Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir

by Nick Flynn

Book Overview

Nick Flynn met his father when he was working as a caseworker in a homeless shelter in Boston. As a teenager he'd received letters from this stranger father, a self-proclaimed poet and con man doing... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393051390
• ISBN13: 9780393051391
• Release Date: September 2004
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.9" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A gritty tale of growing up and reconciliation

This memoir is a naked telling of the author's life from childhood to the present, but it's even more about his father, a con man who suffers from delusions of grandeur. Flynn didn't meet his father until the age of 27: the elder Flynn simply left home one day and never came back. Life wasn't easy for him, his older brother and their mother after that. The void left from the father-son relationship that never was is the primary focus of the volume and even though it's clear that Flynn wants to know and understand his father, he makes no serious moves to be closer to him. Even when the father becomes homeless on the streets of Boston, his son makes no effort to offer him shelter. Flynn tells his amazing tale in short, episodic bursts, delivering the story in thoughtful, well-executed vignettes. For many years, they are of a young man adrift. Flynn spends summers living in a houseboat, occasionally working construction and in a homeless shelter in the city. Along the way he plies himself with alcohol and experiments with any number of illicit substances. His mother, with whom he has taken to sharing drinks, takes her own life at the end of her struggle with drugs, drink and depression. One would expect a book like this to be filled with brooding about what could have been, or with guilt or self-doubt. Interestingly, it's not. The author lays out his life and doesn't ask the reader to feel sorry for him. Although a lot of details are sketchy, he speaks as though he has hurt and been hurt in equal measure. The book is also surprisingly funny in many places, and Flynn's delivery may remind some of the winning wiseacre David Sedaris. While the material is gritty and brutally honest, the writing is so good that it's hard to put down. Highly recommended.

too good!

most details concerning the story have already been explained. I'll only say this book seemed brutally honest to me, filled with humanity and short sentences which summed up whole worlds of considerations... it's painfully beautiful, great writing too, just read it!

"You will be haunted by this story ..."

I've just finished page 341, the last page. It's midnight here in these Connemara hills and I can't rest. I'm unsettled. I need to write something about this book. But what? Do I love it? Do I hate it? In the beginning I felt like quitting after every ten pages, then continuing after the next ten pages, and so on, and so on. I felt myself both repulsed and seduced. Eventually I gave in. Gave in to Nick Flynn's words, sentences, story, language, world, universe. The universe of Nick Flynn's disfunctional family: his alcoholic, delusional, absentee father and his suicidal mother, form the foundation of this memoir. In large measure it's a journey in search of his father, a man who lives by his wits, fuelled by alcohol, driven by the delusion/fear of writing the 'Great American Novel' (with a million dollar advance and the Nobel prize certainties in that delusion), to eventual homelessness on the street. It's also Nick Flynn is search of himself. But it's none of the above. It's truly a work of literature that sets out, on every page, to capture, and lose, the mystery of the human condition. It's surreal, a glimpse at a parallel universe that we may all be living. This book finds a kinship with Joyce and Beckett, and it's no wonder that Nick Flynn chooses an excerpt from Beckett's 'Endgame' to open the story: HAMM: Scoundrel! Why did you engender me? NAGG: I don't know. HAMM: What? Why didn't you know? NAGG: That it'd be you. You will be haunted by this story long after you've finished reading it.

Honest and Straight-forward

I love Nick Flynn's writing style. He is a poet who has written a book about his life, and mostly about his father's life, who fancies himself a poet also (though the jury is still out on that). Nick worked in a homeless shelter for years where he ran across his father who was either living on the streets or in the shelter. His father eventually gets a little apartment and Nick visits him occasionally to check up on him. The conversations with his father are hilarious -- although that might not have been the intention. The book is well written. It does not attempt to make excuses for the father's alcoholism or homelessness. It also doesn't attempt to make excuses for the fact that Nick did not pro-actively get his father off the streets. It simply relays the facts in a straight-foward manner of an off-beat and bizarre life. Bottom line: Excellent book and quick read. The book reads like poetry; it is beautifully written.

Heartbreaking, Comical and Endearing

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