Tucker Max—the irreverant, politcally incorrect, borderline misogynist author of I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell—is calling it quits after writing just three books.
From an interview with Forbes (via Abnormal Returns):
And now, the man who can sell all those books shares in an exclusive with Forbes, he is retiring.
Not from writing—but from the “fratire” genre that made him famous in his first two books. After his third book Hilarity Ensues comes out in a few weeks, there will be no more like it coming from him.
“I never thought I would do that forever. There are many people who are envious of what I do, and they’re like, ‘you can’t do this forever’ blah-blah-blah. And I’m like, ‘Well who said I would?’ I mean, that’s like going up to Dirk Nowitzki and saying ‘Well, you’re not going to win NBA titles forever, so. . . ’ Of course he’s not. Nothing is forever. So why would the lifestyle I lead in my twenties be forever? I never thought it would be forever. It was what it was when it was.
“That’s why I’m retiring from writing more of these stories at the end of Hilarity Ensues. I publicly, explicitly retire. I want to be free to move on with my life, and I think the way I have to do that to set a public end to this.”
Max is often credited for creating a new literary genre which The New York Times dubbed as "fratire."
If you hadn't heard of him before, Max would be the first to tell you unapologetically just how successful he is as a writer. From the same interview with Forbes:
“I’m so far up the power law curve of book sales, dude,” Tucker told me. ”The very tip-top are J.K. Rowling and Stephen King, Stephanie Meyer, James Patterson, and Paulo Coelho. People who sell tens or hundreds of millions of books. That’s just a different game. That’s like, the Bible. They’re competing with the Bible. I’m not in the Bible tier.” (I can hear the religious among readers thinking: thank goodness!)
“I’m on the tier below that. But still, on the power curve, I’m all the way at the tip. I’m on the same tier as Tim Ferriss or Chelsea Handler or Jeanette Walls—we’re in the 2, 3, 4 million range.”
Many will miss him. And many won't.
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