another postmodern turd in craptown

At first I didn't like this book, but as it went on, it got better/more engaging, which I think says a lot about its overall quality. For the first couple hundred pages I was annoyed by the tone. The humor was a bit off. Things that were intrinsically hilarious (though horrifying) were given a bit of humor but then too quickly turned around by pathos, even melodrama. Also, Flynn creates long, long passages of abstracted language, which isn't my thing, and there are enough comma splices here to make any writing instructor's hair stand on end for weeks. I almost couldn't get past it -- I almost quit.

But the book is also breezy and shorter than it appears, and I also have a problem re: not wanting to leave books half-read. In this case my obstinacy paid off. At the very end, Flynn compares the book's structure to Moby Dick, with much of the book being about the quest to find his father (the whale) and the whale-meeting part being the very end. I'd wanted the book to really "get started" earlier, but when it did, I realized that all that other stuff was preparatory, necessary. The last fifty pages are a beautiful, compelling, vivid, compassionate rendering of Flynn's relationship with his father, who is a delusional alcoholic. I only wish the pay off could have come sooner.

At first I thought, for a book about a father-son relationship where both are struggling with substance abuse, the father gets little mention until late in the book. Then, in the Notes at the end, I see that Nick Flynn was using the old Moby-Dick model for his dad. You know, lots of talk about the white whale in the room (ocean?) for the most of the book, but no actual appearance till late in the game.

Oh. OK.

Jumps back and forth in time. Reminds me in some ways of Death of a Salesman, the way the sorry dad is so confident about his coming success in the writing world. Big dreams. Big ego. Big problems ignored.

When Nick goes to NY for writing education, he eventually writes a collection of poetry, gets it published and shares it with his grandfather and brother (only later with his dad, too, as many poems are about both his alcoholic father and dead mother). He writes:

"Neither my brother nor my grandfather have said a word about my book. Like dropping a pebble into a very deep pond. Just as neither of them has a photograph of my mother on display in their homes, yet there she is, beside my father's bed."

Boy, could I identify with that. Weird how, when you give a copy of your book to a family member, it drops into a black hole and is never mentioned again. The reasons could be myriad, so I guess that's for writers to figure out.

Anyway, what I enjoyed most about this book was it's inside look at the Pine Street facility in Boston where the homeless go for a bed at night, especially come winter. Flynn worked there and, eventually, his own father showed up as a homeless person in need.

I had no ideas about the ins and outs of such places, but I know this -- you've got to be a saint to work in one because it is a tough, tough business with no easy answers. I think of it each time I see people looking for money at stoplights or tent encampments on stretches of green in towns and cities.

I was very conflicted about the rating from beginning to the end. I found myself skipping pages because I just wasn't interested in certain sections of the story. I found the beginning great and the ending interesting. A 3.5 rating would be my alternative if a could change it

Nick Flynn’s Another Bullshit Night in Suck City may have a juvenile title, but it’s still the best memoir I ever read.

Most memoirs fall into two categories: 1) Sentimental, heartstring reads that tug the rig with hardships, terminal diseases, and enduring tales of lovers/family/friendship (regardless of how messed up they are); or 2) sensationalized hard knock tales of crime (and possibly redemption). Nick Flynn’s first memoir doesn’t go either of those routes. It’s cool, slightly detached, a bare murmur of heartfelt. It sounds like how you’d describe your life if you didn’t know you were writing a memoir.

In the late-eighties, Flynn reunited with his estranged father, Jonathan. They are not reunited on some TV show with slow motion reaction shots. There are no tears, no hugs; just Nick’s realization that the father who left when he was a year old is an alcoholic resident at the homeless shelter where he works. There is no miracle ending; there is no great progression in their relationship. Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (how Jonathan describes homeless life in Boston) is just a splice of scenes—some good, some bad, most everyday tales that could come from anyone—of a family relationship that never had any glue (especially not with Nick’s mother committing suicide when he was 22). It’s a pity it has been so long since I read it, because there were so many nuances I enjoyed, and I still think Another Bullshit Night in Suck City is the best example of Flynn’s calming, poetic voice. Four stars.

