Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

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 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 show more 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 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 show more 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

The teaser of this book is that author working in a homeless shelter (the Pine Street Inn in Boston) when one day his father enters to spend the night. Sounds unlikely, but this book is a memoir. Flynn works quickly to break down the preconceived notions of a ne'er do well father and a good son who works to help the homeless. He does this by telling of the struggles of his own life with substance abuse, crime and aimlessness. In fact, there's a lot of his father in him for not having known one another his first 20 odd years. Flynn quixotically pursues getting to know his father and thus understanding himself, and this book is the result. Written poetically, this book is a sucker punch in the gut.

"Nothing in the shelter makes more sense show more to me, makes me understand my purpose more, than to kill bugs on a homeless man's flesh, to dress him in donated, cast-off clothes, to see him the next day, laughing beside a burning barrel." p. 48

"Most of the job consists of learning how to hide, of how to appear busy, of killing time. In this way it's a continuation of my twelve years of public school. Hiding seems the point of everything." p. 139

"…I see no end to being lost. You can spend your entire life simply falling in that direction. It isn't a station you reach but just the general state of going down. Once you make it back, if you make it back, you will stand before you long-lost friends but in some essential way they will no longer know you." - p. 182 show less

Nick Flynn har ikke set sin far i mange år, da han i 1987 pludselig dukker op på det herberg for hjemløse i Boston, hvor Nick arbejder. Faderen er alkoholiker og fantast, en bankrøver og nasserøv, som har svigtet alle, han har kendt, men som i egne øjne er et miskendt geni, som bare lige mangler at skrive sin store roman færdig.

Mødet bliver startskuddet til Nicks fortælling om sin egen opvækst med broderen og en mor, som forsøgte at få hverdagen til at fungere for sig selv og sine børn, og efterhånden viser det sig, at Nick som voksen er tæt på at følge i sin fars fodspor med lidt for mange stoffer, for megen sprut og manglende lyst til at tage ansvar for sit liv. Og selv om Nick ikke kan tilgive sin far og f.eks. ikke show more tilbyder ham at overnatte i sin lejlighed er det ironisk nok ham, som med denne erindringsbog fuldbyrder faderens drøm om litterær berømmelse.

Det er en usentimental erindringsroman med noir-stemning, som er skrevet med stilistisk overskud. Et mesterligt og bevægende dobbeltportræt af to mænd, som er forbundet i livet, hvad enten de vil det eller ej.. ( ) show less

I like memoirs as there are so many different ways for someone to make their way thru this world. Suck city tells of the journey of Nick Flynn’s life as it intersects with his dad who essentially abandoned him at the age of 6 months. Alcoholism impacts both their lives but Nick manages to support himself, work at a shelter where he crosses paths with his dad. Nick manages to get the help he needs while his dad remains an alcoholic. This story can be a little familiar as there are a lot of substance abuse memoirs. However there are a few aspects which make this email unique. Nick kept the letters his dad sent him in a box so that figures in the writing. Nick is also a poet, filmwriter, etc. and that is evident in his writing. I show more didn’t particularly care for the King Lear script chapter but it was different and I think people may like it. show less

A lens into the world of being homeless in Boston, in the eyes of a counselor at a shelter. The author reconnects with his estranged father, when the father is a guest at the shelter. Brilliantly written, with rich layers of metaphor for the human condition, and a plot trajectory worthy of Herman Melville.