3.5

I liked this book and it was a fast read. Flynn is a good writer with an interesting life story. However, he jumps back and forth and it is hard to get a real sense of the timeline of events, which can get a bit frustrating at times. He also adds in some strange chapters that are related but seem repetitive or slightly disconnected to the book overall. In addition, though Flynn certainly doesn't spare any details, including ones that go deeply into his own issues, he winds up keeping the reader at an arm's distance from his emotions. The reader can infer them, but it seems like there were parts he just wouldn't let you close enough to. It was a strange because there was no shortage of feeling in the book and he explored the difficulties of homelessness well. I was interested in his emotions regarding his father and his mother. I wanted more of Nick, but we got more of his father, who was hardly in his life, yet always present. Other than noting his self-destructive behaviors, he didn't let us inside those much. I would have liked to have seen more, but my sense is that he wasn't ready to do that. Given what happened to him, I guess that's pretty understandable.

In Flynn’s 2004 memoir, in which he details his relationship and history with his father, he keeps the reader solidly grounded in time and place by the use of several devices, including switching verb tense, point of view, and adding dates at the beginning of chapters, or in letter and log excerpts. Flynn sets the stage in the first chapter, when he describes his homeless father’s efforts to use an ATM booth for shelter at night, by leading with the date,
"(1989)." Flynn can toss the reader from the present to the future without a moment’s notice. And it is this quick maneuvering that helps the reader remain tethered to place and time. Flynn’s use of temporal devices helps the reader experience the events as they unfold, unfolded, or will unfold. He switches tense and point of view with ease and always takes the reader right along with him. He has created a stable narrative with plenty of movement. As he layers time upon time, event upon event, he pushes the truth at the reader in a manner the reader cannot avoid. This is a significant memoir, an exceptional read.

Found the paperback at a local bookstore and almost didn't get beyond the second chapter... Frequent comma-splice errors had me wanting to either whip out the red pen or smack his editor upside the head. The story grew on me after a while, though... Similar to books like The Kurdish Bike, there is no clear good guy or bad guy; they all have things to answer for. Even with the dad - an easy character to dislike - you see the gradual slide downhill and realize that, sadly, he's also doing the best he can (within his external locus of control). In the end, I really appreciated the raw honesty about how they lived their lives and their motivations. Interested in reading more by this author.

This book was so good!

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Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, by Nick Flynn, 2004. This is a lovely memoir about how an abandoned son struggles to come to terms with the man his father has become and how he can come to understand him and perhaps even establish a relationship with him. The book was also made into a film in 2012, with Paul Dano playing Nick Flynn and Robert De Niro, playing the passionate, alcoholic and unforgettable father, Jonathan Flynn. This is one of the most moving memoirs I’ve ever read and it comes highly recommended.

Fascinating memoir/collage experience of Nick Flynn reckoning with his father's absence in his childhood and then his later presence as a guest when Flynn was working in a homeless shelter. The movement between his father's experiences and Flynn's own was kinetic and kept tension throughout the book. He managed to keep a lighter tone, with even some touches of humor, as he grappled with such heavy topics. Well worth a read.

First heard about this book when it was highly recommended to me by lauded book blogger NonAnon aka Citizen Reader -- a reliable source of good reads and someone who doesn't pull any punches for bad ones. But I dragged it home from the library three or four times and dodged it. Why? I had trouble getting "into" it. The first paragraph just turned me off. Now I know...you just have to get into or get past that peculiar first page... stay with it and you will be snagged. Exquisite, painful, gorgeously written. I am so glad I finally dug in and read it!

"Another Bullshit Night in Suck City" is a memoir that circles around with the concept of trying to figure out who you are and how you are/are not your parents. Nick Flynn's dad vanished from his life when he was a baby, he was reared by his mom and her string of lost boyfriends. His mother was raised with money and turned her back on it, his dad never had much and ended up with nothing. Drugs were ubiquitous and a big part of Nick's life (like they were for a lot of people who grew up in the 70s, myself included). His mom got caught up in a coke ring that Nick became a player in as well. Mom's drug addiction ended with her suicide -- and Nick went from unfocused to lost-at-sea. Partying hard, he lived on a leaky boat -- as rootless and adrift physically as he was mentally. Working in stints at a homeless shelter, he re-encountered his father. In one of those weird coincidences, his college sweetheart's family was a rock of stability in his father's drifting life. Things get tangled up, but there is no truth to unravel.

