Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

by Nick Flynn

Overview

The 20th anniversary edition of "a remarkable feat: a clear-eyed, inventive, and astonishingly honest guided tour of hell." —Elissa Schappel, Vanity Fair

Nick Flynn met his father when he was working as a caseworker in a homeless shelter in Boston. Another Bullshit Night in Suck City tells the story of the trajectory that led Nick and his father onto the streets, into that shelter, and finally to each other. The 20th anniversary edition, which features a foreword by Andre Dubus III, will introduce this modern classic to a new generation of readers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393081947
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	11/01/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	376
File size:	982 KB

About the Author

Nick Flynn is the author of This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire and three previous memoirs and six volumes of poetry. A professor on the creative writing faculty at the University of Houston, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Editorial Reviews

Flynn's talents are considerable -- he has a compelling voice and a wry sense of humor, especially about himself. He avoids the pitfalls that come with his subject matter: when writing about his recovery from alcohol and drug addiction, he keeps therapy-speak at bay; when describing his work at the shelter, he's utterly unsanctimonious.
— The New York Times

Vendela Vida

Although in synopsis the story may sound depressing, the prose swirls in graceful arcs that frequently rise to the level of poetry, leavened by mordant humor.
— The Washington Post

Michael Mewshaw

A noir family history told in small ladlings-perhaps all the reader may want to absorb at one time, or all the talented Flynn (Some Ether, 2000) can pour at a sitting. His mother left her husband when the author was four years old. In a snapshot taken in the early 1960s, "I crawl toward my father's face as we lay on the grass. . . . The father as ship, as vessel, holding the child afloat. But there was a parallel father as well-the drunk, the con, the paranoid. The father as ship, but taking on water, going down." Flynn didn't see his father again for 24 years. In the interval, his mother committed suicide after hovering "in the realm of vapor and shade," though not before her son had embarked on his drinking career: "By the time Saigon falls I'm drinking whatever liquor I can get my hands on." He's 15. When Dad finally gives him a call, they are both wrecks: the elder an alcoholic ex-con living flop to flop, rifling garbage cans, still making stabs at writing, but more concerned with how to stay dry on a rainy night; the younger a doper, part-time drug-runner, working in a homeless shelter, adrift on a "sea of forgetfulness." While the author ever so slowly, with lots of swings, gathers himself, his father takes to driving a taxi, more for scoping out sleeping venues than collecting fares. Flynn drives the homeless shelter van at night, each bundle a push-pull chance to encounter his father. The voice here is boiled just right: tough, articulate, mindful, without self-pity. There will be little bonding, and any knitting up of the ragged sleeve will have to wait for another time and plane. This is "the book that somehow fell to me, the son, to write," states the author, describing himselfas "my father's uncredited, non-compliant ghostwriter." So give credit now, where it is well due. Author tour. Agent: Bill Clegg

Kirkus Reviews

"Unlike the pity parties that too many memoirs have become, Night has no maudlin gestures, no 'inspirational' tones, no hysterics; it stares down emptiness with clear, dry eyes."

Entertainment Weekly - Troy Patterson

"Flynn's authentic voice... holds us rapt, keeping both the tragic and the redemptive possibilities open."

Village Voice - Darren Reidy

"In a perverse act of divine intervention, a life worth writing about was bestowed on a man actually able to write—in startling, beautiful, unsentimental prose.... It is crammed with beauty and wisdom, and everyone will love it."

GQ - Devin Friedman

"[Flynn's] story is eerie testimony to the potent influence of an absent parent. But Nick, a poet, is too subtle a writer to say so outright, and instead lets us draw our own conclusions with a delicate, poetic logic."

Boston Globe - Kate Bolick

"A remarkable feat: a clear-eyed, inventive, and astonishingly honest guided tour of hell."

Vanity Fair - Elissa Schappel

"Told with energy, critical reflection and sensitivity, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City is less a memoir than a study of one of America's darker conundrums: homelessness."

Los Angeles Times Book Review - Thomas Curwen