Case of the Neurotic TV Doppelganger.

AMES, Jonathan; CHILDREN'S stories; BIOGRAPHY (Literary form); ORAL interpretation of fiction; AUTOBIOGRAPHY

THERE'S a line between authentic autobiography and creative self-mythology, and Jonathan Ames routinely skirts it. No: he expertly and flagrantly dances around it. As an essayist, novelist and downtown personality, he chronicled his peculiar urban exploits -- getting colonics and hanging with transsexuals -- for The New York Press in the late 1990s; became a favorite performer at the Moth storytelling series, for his genital-warts-and-all oversharing; and devised a career as a foul-breathed amateur boxer, the Herring Wonder. Very little of his life -- or body -- has gone unmined. But he would like people to know that, contrary to the title of his 2000 anthology, ''What's Not to Love: the Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer,'' he is not actually a pervert. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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