The title of this book was enough to make me want to check it out. I heard about Nick Flynn's writing while visting the School of Visual Arts in New York city. I sat in on a thesis class for the photography M.F.A. program and one of the students referenced Flynn's work as an influence of his photographs. The name Flynn stuck with me and when I saw this book on a friend's bookshelf I asked to borrow it.

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City is written in a unique style divided by short chapters which often read like prose. One of the chapters is completely filled with phrases that are used for describing the act of getting drunk.

The book is centered around the author's early life and later experience working in a homeless shelter in Boston. Flynn's father is an alcoholic and ends up living on the streets in Boston and eventually spending nights at the shelter.

A part of my fascination with this book may be my personal connection to Boston and my own father. My father grew up in Boston and had a dad that might have been a lot like Flynn's father. My grandfather Vincent spent time in rooming houses in South Boston, unable to support his sons between of bouts of alcoholism and small time crime. Reading this narrative brought me closer to Nick Flynn's Boston and my own.

With a style vaguely reminiscent of the Beat generation novels, Flynn tells a story that's purely his to tell.

+10 points for referencing many Boston locations I'm familiar with, including the Pine Street Inn, one of the largest homeless shelters (and now, long-term housing providers) in the area.

How many people get to take care of their dad in a homeless shelter? Very real, very honest, and at times, funny twist on a rare event of where we get to in our lives. Great, easy to read prose, with just the right amount of description.

m'ha cansat bastant perq la manera d'escriure i lligar les idees era mig forçada però l'història és molt maca i acabes empatitzant amb els dos protagonistes

So this book is kind of like Joseph Mitchell's Up in the Old Hotel except that 1) it is relatively contemporary; 2) it is about Boston; and 3) it is autobiographical. Which is to say that, on the outside, it is nothing like Up in the Old Hotel. Except that it is what I call a "mood" book that gets you in the Boston "mood" - like, more a tableau than a novel. Yeah, you like that I wrote "tableau" didn't you? I was trying to fit the term "geist" in but I am too lazy to think up a sentence for it, other than, maybe, "this book gets you a feel for the 'geist' of Boston-and-vicinity." It's about a guy that works in a homeless shelter and meets his dad there, who happens to be a client. Also about how white folks can also be "straight ghetto" in the derogatory, stereotypical sense. See also, All Souls and The Departed.

I tend to shy away from memoirs. Books like A Million Little Pieces, Angel At The Fence, and Love & Consequences, all masterworks of prevarication, have made me suspicious, admittedly unfairly, of the genre as a whole. Thankfully, Nick Flynn's memoir, Another Bullshit Night In Suck City, is a fine example of what a memoir ought to be: introspective, well written, occasionally humorous, and honest.

Flynn's memoir is a pragmatic, and yet powerfully emotional, examination of his relationship with his estranged father, a man of questionable veracity, slowly destroying himself through alcoholism. Flynn's criticisms of his father are unflinchingly straightforward, but he does not spare himself from his clearheaded and insightful scrutiny; the demons of both men are shown with heart breaking clarity through Flynn's beautiful, experimental prose. And while some of the literary styles Flynn incorporates into his narrative are not entirely successful (the segment called "santa lear" comes to mind) the book easily overcomes whatever flaws it may have, leaving us with a tragic, but ultimately redemptive tale of homelessness, drug addiction, alcoholism, compassion and hope.

this is one of my favorite books and nick flynn has become my favorite author. i see a lot of ill-feeling reviews and i wonder if it’s easiest to like it if you can relate to the dysfunction of nick flynn’s parents, himself, his life, his writing style.
it’s painful at times, so painful that you feel what he feels and you feel his [perspective of his] mother’s feelings radiate in your own head hours after putting the book down. but i always find myself picking it back up again.