Another Bullshit Night In Suck City: A Memoir

Rating:
Summary: Heartbreaking, Comical and Endearing
Review:
Nick Flynn's prose in his book "Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir" has the feel of a great writer. He is able to capture the essence and flavor of the homeless, the shelters, the life and times of a young man who is trying to find his way.

Nick Flynn's father, Jonathan, told him when he met his father at a homeless shelter, "that life on the streets of Boston was just another bullshit night in suck city". How aptly that must describe life of the homeless. Jonathan was an aimless man looking for the quick buck when he met Nick's mother, Jody. Jody was from an affluent family, and the young man was given many chances by this family to succeed in one business after another. Dad just couldn't make it- alcohol, drugs and lack of responsibility took precedent. Dad left the family, wife and two sons, and left them on their own. He went from job to job, drug to drug, prison to no real life on the outside, and became a homeless person. Nick during this time grew up also looking for drugs and alcohol, and finally cleaned up his act. His mother committed suicide and left him bereft. He saw his dad a couple of times, but they were not successful meetings. Nick went on to become a case worker at a homeless shelter in Boston. His bold writing of life in the shelter gives us a very clear idea of the sadness, humility and humanity that makes up such a life. Into this setting comes Jonathan, the dad. How strange to meet your father at your job, particularly at a homeless shelter. This meeting led to a father/son relationship, of sorts. Nick's brother wanted nothing to do with his father and absolutely refused to see him. Nick is left to form a relationship of sorts; one born out of grief, hate and of course, love. The pattern of the relationship is parental- the son becomes the parent. But during this time Nick learns about his father and mother's life and is able to distill old demons. And, he is able to start his novel.

Nick Flynn has created a large disturbance with this novel. It has been well received because of the story and because of his writing. This novel grabs you, and it is hard to put down. I look at the homeless in a different light. When I walk the streets of Boston, I shall look at the bus stops, "T" station and other areas where homeless congregate in a different manner. This novel is an eye opener, and it deserves unprecedented praise. I shall keep an eye on Nick Flynn- he has a future. Highly recommended, prisrob


Rating:
Summary: I Thought My Family Was Dysfunctional
Review: A few years back it was the IN thing to talk about how dysfunctional our families were. Then after a while we learned that all families were dysfunctional. It was indeed a wonder that any of us made it to adulthood. But while my family was indeed dysfunctional, it was a model of sanity compared with this one.

Barely surviving himself, Nick Flynn was working in a homeless shelter in Boston when his father came in off the streets searching for a warm meal and shelter. It was the second time that Nick had met his father in 25 years. From this beginning a relationship is built. It was difficult, struggling, but still a relationship.

A book generating uncommon feelings as the two men go through life.

Rating:
Summary: Revelation, upon revelation...couldn't put it down!
Review: Flynn's gift for creating an intimacy with a population not many of us get to know or care about shines as luminously as a neon sign in a midnight city. I have read reviews that called this book "comic" and found that odd. Tender, soulful, honest as poop, it explores homelessness as only someone who has been down in the trenches could. It also breaks our heart over and over again, but with such finesse that the brutality and pain that drives the plot never becomes more interesting than the sincere seeking of the narrator for the fatherly love he can never really find. This is the heart and soul of the book.

But it is the writing itself that really lifts this adventure as it slithers into some of the rawest environs of inner city despair to transcendant heights. The racing narrative is muse-driven. Beyond mere style. Poetic and unexpected and always keeping its eye on the prize--understanding and compassion amid incomprehensable human tragedy---the writer's ability to bring us inside his viewpoint is masterly.

This is a writer's book. Anyone who has ever tried to express the elusive essence of reality has to be mind-boggled by Flynn's ability to be both intimate and reporterly at the same time.

Read it and you will never again be able to see a homeless person or alcholic in the same way again.

This is not one of those "dysfunctional family" books meant to entertain. This book has the potential to change your most basic assumptions about madness and the people who are connected to the lost souls who wander our streets. Flynn somehow, magically, brings us right into this family. All the characters in this book and the narrator himmself in the end become "ours".

Rating:
Summary: HEARTBREAKING WORK OF SMOLDERING GENIUS
Review: I love it when I find a book that I can't wait to come home to! Nick Flynn beautifully weaves the story of his life with his father's. Flynn's style is decidedly unemotional in the obvious ways but the book can get heavy in a way that is so rewarding. The author doesn't cut his perceptions up into tiny tedious details and feed it to you slowly so you can understand... rather he invites you to come and look at the table he has set and take what you want.

The book isn't funny in the Ha Ha sense but there are laughs, especially with Nick's father, The Beautiful Loser- and bittersweet laughs even when the father is just a loser. To me one of the most powerful parts of the book is when Flynn describes a cold winter night when a homeless man makes the rounds as late night diners and coffee shops close and give way to crowded doorways and steamy sidewalk grates. I laughed out loud at the comparison of men on sleeping on grates to dumplings steaming on a rack... almost cried at the notion of a life spent trying to be invisible in order to hang out in public spaces for hours without getting kicked out. A teenage pastime of mine was to interview street people with an old video camera and I always liked how a man slumped in a doorway would straighten up with pride
at the notion of someone wanting to know about him. Flynn is great at describing
aspects of homelessness that might not occur to most people. Flynn himself comes off as an appealing mix of tough/bitter/punk rock guy and perceptive/empathetic zen poet. It's refreshing to read a modern memoir that isn't all ego based. I found his story-his dealing with his past and incorporating that into an 'adult' life for what seems to be really purpose driven- Extremely inspirational.

