Greyhound Diary

By James Inman
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Paperback, 84 pages
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 (13 Ratings)
Greyhound Diary
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The Greyhound Diary Travel Guide is a depressingly hilarious roaming narrative. A postmodern Odyssey from the backwoods of Wheatland to the lost highway in West Memphis. From the trashed streets of Newark to the industrial cesspool that is Cleveland. Trapped inside the Turtle Boat with tattooed clowns and freak-show white trash, a grueling masochistic non-stop journey into the heart of fear. Everyone, regardless of age, race, color, creed, sexual orientation, class distinction and/or drug and alcohol dependency will relate to this universal saga steeped in American popular culture. This horrid tour is a cynical account of what it feels like to be out there on the bus in the middle of nowhere crawling around at ten miles an hour with Amelia Earhart's retarded brother at the controls. This is everything you've forgotten on those trips home from college. A fascinating, compelling ride…
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Apr. 21, 2006 By Dennis Weiser
"James Inman's is a very funny guy… "
I barely escaped a career as standup comedian. By 5th grade, I was doing sketch-comedy with a very talented classmate named John Brothers. Inspired by the televised genius of Sid Caesar, Shelly Berman, Jonathan Winters and Bob Newhart, we performed barber, dentist and psychiatrist sketches which our peers at least (and more than one teacher) found screamingly funny. This was back around 1960. Schoolmates told me I had real comic talent and urged me to pursue a career as a standup comic. My own extended family were trying to push me toward law school. I even got an opportunity to Emcee an entertainment night at the school auditorium, trying my hand... More > (and tongue) at telling jokes before bright stagelights and a full house. I discovered a knack for saving jokes that flop by making faces and using silence, of turning impending public humiliation into laughter (I think I must have learned this from Jack Benny and Johnny Carson, though probably Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy are in there somewhere too and deserve credit). At one time, I thought I could be Johnny Carson.

I don't know where John Brothers is today. Probably an accountant somewhere. Or maybe on death row.

Luckily, I managed to transcend my South St. Louis environment and upbringing. I found an escape through further education, a career in literature and philosophy.

James Inman was not so fortunate.

When I say that James Inman is very funny guy, I'm not just offering a clinical diagnosis. During my long and checkered apprenticeship as writer, I worked for several years as mental health therapist. I also wrote a humor column for The Kansas City Business Journal.

So when I tell you that Inman's "Greyhound Diary" is very, very funny, I mean: it made me laugh. Explosively, unpredictably and often.

As Miguel de Cervantes' DON QUIXOTE demonstrated in the 17th century, cruelty is often at the heart of humor. Steve Martin wrote CRUEL SHOES, which is a very funny book. Like Robin Williams, Martin has since stretched into other, more demanding roles as actor and, most recently, novelist. I haven't read SHOP GIRL and probably won't get to the movie until my third incarnation.

Knowing James as I do, I can say with confidence: there is no such hope for growth and development of his considerable talents as a cruel and very funny observer of the human farce. Or: his only chance lies with the development and distribution of newer and more powerful, mind-and-behavior-warping pharmaceuticals.

But I hope he won't take them.

Inman writes unusually well for a comedian and monologist (many of whom seem to have had Laura Bush for literacy teacher).

The particular beauty of "Greyhound Diary" and its author's gifts lies in James Inman's acerbity and sense of immediacy. Inman's terrain is that nether zone of paranoid malaise, conspiracy theories and sociopathic cabals littering an American landscape that has come to be increasingly "informed" by Reality TV, infomercials, videogame addiction, proliferating meth labs, squalid hype and vicious lobbying, the ubiquitous suspicions of a culture that is lost in some Cronenberg-esque, electronic wilderness on bad acid, a culture deranged and raging with denial. A civilization positively frothing at the gills.

"Greyhound Diary" takes the pulse of America and is dialing 911.
—Dennis Weiser, poet-novelist-philosopher-shaman
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Apr. 6, 2008 By Mr. Arthur Hinty
"Greyhound Diaries" James is a sick and twisted man -- no, I mean it, he really is -- and this book is as much a peek inside his own personal crazyosyncracies as it is an indictment of the Greyhound-riding, scum-chomping underbelly of America.
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Oct. 1, 2009 By steffan piper
"Night ... at the Grey Cafe ..." Having just finished reading this book and had to leave a positive review after having laughed myself silly for the last two nights. At a mere 79 pages, Inman's travel diary reads like a polished novella of the caliber of Paul Bowles. James Inman touches on a subject that many people have dealt with but few people have written about - without sounding like an ad brochure or meaningless moan from Lake Wobegon. This is a great literary tour through an unlisted United States.
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Jul. 6, 2008 By Brad Nelson
"Why haven't you read this book? 6 stars!" If you had, you wouldn't need me to tell you that it's like Heart of Darkness except not in the same era, doesn't take place in Africa and though he is being driven to places in air-conditioned coaches with "whisper quiet shock absorbers", Jim still finds stuff to complain about and learns nothing. What we learn is that James Inman is a very funny man. Or like Albert Einstein once said,"James Inman, you are a very funny man. But it's all relative."
This is the funniest documentation of someone losing their hair that I have ever read.
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Apr. 10, 2008 By emery
"The Greyhound Diary sickens me with delight!"
In a civilized society, there should be a tertiary option for
travelers like Inman. His car breaks down, he can't afford to fly but
he should never be thrust upon other travelers, no matter how down and
out their fortune they might be.

Alas, there seems only one option for citizens like Mr. Inman: The
Greyhound bus.

As I read this book I was nauseated and lifted at the same time. While
these stories made me feel wildly better about myself knowing that my
life is infinitely better than his, I know well enough that this was
not a work of fiction. In fact I was sure there were some events he
was... More > putting a milder shade of red on.

Finished with the manuscript, I had a less caustic reaction to it. It
told a story of desperation and need but not like so many other crap
books in print through the ages. This book was a tale of misery as
told through the eyes of a sociopathic genius. It's a study of the
American dream gone haywire. No one wins. Everyone is sick and the
entire story is a snapshot of the American lie. With a sharp shooter's
skill James Inman takes aim at the seedy underbelly of this great
nation.

The Greyhound Diary is the most important work to be written since The
Diary of Anne Frank. To be held hostage by one's own mind within a
system that conspires to keep it that way is more vile than any Nazi
in the attic hunting for children to murder. < Less
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Product Details

ISBN 978-1-4116-4922-4
Copyright James Inman (Standard Copyright License)
Edition Second Edition
Published March 4, 2008
Language English
Pages 84
 
Binding Perfect-bound Paperback
Interior Ink Black & white
Dimensions (inches) 4.3 wide × 6.9 tall

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