No easy answers, no happy ending. Just a story, but he tells it so very, very well. Best memoir I have read in ages.

A poet who teaches writing classes, Flynn was also "Artistic collaborator" on the provocative, fascinating documentary, "Darwin's Nightmare". I saw the dvd a couple years ago, just noticed his contribution on Flynn's website. Plan to re-watch the film this weekend.

This is one of my favorite books of all time.

you like booze, but you know that it systematically drowns all hope and goodness in your life, right? maybe also you have some love/hate issues with one or more of your parents? do you have four hours to blow? or, possibly a half hour every day for the next eight days?
well, ok then. i'll loan it to you if you don't spill coffee on it.

tNick Flynn’s Another Bullshit Night in Suck City tells the story of himself as a confused young adult who struggles to avoid following his long lost father’s footsteps to homelessness and misery. The book is set at Situate, Massachusetts, also known as “Suck City”, to the city of Boston around the time of 1960’s to 1990’s, when Nick’s father, Jonathan Flynn, was a young adult to present time when Nick, himself, is a young adult. Trying his best to avoid becoming the “town’s drunk” and failure just like his father was, Nick eventually accepted the fact that his fate of ending up like his father was inevitable after a series of events and the parallelism between him and his father’s lives. Nick reflects on all the stories he had heard about his father, an inconsiderate bigot who gives himself too much credibility for his writing and criminal deeds, and became even more agitated and afraid of his “destined future”. This book addresses the realistic hardships of individuals of their family relationships, which can essentially shape the person they become and how their future will unveil.
tThe chapter that stood out to me the most was “Two Hundred Years Ago”, which plays a significant role in this book by foreshadowing how Nick Flynn will eventually become a broke drunkard like his father and also exemplifies the main point of this whole memoir. In this chapter, Nick indicated that if the setting of his book was changed to two hundred years ago, his father’s reputation would become a huge aspect to his own life due to the fact that the people around him will view him the same way like they view his father. Nick said, “ They would say to themselves, or to whomever they were with, ”It’s his father, you know, the crazy one, the drunk,” and they couldn’t help but wonder what part of his madness had passed on to you,” suggesting that personality traits can be passed on to descendants as if it were genes. It was because of this chapter that I began to feel sympathetic towards Nick Flynn, as I start to understand how difficult it must have been to have an alcoholic as a father who had abandoned you while you were young.
tI’ve developed an emotional connection with this intriguing book as the years and years of Nick’s life pass by as I turn page after page, seeing how Nick grew and matured as his anger and confusion built on when he learns more and more about how terrible of a man his father was. Because of Nick’s impassiveness while telling such a depressing story, I felt like I experienced his feelings of anguish and frustration for him without him describing it. Looking through the eyes of Nick Flynn, I felt his shock when his mother committed suicide while he was having fun at college, his annoyance of Jonathan Flynn’s conceited attitude and how irrelevant and uncivilized he is, and his torment of what seems to be endless internal conflicts.
tThere were numerous things that I have learned from this nonfiction book such as how a homeless shelter operates to the difficulties of finding a job that barely makes enough money for a poor living. Regarding to life morals, from this book, I've grasped the deeper outlook on family, irony, and frustration. It seems to me that no matter how horrible or irritating family may be, everything will always fall back together which is depicted by how Nick’s mother and brother did care for him throughout all the “bullshit” they have been through and the connection between Nick and his father does, indeed, exist no matter how many years they have spent apart. The irony of it all is how much Nick tried to avoid his father, only to coincidentally meet him as a resident of a homeless shelter where he works. It amazes me how Nick can cope with all the issues that would drive him insane, yet he hardly self-pities himself and keeps moving forward.
tUltimately, the story of Nick Flynn and Jonathan Flynn is a story of overcoming their difficult relationship, struggling through harsh times with poverty and alcohol, and accepting each other’s past and moving on. It all adds up to a tale of teenage rebellion, family hardships, and arrogance. Another Bullshit Night in Suck City tells us that story very well, reminding us that each and every individual has traveled down the wrong path at least once in their life, only to realize that they screwed up and need to get back on track.
tI highly recommend Another Bullshit Night In Suck City because it allows readers to gain a new perspective by living through Nick Flynn’s constant issues with his father, money, and his own self. Having to encounter ten different men your mother dated and married throughout your life without ever meeting your real biological father to almost bleeding to death due to drunk driving on a motorcycle to having your mother commit suicide to having everyone shame you because of your violent, uncooperative father who happens to be at an unwelcomed resident at a homeless shelter that you’re working at is just the gist of the experience I have had while reading through Nick’s memoir. I became more hooked as the story progresses with Nick’s struggles and the drug abuse, alcoholism, and life-changing mistakes makes everything even more intense and fascinating. Not only is it interesting to read, but the story also reveals the lessons learned along the way, one of them being how Nick eventually accepted Jonathan Flynn for who he is, despite his arrogance and criminal record. In addition, I think this book would be a great start for readers who usually favor novels in the fiction genre and are hesitant to try nonfiction books. Although this book may be non-fiction, the style is very much similar to that of young adult fiction so it is fairly easy to comprehend, and it is even better knowing that such a tale happened in real life!