Rating:
Summary: In social services? Read this
Review: I think those of you in social services will find this book particularly riveting. Flynn is simultaneously a social worker, the estranged son of one of his own homeless clients, and perilously close to falling apart himself. The clarity, honesty, compassion and humor with which he sees from all three perspectives gives the book three-dimensionality. His struggle to reconcile the three perspectives is harrowing, humbling, and perhaps hallowing. Makes a hell of a story.

Rating:
Summary: Family of Lost Souls
Review: Memoirs are often written by people who for some reason think their lives and inner thoughts would be interesting to other people. Why read about the totally mundane and average life of someone you never heard of, or a self-worshipping celebrity who throws out a quickie book upon getting a big cash advance? Well you have nothing to worry about in this extremely hard-hitting and disturbing memoir from Flynn, who has led a fascinating and tragic life. This is a memoir that actually matters, mostly covering Flynn's very strange relationship with his very strange father. His father is a small-time conman and drifter who fancies himself a great writer, but after leaving Flynn's mother spent decades in and out of prisons and homeless shelters, one of which the younger Flynn just happened to work at when he grew up. The elder Flynn left heartbreak and emotional suffering in his wake, and here his son gives us the awful details of the resulting suicide of his mother, his own bad trips down the roads of thuggery and addiction, and his unsuccessful attempts to get to know his increasingly downward-spiraling father. An added bonus of this book is a gut-level look into the lives and real travails of the homeless. Here Flynn has written a good substitute for the classic American literature that his father trumpeted about writing for decades. [~doomsdayer520~]

Rating:
Summary: Gritty and raw
Review: Mr. Flynn lays it all bare in this beautiful, raw and gritty memoir. He seems to spare no pain and touches on every difficult emotion he must've felt in bringing this memoir to life. I cannot begin to imagine the depths of pride his mother might have felt had she been able to read and appreciate her son's organic talent for writing.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding
Review: Nick Flynn has written, arguably, the best memoir of the year. Do not be turned away by the hipster title: this memoir transcends the parameters of the genre with impeccable style and maturity. While the narrative is punchy and often jarring, the prose soars, weightless and atmostpheric. There is a sublimity to the language, and its accompanying narrative, that Flynn can call his own. This is not a confessional. It challenges the tradition of memoir that seeks reconciliation, first by resisting that tendency, and then, ultimately, by destroying its possibility. In this sense it is an aporia, bearing witness to the true and often terrifying relationship to the father. Please buy this book and read it, and then give it to many others.


Rating:
Summary: Regional references
Review: Whether you are from New England or not, Nick Flynn's new memoir has great potential to resonate as a work that describes an often ignored problem all over this country. Admittedly, my initial interest in the book stemmed from my own upbringing in suburban Boston. While knowledge of the multiple localities that Flynn writes of is helpful, his self-effacing style of writing is so impressive (given that he is writing about his own father) that I often found myself mesmorized by the way in which he was able to write the memoir from such a seemingly objective viewpoint. Halfway through the book I made a trip into the city for some post-Christmas shopping, and found myself becoming more cognizant of the homelessness around me. After reading this book, it is hard not to. Perhaps what is most impressive is that Nick was able to channel all of the negative aspects of his life through art and come out with a fantastically well written book.

Rating:
Summary: Biblically powerful story of a prodigal father
Review: Words escape me.

Nick Flynn's memoir pulses with power and seethes with anger. It delights, confounds and stuns the reader with page after page of painfully beautiful narrative.

Flynn's story revolves around his relationship with his prodigal father, an alcoholic ne'er-do-well, would-be novelist and occasional felon who lives at the fringes of society and almost completely avoids the shattered remnants of his family--until the night he checks himself in at the homeless shelter where his son works.

Through the course of the book, Flynn's father reveals himself to be an anti-Odysseus far more pathetic and contemptible than Joyce's Leopold Bloom. Here we see a man who never takes ownership of his life or actions, a man awash in vodka and lies. One senses that, in describing him, Flynn is describing everyone one passes on the streetcorners of urban America--his father is not so much Everyman as he is Everybum.

And yet. One of the books greatest strengths is that Flynn pulls no punches when describing his own life, his alcoholism and drug use, his periods of waste and dissipation--thanks to his honesty, he comes across not as hero, but as human. Flynn moves and lives in a panorama of blighted urban hell as scary as that in "Taxi Driver," a wasteland populated by people who sometimes slide across that invisible barrier into lives of desperation and ruin, of panhandling in subway stations and sleeping on steam vents; he fears helping his father too much because he doesn't want to become him.

Only minor quibbles come to mind. Flynn's paragraphs run long and his chapters end quickly, although once one gets into the book, one stops caring about such minor stylistic idiosyncracies. He also occasionally veers out of the realm of nonfiction and into farcical Joycean scenes that, while tremendously entertaining, leave one wondering how much of them (or of other parts of the book) are products of the writer's imagination.

Still, this is a must-read, one of those books that ends up being about far more than itself. Its universal and timeless themes make it great, a book that future scholars might study to learn about inner-city America in the late 20th century, or that English teachers might cheerfully assign to their students. Because, in the end, its characters remain in one's head not because of their roles in society's grand theater, not because they're homeless people, rescuers, alcoholics, writers, convicts, deadbeats and poets, but because they're fathers, sons, brothers--and most importantly, people.