Book Review: Assholes Finish First

Assholes Finish First

Tucker Max

Gallery

416 pages

It is not often that I need to do this, but I must begin my review with a disclaimer.  If you have a more conservative sense of humor and don’t appreciate stories about grown men drinking themselves into oblivion and shamelessly whoring themselves out to misguided women, then this book is not for you.  In fact, it will probably anger you.  As Max himself explains,

My name is Tucker Max, and I am an asshole. 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 dickhead. But, I do contribute to humanity in one very important way: I share my adventures with the world.

In fact, truer words have never been spoken.  Max’s stories in both Assholes Finish First and I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell border on the absolutely unbelievable.  In fact, my husband (who loathes Tucker Max with an unbridled passion), is quick to surmise that Max’s stories are fiction.  I concede myself that there is likely some embellishment involved, but damn do I get a good laugh from them!

IHTSBIH is Max’s first book, which is a compilation of stories from his website www.tuckermax.com.  Some of you may have seen the movie that is based off the book, also entitled I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.  The two books are identical in nature—they just involve stories of Max’s debaucheries.  Really, they probably don’t need to be read in order and it would be hard to say which one comes out on top.

My favorite story from Assholes Finish First would have to be the one about TuckerFest, where Max meets up with some of his fans and drives an RV to Jersey .  Sounds pretty innocuous, right?  That couldn’t be further from the truth.  I giggled to myself throughout the entire story, and it was a long one.  I loved the picture Max included of one of his female fans—let’s just say that the fact that before he met them in person, all Max knew about his “fans” was that they spent hours idolizing him on an online chat thread.  I would have thought it would have occurred to him beforehand that maybe some of these people just didn’t have a life.  But I digress.  You can probably see where this is going.

Then we have the whole debacle with a completely annihilated Max being chased through Harlem in an RV while a crazy woman in a Jeep is tailing him for denting her car with a beer can.  How did that happen, you might ask? Only because Max and his equally drunken comrades were driving down NY’s freeways throwing all sorts of detritus out the windows at passing cars.  Which obviously leads to another problem—how funny is it to read about someone doing two very potentially damaging things, 1. driving while under the influence and 2. throwing objects from a moving vehicle at other moving vehicles.

Max is the first to admit that his conduct is outrageous, and the RV story in particular also included its own disclaimer.  That didn’t stop me from feeling guilty at thinking the whole thing was funny.  And I do.  I think Max’s antics are utterly and completely hysterical.  Maybe my humor is too much like that of a teenage boy!  I will say this though—I find Tucker Max, or at least his books, to be the male equivalent of Chelsea Handler and her books.  In fact, when I met Chelsea at a book signing for her second book, my sisters and I told her she needed to have Max on her show.  Unfortunately, her response was something along the lines of “Who is Tucker Max?”  But yes, if you like Chelsea ’s books and aren’t offended by her sense of humor, I would recommend you try Tucker Max.

Other Reviews:

None that I can find!

I borrowed this book from my local library.