Join Me - Danny Wallace

As many people will admit, there is not much stranger than the behaviour of one’s older relatives. Perhaps those people haven’t considered the oddity involved in emulating those older relatives.

But stuck in a couple of years’ worth of doldrums after working with Dave Gorman on finding 54 Dave Gormans, Danny Wallace suddenly decides to pick up on a most unwitting, inspiring legacy.

For it is only with an old Swiss relative dying, does he find that the man involved, Gallus, had had a wish 60 years previously… a wish and a large farm. He wished for 100 of his fellow villagers to join him in a commune on the farm. The fact that there had only been 1000 villagers was not a problem, but the whole scheme collapsed when he reached a total of three.

Danny Wallace, then, decides, 60 years later, to be joined by 100 people, in tribute to the wishes of old Gallus. Not on a farm, and not even in Danny’s London flat, as that wouldn’t be big enough. Just joined in mind would be enough ~ 100 people united in some way, purely with any simple collective link.

Thus Danny advertised in Loot, with the open, welcoming words “Join Me”, and a request for a passport photo as proof of willingness to join. With the circulation of Loot, he was sure to attract many people towards his 100.

He got one.

But then he got that one’s flatmate, and then some more, and then he decided to spam everyone he could contact on the Internet, suggesting they join. They said bad things back to him, assuming he was some megalomaniac after their money, and calling him lots of rude insults, even “American”.

But by taking a more gently, gently approach, and his own website, and word of mouth, Danny gets his 100 joinees. But this is only a few chapters into the book. Why does it then continue, and with writing and not hundreds of blank pages? You’ll have to read up on the inspiration for Danny to have 1000 joinees ~ the same amount as were in Gallus’s entire village ~ yourself.

The hundred members, or joinees, were all well and good, but eventually even they began to smell a rat. A big problem was looming for Danny, one that would bring him incredibly close to his nemesis. The surprising thing, as all aware of the scheme were quick to tell him, was that all these people were joining, and all with no idea what they were joining. They had various reasons, “This is something mysterious for the bored, depressed, isolated and outcast generation” being one of the more considered, but no-one writing to Danny’s webpage forum could work out why they had been told to Join Me.

And neither did Danny. He knew one reason ~ to honour his ancestor. He also knew that if he told people that, especially after he waited around for 1000 members, they would feel betrayed, and very disappointed.

The telling episode when he found the reason for people to Join Him is one of the major turning points in this excellent book, and comes only a quarter of the way in. Consider that, as we leave the rest of the plot for your own discovery, and revel in the detailed story told to us in a great way.

(The premise of Join Me may well be known to many prospective readers, and is sort-of mentioned on the back cover, anyway. But let us just leave a slightly bent quote from page 165 to tease… “Now I have an excuse to do [what] society deems… wrong or odd.”)

As said above, Danny was part of the Dave Gorman Collection, in that he was one of the causes, the main witness, and in Dave Gorman’s book on the saga, actually the main writer too. It’s so nice to see that here he has taken theediscerning’s advice and delivered this story in a much more breezy and successfully humorous way. While the page numbers shoot up towards 400, one can easily rattle through this and find a lot of comedy, a lot of detail, and a heck of a lot of “I wish I’d thought of this”.

Yes, there are hardships in running this collective. The minor include having to send out 100 disposable cameras in 100 Jiffy bags, with three stamps on each, and having to lick the whole lot yourself. The major include everyone else calling the idea a cult. This persists to this day ~ the copy theediscerning took from his library was to be found in the religion section. To tell the truth, Danny includes lots of witty ways to suggest, jokingly of course, that he is the new Jesus. As he points out, Jesus could only manage twelve joinees (disciples, if you must); Danny opens chapter nine with 200.

But Jesus didn’t think of stopping halfway through his book, and decide to call it quits, thinking an evil criminal had beaten him. And less is said about the power of T-shirts in The Bible.

Just like the earlier Gorman book, there is never much worry about whether or not the target of people is reached; the fun is the exploit of the person living it. Especially as we know Danny from “Are You Dave Gorman?”, and we know Hanne, his Norwegian girlfriend, and we know just what will happen if she finds out he is crossing the world on another harebrained boys-at-play scheme. And we eventually find she looks just as we’d imagined. Bless ‘em!

The details in the story are much funnier than the first scheme too, ranging as they do from unusual reasons for unwanted Indian takeaways, to giant squid, to Inverness Reverends with a great way with blue language, to the oddest cocktail bar Paris has to offer. We can ignore the fact that there is great detail to the conversations reported, so either they’ve been dressed up for humour, or Danny knew from the start there was another hit book in this project and taped every little word as he went along, and just wallow in the bizarreness of real life, told very clearly and enjoyably.

This book is truly one that is hard to categorise, as it covers travel, autobiography, a bit of sociology (the same Reverend has his own theories on group membership, and what would be better for the collective’s success, which have a great bearing on the book’s outcome), and of course serves as a self-help guide to forming your own cult.

This brings us to the only flaw in the tome ~ one wants to abandon the book, and either Join in right away, or more worryingly, get cracking with one’s own collective. It’s just, how to advertise, now that “Join Me” has become a well-worn way? How can we imitate Danny’s creation without people accusing us of stealing his ideas? And the main problem that hit Danny still stands ~ what would we have to offer as a reason for people joining?

And, how could we hope to write such a successfully entertaining and humorous book from the results? We could not. This book is far superior to the book form of the search for Dave Gormen, and is the perfect marriage of excellent story with the ideal person to tell it. Five stars.

If only there was another quirky way of having such an adventure and making a good comedy book out of it as a result ~ any suggestions?

Amazon list Join me at £9.99, for an edition bearing the ISBN 009188800X. There is also a cheaper edition, also from Ebury Press, which “came out” June 2004. Hmmm…