I thought this book would affect me more than it did. The back of the book has a synopsis and a list of quotes from reviews, which is what made me think I'd enjoy this book more. One review caught my eye, from GQ magazine. It says, "...a life worth writing about was bestowed upon a man actually able to write..."

Firstly, everyone has a life worth writing about. There's poetry and beauty and a story to tell about everyone's life; a good writer will make the most mundane circumstance seem electric. Secondly, the author didn't really write about his life. The truly beautiful prose was reserved for talking about his father's life or how his father's life impacted his own. I think there was a single paragraph dedicated to how he went back to school to get his degree and moved to NYC. Those are momentous occasions in a person's life, even in the context of writing about your father. To contrast that, there was a whole chapter dedicated to words and phrases used to describe alcohol -- both he and his father were alcoholics.

I didn't learn a thing from this book, other than where to find places to camp out if I ever find myself homeless in Boston. I did enjoy reading the book, but not as much as I thought I would have, which is always disappointing.

I spent a lot of time while reading this wondering who I know that will be resigned to a fate similar to that of the father in these memoirs. Who will wind up past the prime of their life having talked for years of what they will accomplish and have really accomplished nothing? I can unfortunately name a decent sized handful of people who run this risk at this point in their lives. Closer to thirty than to twenty, and wasting months of their lives on drinking binges, babbling about their potential, but not wanting to do anything besides their current lifestyle. Of course, they hide their virtual uselessness by making (not especially good) music. And I'm a big fan of music, and realize that in order to make anything good you will probably make a lot of stuff that isn't. However, to pin all your hopes for your future on making it big in music just isn't that realistic. Even less so now that the music business has been in recession for longer than the rest of the nation can boast. I wish there were anything to be said about it that wouldn't be taken as annoying nagging, but these people will run the course of their lives however they see fit, regardless of what is good for them or what they're capable of. It's relatively foreign to me, having been raised to believe that anything you get in life should be something you have earned, and that if you didn't earn it, you probably don't deserve it. I believe life is all about working hard. Not that I've been doing much of it myself lately, but being in this position has only made me realize just how much it's not the life for me. My self worth is at an all-time low, and with where I stand on such things it damn well should be. Luckily, I will be starting to go full-time to school in about a month, and that should be repairing to my self image and mindset. Anyway, it's funny that the setting for these memoirs is Massachusetts, because it only drove the point home for me about the failings of the lifestyle, having grown up on the Cape. I know there are people everywhere that wind up on the streets, finally running out of people to use and possessions to hock. But I keep seeing people from back home confining themselves to the slacker, constantly partying social life. I feel that Cape Cod is a destructive place to live, and I'm beginning to wonder if there's something about the whole state. Or maybe even the coastal areas of New England. I doubt that is in fact the case, but wouldn't it be odd if somehow the places that birthed out nation are beginning to be left behind in disgust? Anyway, back to the matter of the book, it was definitely interesting, sometimes almost painful, and altogether hard for me to put down.

I've just finished Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn. It was a difficult book; and hard not to wonder how Flynn survived his 'upbringing'. Such as it was.
The film version starring Robert DeNiro and Paul Dano, was released as Being Flynn
I imagine Another Bullshit Night in Suck City would be tough to put on a marquis, I've seen plenty of internet mentions of the book where they clean up the title.
What you can't do is clean up the lives that the book is based on.
Some people have clean, organized, orderly lives, successful and happy lives. Jonathan Flynn's life is not one of them.

Flynn, the father is basically a fuck-up, an achoholic with grandiose visions of himself as America's greatest living writer. In truth, the book he has been working on for almost all his adult life is a gathering of notes and scraps, possible beginnings which dwindle down into nothingness. And yet it is the one constant which sees him in and out of prison, in and out of homeless shelters, in and out of his own life.

I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for Flynn to see his father - which he did only on a couple of occasions while he was growing up - in this condition. But he heard about him and received letters from him over the years. He knew he lived on park benches,that he pretended to have business at an ATM so he could stay in the warmth of the lobby, wrapped himself in plastic bags to keep out the cold and damp. It must have been incredibly painful as well as shameful. He talks about not helping his father for fear of spiralling down in the same direction. Reading about his father, it's easy to see how he could suck the life right out of you.


Flynn, the son, barely escapes the sins of the father. He drinks, does drugs. His mother, also an alchoholic, after leaving Jonathan and taking Nick and his brother Tad, goes through a string of men and seems mostly to be barely in the picture. Flynn says she works at various night clubs and restaurants, almost always seems to find some guy, married or not, to help her out. From an early age it doesn't seem like anyone is helping him chart a course so it's understandable that he drifts. I wonder if he drifts into working at a shelter because it's his only option or because he unconsciously is seeking out a relationship with his father?

