Nick Flynn (1) (1960–)

Somehow simultaneously tender and candid, this memoir might qualify as required reading. Not only does it provide insight into the status of one of our society's most invisible and underrepresented castes, it also makes careful and thoughtful statements about human vulnerability, the tenuousness of relationships, and the status of narrative as a means of expressing the inexpressible.

Nick Flynn grew up not knowing his father, except through a series of self-aggrandising letters, claims of artistic written genius and altruism. The lies are his father’s legacy. His mother’s is her suicide, and the father figures who have drifted in and out of their lives. Later, he ends up working at a Boston shelter, where he inevitably comes into increasing contact with his homeless father, a situation he seems to find both appalling and compelling.

Set in Boston, this book is show more disjointed and depressing, even damaging; a perfect representation of the condition of homelessness. I didn’t enjoy it, but I’m pretty sure the reader isn’t meant to. The fact that the family gift for storytelling amounted to something is less a redemption than a curious ain’t-life-odd addendum to a round of alcoholism and drug use, the by-product of a reluctant quest to understand and describe a family history. show less

I won't deny it. I was browsing the poetry section at my local library and the only reason I picked this title up is because the name on the spine caught my eye. Another Bullshit Night in Suck City? I thought, what on earth could that be?.

As it turns out, it's a memoir about a man's struggle with his father's homelessness. At first the concept seemed a bit...conceited? This "poet" was going to try to make me feel sorry for him for his fathers homelessness? This wasn't the only problem with show more the novel at first. In the beginning, the story jumps around in time a lot and I had a hard time enjoying it. One chapter his father would be homeless, and then the next he'd be in jail. Was he in jail and then after being released became homeless, or was he homeless and then got hauled off to jail? It was easy to get mixed up at first.

However, I stuck with it, and as I read I became sympathetic towards the author. Having myself mostly grown up with an absent father (through divorce) I could understand how the author felt as a teenager whose only father figure was whoever his mother was dating at the time. While I never turned to drugs or alcohol, I found myself relating to the authors struggles to keep himself on track during his teenage years.

I think this is what put the book over the top to me. That, and my general (and perhaps somewhat morbid) fascination with addiction and mental illnesses. Reading Flynn's descriptions of his fathers addiction to alcohol, his fathers crazy antics, and even Nick's own struggle with drugs; were very satisfying for my twisted little brain to consume, and I eagerly devoured the pages to see what the "characters" would get themselves into next.

Both Nick and his father's stories are sad and eye-opening, but their valiant attempts to make it out of the dark places they have found themselves in is full of hope and inspiration. I really enjoyed Another Bullshit Night in Suck City and am glad my eyes didn't overlook that odd title. show less

As I read The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands by Nick Flynn, the word esoteric kept rising to the surface of my thoughts. Flynn's poems have a feel of peeking inside a world I'm unfamiliar with, maybe even a world I don't want to see but need to. There were moments I felt like the experiences Flynn shared in these poems lived outside a reality I could understand yet I felt compelled to keep reading, to explore the words, to see where each poem was going. The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands show more left me wanting to both raise my hands and sit on them to keep from raising them. show less