The credit for this book’s colorful title goes to Nick Flynn’s dad, the main protagonist in his memoir of coming to know himself through a chance reunion with his father. The story initially focuses on the early parallels between young Flynn and his estranged, alcoholic father. The author then brings us to a Boston homeless shelter where he held a minimum-wage job for 5 years after living alone on a houseboat near Boston Harbor. Father and son’s lives fatefully intersect in the shelter when his dad becomes a regular, but highly-volatile, unwelcome guest.

As a Boston native, I appreciated Flynn’s wry surveying of the City during his nightly voyages in the homeless shelter van. He was usually successful rounding up the deinstitutionalized and others made homeless by chance or by choice; however, he was often unable to corral his own father, that is, when he didn’t purposely avoid his usual haunts.

Flynn’s dad burned all personal and professional bridges long before he wound up on the streets, and it seems all he has left is his ego, buttressed by grandiose notions about his skill as a writer. He talks ad nauseam (to the reader’s amusement) about his great semi-autobiographical novel that has gone unrecognized (this tome may or may not have ever been completed). As proof someone was interested in this work, he frames “personal” notes (form rejection letters) he received from publishing houses.

Flynn is first a poet, and you see his skill as he deftly crafts lyrical passages about their shared mental illness and sometimes self-destructive streak of eschewing convention—and help when needed. For good or bad, they are both self-made men who have a talent for storytelling. You get the sense that Nick’s book serves to tell his own story, but also that of Flynn Sr., who never had the discipline or courage to get it down himself.

Nick Flynn's unflinching and unsentimental account of his largely absent and totally pathetic father and of his own work in a Boston homeless shelter raises many questions. Chief among these, at least to this reader, is what we owe, if anything, to another human being with whom we happen to have a direct genetic relationship--in this case, a father? I confess to going back and forth between two poles as I read Flynn's disturbing memoir. At one pole, a voice was saying, "He's your Dad, dammit. Try a bit harder to help the guy." At the other pole an equally strong voice countered, "The guy is a delusional jerk--stay as far away as you can." In the end, I think, Flynn handled the situation about as well as he could, after overcoming, or at least confronting, his own terrible problems with alcohol and drugs. This is a powerful book, and Flynn writes with great skill. At times, however, I did feel that his writing became just a bit too clever--as in the chapter "Santa Leer," to give one example.

Bekijk de film, want die is zoveel beter. In het boek is alles zo serieus en zwaar, waardoor het nagenoeg onleesbaar wordt. Door de humor in de film is die afschuwelijke wereld van daklozen en alcoholisten een pak beter te verteren. Het boek zit qua structuur nochtans goed in elkaar: via niet-chronologische fragmenten beschrijft een zoon de moeilijke relatie die hij heeft met zijn sinds peuterleeftijd afwezige vader. Hij wil weten wie die man is in een poging in het reine te komen met de zelfmoord van zijn moeder. Zware kost. De laatste pagina’s heb ik gescand, want ik was het beu. In de film wordt de overeenkomst tussen zoon en vader, die er is tegen wil en dank, veel grappiger uitgewerkt. Nog een minpunt: het boek staat vol schandalige taalfouten. Ongelooflijk hoeveel dt-fouten ik heb aangestipt, en niet van de minste. Een voorbeeld? ‘Het is gebeurt’.