Reading this memoir was a little like being a looky-loo at an accident. I found myself morbidly fascinated and also horrified. I personally prefer stories that unfold in a more traditional narrative and at times found his manner of revealing the story a bit confusing but I liked it enough to keep going.
Finally, knowing that after everything, Flynn is a real writer who teaches a course every year at the University of Houston, is a relief. I was comforted to know that he broken free of his family's curse but looking at his face I can see the scars; they're still there in his eyes. If you don't mind a bit of heartbreak, you might give this gritty true story of a man finding his way to his father a try.

2.5

This book is a memoir by a guy who did not have a relationship with his father until he met him serendipitously at a homeless shelter where Nick worked. Flynn’s writing sometimes waxes poetic with his small anecdotes about growing up without a dad, and the trouble that he often found himself in. The Patty Hearst Story and Creature Double Feature are familiar events to my childhood as well, which makes for a nostalgic moment. This was made into a movie starring Robert DeNiro and Julianne Moore; it is entitled Being Flynn because apparently the memoir's title is somewhat offensive. By the way, Nick Flynn is from Scituate and one of our former staff members used to hang out with Flynn and his wife in Provincetown.

wowowowiwowowowowowowowowowow

I don't give a rave review to very many books, but Flynn's book is one I will cherish and re-read throughout my life. He writes with honesty that feels in the moment, and, as the reader, you sort of follow his thinking as he finds his way out of one life into another, and I would say, better one. The parent in me cringes as I read, wanting to shake his parents by the shoulders and shout, "Wake up!" I recognize his father's demons in some of my own family members so, while I wouldn't say I developed a new empathy, it did shine a light on the subject in a way I have never thought about or understood before.
At the end, Flynn writes, "Perhaps it is our fear, that in the silence between stories, in the moment of falling, the fear that we will never find the one story which will save us, and so we lunge for another, and we feel safe again, if only for as long as we are telling it." That is a profound statement, at least for me.
I had the pleasure of attending a reading by Nick Flynn from his poetry and his new book last year. He truly has the soul of an artist, and we are lucky indeed to have his thoughts in our midst.

I was reluctant to give this five stars--it's not an easy experience. But it's definitely amazing. Don't confuse it with just another quirky family memoir: it has emotionally raw and real things to say about alcoholism, mental illness, heredity, and the homeless. (Each person from the shelter is drawn so distinctively it makes you realize how reductive and dismissive the term "the homeless" really is).

I make it sounds harsh and dark--which it is--but there is also a deadpan sense of humor running through it, eliciting the relieved, nervous laughter you get when you just catch yourself overbalancing on a rickety ladder. Flynn takes a lot of stylistic chances to keep making the story immediate and arresting. Not everything works--for me, the Lear chapter doesn't quite cut it--but so many other chapters ("Ham" and "Cloverleaf" and "Same Again") are just stunning.

I think there might be a great book within this good one, if a good editor had brought some more order to the chaos.

A beautiful reflection on Flynn’s relationship with his father, a homeless alcoholic. Flynn is an amazing writer - every sentence is just damn perfect. We never really know how he feels about his father which feels so very authentic; many of us have conflicting relationships with a parent and to try and put our finger on our feelings is not only tough, it’s virtually impossible. Flynn skips the analysis and just tells a spellbinding story. What a great book by a top notch author.

Memoirs make up a tricky genre; one that is very much hit-or-miss, as the writer must tell their personal stories while making it accessible to an audience of strangers. Nick Flynn may have succeeded as a poet, with collections such as Some Ether and Blind Huber, but poetic language doesn’t cut it in the memoir department. Another Bullshit Night in Suck City is vividly written yet unmemorable; a story of triumph over tragedy that does not triumph as a creative work of nonfiction.

Part of the memoir chronicles Flynn’s life from his upbringing by a single mother to his drug-addled teenage years to his adulthood as a social worker, working at the homeless shelter where he met his wayward alcoholic father, long homeless due to mental illness. The other plotline chronicles the story of his father as a creative yet aimless young man entering a marriage of convenience, abandoning his family and succumbing to illness and addiction. These plotlines intersect while alternating between past and present in a depiction of Flynn’s conflicting feelings towards his father, his own struggles with addiction, and the dispelling of his personal demons.

The memoir contains an episodic and meandering narrative, partly made up of small chapters that are merely meditations on Flynn’s life. These serve little to no purpose in the story and read more as journal entries than as part of a story. Since much of the book is made up of description and not dialogue, Flynn adds a creative touch to the few scenes that contain dialogue by writing those chapters as play scripts; a method which, while interesting in theory, falls flat in its attempt to be innovative.

One can easily discern from his writing that Flynn is more a poet than a novelist, in that his strengths lie more in providing imagery than in telling a coherent story. While the story in itself is ultimately forgettable, the vivid, gritty descriptions of the streets of Boston and its homeless population are more likely to make a lasting impression on readers. Flynn certainly wields the poet’s ability to take a snapshot of a moment in life and put it in writing; however, this does little to further plot development.

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City contains an intriguing premise that turns up short, lost in episodic vignettes that don’t contribute to the plotlines at hand. I recommend picking up one of Flynn’s poetry books rather than this one; there’s little to be had beyond the fun title.

This book was incredible. All memoirs should be written by poets.