Friday, February 25, 2011
Book Talk: Another Bullshit Night in Suck City By Nick Flynn
Contributed by Anne Gudger, teacher, writer, mother
As a writer, what intrigues me most about Flynn’s memoir is the structure and they way he dovetails his past and present. This guy, like a dealer in a Vegas casino, shuffles the story of his growing up life into his adult life, his own story with his father’s story and his childhood with his adulthood, with remarkable skill. And he doesn’t explain a darn thing.
Suck City is about Nick, who’s a caseworker in a homeless shelter in Boston and his father, Jonathan, who’s an alcoholic, homeless ex-con, deadbeat dad and self-proclaimed poet. Jonathan disappeared from Nick’s life when Nick was a boy and surfaced only through letters and stories. Adult Nick meets his father at a shelter: son as caseworker, father as homeless man.
Ouch.
On the first page, Flynn describes his dad pretending to make ATM “deposits” in order to get out of the cold. Later he writes, “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.”
I love Flynn’s barebones story telling. I love the lack of hyperbole. I also love how he never asks for the reader’s pity, maybe just a little understanding. This kind of no nonsense style reflects in the structure too. The book is written like a series of snapshots where connective tissue is sometimes assumed. I felt like I was holding a flipbook and watching Nick grow up alongside his unstable father as the stories collide.
In studying with Jennifer, questions of framing and what’s most interesting about memoir frequently come up. In writing my own story of being widowed at 28 while I was pregnant, I struggle with how much of my childhood to reveal. Childhood traumas and how I learned to hold things in as a girl effected how I grieved as a young woman. I’ve spent the past two years plus writing my widow stories and my childhood stories and wondering if I can be the master shuffler that Flynn or if I have two books instead of just one.
Flynn’s book shows me one possibility of how to write my adult story while letting my young stories flush me out as a narrator. If you have the same big question I do: one book or two? Try Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. Or if you’re looking for a memoir that is heartbreaking but not sentimental, experimental and not traditional, my suggestion is the same: Another Bullshit Night in Suck City.
And how could I write about this book without saying something about the title? I can’t resist: It’s not bullshit and it doesn’t suck.
Suck City is about Nick, who’s a caseworker in a homeless shelter in Boston and his father, Jonathan, who’s an alcoholic, homeless ex-con, deadbeat dad and self-proclaimed poet. Jonathan disappeared from Nick’s life when Nick was a boy and surfaced only through letters and stories. Adult Nick meets his father at a shelter: son as caseworker, father as homeless man.
Ouch.
On the first page, Flynn describes his dad pretending to make ATM “deposits” in order to get out of the cold. Later he writes, “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.”
I love Flynn’s barebones story telling. I love the lack of hyperbole. I also love how he never asks for the reader’s pity, maybe just a little understanding. This kind of no nonsense style reflects in the structure too. The book is written like a series of snapshots where connective tissue is sometimes assumed. I felt like I was holding a flipbook and watching Nick grow up alongside his unstable father as the stories collide.In studying with Jennifer, questions of framing and what’s most interesting about memoir frequently come up. In writing my own story of being widowed at 28 while I was pregnant, I struggle with how much of my childhood to reveal. Childhood traumas and how I learned to hold things in as a girl effected how I grieved as a young woman. I’ve spent the past two years plus writing my widow stories and my childhood stories and wondering if I can be the master shuffler that Flynn or if I have two books instead of just one.
Flynn’s book shows me one possibility of how to write my adult story while letting my young stories flush me out as a narrator. If you have the same big question I do: one book or two? Try Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. Or if you’re looking for a memoir that is heartbreaking but not sentimental, experimental and not traditional, my suggestion is the same: Another Bullshit Night in Suck City.
And how could I write about this book without saying something about the title? I can’t resist: It’s not bullshit and it doesn’t suck.
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