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| Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir | 
 enlarge | Author: Nick Flynn
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy Used: $3.95
You Save: $10.00 (72%)
New (30) Used (32) Collectible (2) from $3.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  39 reviews
Sales Rank: 47884
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.2 x 1
ISBN: 0393329402
Dewey Decimal Number: 809
EAN: 9780393329407
ASIN: 0393329402
Publication Date: September 12, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
"A stunningly beautiful new memoir…a near-perfect work of literature."—Stephen Elliot, San Francisco Chronicle
"Sometimes I'd see my father, walking past my building on his way to another nowhere. I could have given him a key, offered a piece of my floor. But if I let him inside the line between us would blur, my own slow-motion car wreck would speed up."
Nick Flynn met his father for the third time when he was twenty-seven years old, working as a caseworker in a homeless shelter in Boston. As a teenager he'd received letters from this stranger, a self-proclaimed poet and con man doing time in federal prison for bank robbery. Nick, his own life precariously unsettled, was living alternately in a ramshackle boat and in a warehouse that was once a strip joint. In bold, dazzling prose, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (a phrase Flynn senior uses to describe his life on the streets) tells the story of two lives and the trajectory that led Nick and his father into that homeless shelter, onto those streets, and finally to each other. With a new postscript for the paperback edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 34 more reviews...
 Senior Writers Seminar - Dominski October 23, 2008
This memoir recounts the story of a young man who, fatherless as a boy, gets to know his father for the first time through his job at a homeless shelter. The story alternates between chapters about the author's childhood, or even before he was born, and chapters about him as a grown man, encountering his homeless father. The author's very detailed descriptions of his job at the shelter provide a very stark look into homelessness in a city, "Lice thrive so well on his body that they can be seen crawling over him from twenty paces." (Page 47) These descriptions of the homeless the author encounters resonate with the reader because the author is living with the knowledge that his father may be living an equally desperate lifestyle.
As the chapters switch between time frames of the author's life, they also switch between different writing styles; from stream-of-consciousness writing to contained narratives, which also switch between first and third person. The contained narratives, which are written in first person unless they precede the author's birth, are short enough to only cover one event at a time. In another book, such a disjointed development of events may be not work quite as well, but in this memoir, the short chapters allow the author to select which actions of his father's he want to emphasize to the readers. This characteristic of the book causes the father to be cast as the author remembers him, and although this description of him may stray from the actual truth a little because of this, thus is the consequence of a memoir. Interspersed amongst the action-driven chapters are sections of stream-of-consciousness writing that provide a direct look into the author's emotions. Because of this, these chapters contain some of the most powerful writing in the book, "For if you are not responsible for your own father, who is? Who is going to pick him up off the ground if not you?" (Page 27) These sections, though spare in comparison to the narrative chapters, are powerful because they give the author an opportunity to explore his feelings about his father. In these streams of the author's consciousness, he struggles with how responsible he should be for his father, and how much he should let him into his life. Standing next to the narrative sections, these parts allow the author to reflect on and essentially respond to his own actions. It is this relationship in the book, between what has happened and how the author feels about it in retrospect, that makes this memoir so successful at recounting the author's inner struggles.
 Having lived on the streets of Las Vegas... October 13, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I can tell you that this author has embellished little. I avoid four letter words in my books simply because I think they distract. Nevertheless, I understand Flynn's reasoning here, and at least for me, the language in this book was palatable. What I found most interesting about this work was how different street living is in Boston compared to Las Vegas and East Los Angeles. Then East LA is a 24/7 war zone. While Boston and Las Vegas are similar in the fact that it's the police in these two cities you had better be wary and respectfully of; in East LA, as bad as the police are, badges are a welcome sight compared to MS-13.
 The blurb doesn't live up to the contents October 5, 2007
2 out of 12 found this review helpful
The assertion a life worth writing about by an individual who can write well proves to be simply that, an assertion. Flynn's talents (?) are mediocre, the book tiresome, repetitive and unfortunately like most of the other 'my childhood was the pits' by which I mean it may self serve the author.
None of the characters were likeable despite being deeply flawed (which often makes the person likeable).
I doubt Flynn's daddy was worth writing about.
It's done now.
Do yourself a favour. Spend your money on a more worthy book - that's just about any other book so the choice is massive.
As for Flynn being a poet, that is still open for debate. If his prose is at all similar to his poetics, his poetry would suck.
Good memoir September 21, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Good, effective memoir/story of the author's father's struggle with homelessness and alcohol and drug use. Very well-written and compelling. A good read.
I really liked this book! August 29, 2007
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I was very interested in the title of this book and when I picked it up, on further examination, I had to read it. It was a fast read for me.
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