulls out the last of his stories, tying up loose ends and providing a few chuckles. For fans of Tucker Max, this will be an interesting read showcasing some of his later life and tamer stories. For people new to Tucker Max, I'd suggest starting with his first book, because without backstory new readers won't find this very funny.

Before I say much about this book, I must say that I loved the first two books Tucker Max wrote. The first book had great content and good writing, and the second book followed up with great content AND great writing. In this third book, the writing is still great, but Tucker Max is running out of content and at times it seems that he is aware of it himself.

In one instance (a story titled "The TMZ Debacle") Tucker Max even says that normally he would not have deemed the story worth telling, but because TMZ interviewed him about it, he is doing it anyway. He tells a Halloween story and mentions that there is a better Halloween story in his second book the title of which Amazon will not let me spell out. In that same book there is an amazingly funny story about an encounter between him and two ex girlfriends; in this book we get the much less interesting epilogue to that story.

The book spends two pages on a story which can be summed up as: "Guys go to look at wild horses. One guy is bit in the hand by a horse". Another two pages are spent on a story which is basically "This one guy may or may not have been gay".

The stories about his friend Hate are kind of funny, but mostly they can be summed up as "Hate got angry, Tucker Max and Credit laughed". The Cancun stories started out really good, but they sounded surprisingly preachy at times when Tucker Max recounts events that he was not even present for.

And then there is the sexting... let me just say that it gets old really fast.

He is a great writer and I loved his first two books, but in this book his is clearly running out of stuff to write about. I cannot imagine what was left for the fourth book, "Sloppy Seconds", which is supposedly the stuff that was not good enough for this book.