Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

I should mention that I'm stuck in my college town for the summer, only able to go home on the weekends. If this town was boring during the school year, it is a ghost town in the summer. There's not much to do, and not many people to hang out with. The first book on my Summer Reading List for this summer was Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn, and I felt the title fit my situation perfectly. 

This is probably the first memoir I have read that I've actually enjoyed (and not the first I will be reading this summer). I don't generally enjoy them--not because the person's life isn't interesting enough but primarily because they aren't written well. Nick Flynn is a great writer. He has several books of poetry published and his poetic voice comes through often in his prose, which only makes his writing better. His descriptions and images are both beautiful and heartbreaking. 

The memoir primarily focuses on Nick's relationship (or lack thereof) with his father Jonathon. It circles around it, an attempt to avoid directly addressing the situation--his father's alcoholism, homelessness, and their strained relationship. Nick grew up without a constant father figure in his life. His father spent time in jail--more than once--and writing his novel which, according to Jonathon, would be proclaimed a masterpiece and he'd be nominated for a Nobel Prize. 

Nick pulls the reader into his life, his mind. He began working for a homeless shelter where his father eventually turns up. He spends most of his time trying to avoid him and his drunken outbursts, unable to mentally take care of his father. But their paths inevitably cross several times and Nick attempts to figure out how his father fits in his life, both past and present. 

There were several quotes in the book, from Nick, his mother, father, and a few writers, including loose quotations from Shakespeare (primarily from King Lear). These are a few that really stuck out to me as I was reading:

"But they never taught us what to do if both of you are lost, and you both end up in the same place, waiting."

"'Never trust anyone who doesn't drink.' Those who don't drink have something to hide, an awful secret that will slip out if they were ever to get drunk. By drinking together we prove we have nothing to hide."

"Seek, seek for him, / Lest his ungoverned rage dissolve the life / That wants the means to end it"

"To be caught in a notion of self is bad. To be caught in a notion of nonself is worse." 

"The present is made entirely of the past. Dwell in the present but learn from the past."

"Read when you can. Write whenever you feel the inner need to do so. And don't ever rush into print."

"When everything has proven tenuous, one can either move toward permanence or move toward impermanence."

"By what you make, you will save the world."

"We need to create the story that will make sense of our lives, to make sense of the daily tasks."

Overall, I thought this book was really great, so I'll give it a 4 out of 5 or a Starbuck's Peppermint Mocha. Nick Flynn is a great writer and I plan to read some more of his poetry this summer. If this book sounds like something you'd be interested in reading, you can get Another Bullshit Night in Suck City from Amazon.com. This was a great book to start my summer reading with. I hope the rest of the books I read this summer are as great as this one was.