The Last Days of August by Jon Ronson
(Disclaimer: This review is going to be rather short-ish.)
Soooo, what do you know about the suicide of famed adult film star August Ames? Read this before continuing. All caught up? Good, let us proceed.
This was a free audiobook for me and I always like the journalism side of true crimes because, if done correctly and respectfully, it gives the reader a great perspective on the crime that past. This time around Jon Ronson, a critically acclaimed journalist, focused on the suicide of August Ames which took place after a backlash of a tweet she posted about an industry norm: man performing in both gay and straight porn.
However, Jon doesn’t’ just focus on the suicide itself. He spread his parameter to the industry as a whole and EVERYBODY that knew August Ames and her behavior before, during and after the infamous tweet. It even dove into her childhood that her brother had no problem with divulging as he “had no secrets.” But, it also did a couple more…direct things, too.
It exposed her surviving ex-boyfriend and his many borderline sociopathic behaviors along with proving the innocence of Jaxton Wheeler, a bisexual pornstar, who received some backlash of his own for the responsive tweet he made. To make Jon’s progression even more troublesome for the industry, he explored how the porn industry, itself, can create and/or amplify the inner demons of its performers that REALLY pissed off a lot of big-name figures. Eventually, he managed to get everything he needs for his documentary and showed that, in his research, there was a lot of blame to be passed around here including directors who did nothing when things went bad.
I would say more but, since I’m giving this a B for professionalism and boldness, I rather just implore you to give this audiobook and nice lesson to.
