We are grateful to Chris Miller for submitting his review of the Kirkus Review of Nick Flynn’s memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City.
Chris is the author of the terrific short story, “Testicalia” published here. The opinions expressed in this review are Chris’s, not mine. But I will say that this is very creative and bold writing, a literary stream of consciousness that I greatly admire.
1995: I spend a few days in Boston. Fly down with my boss for this huge IBM conference on multi-language support for OS/2. Get my own suite on like the twentieth floor of the Sheridan. It has a Jacuzzi, two queen-sized beds, an amazing panoramic view w/ planes flying in and out of Logan Airport. It makes me feel important and lonely.
“The voice here is boiled just right: tough, articulate, mindful, without self-pity.”—Kirkus Reviews
I was going to only review Flynn’s memoir here. But before I write anything—even a poem—I like to do a little research just to get my head in the right space. That’s how I stumbled across the above Kirkus Reviews review, and sort of flipped.
Geez, the title’s practically longer than their review, and still they manage to screw it up. How can something that has been “boiled just right” be “tough”? My dictionary describes “articulate” as, “characterized by the use of clear, expressive language.” I found Flynn’s vocabulary sparse and his structures simple to almost choppy. Repeated fragments give it a kind of panting feel at times. No subject ever wanders more than a few steps from its verb, no clause lingers longer than a heartbeat for completion. The sections too are short and to the point. Because the prose is so easy to parse and assimilate, it’s a little hard to stay focused when the ideas wander or wane, but which fortunately isn’t often. To me, it reads like the writer’s in pain and doesn’t want to waste words, which, given that he’s “accident prone” and broken pretty much everything from his knees to his nose to his noggin, that his father disappears when he’s a baby and his mother commits suicide when he’s in his early twenties, that he struggles with multiple long-term substance dependencies, booze, grass and downers to mention some staples, that he’s immersed himself in South Boston’s homeless culture, it kind of makes sense though—that he’d be in pain, I mean. So I think “poetic” describes his style better than “articulate.” At times I almost felt like it would’ve worked better formatted in short-lined stanzas, maybe even centered, if only to slow me down.
The Boston Sheridan has hundreds of gift shops and fine restaurants, and plush conference rooms in which to hold enormous boring seminars. Somewhat to my boss’s chagrin and annoyance, I refuse to leave the complex, to ever venture outside. I spend three days in Boston and never once set foot on the street.
Kirkus Reviews reviews 500 titles a month. Apparently they plan to branch out into self-publishing. So anyone with 350$ will be able to have them beat off a few cliché-laden lines ostensibly regarding their work. Given that their website lists only about a dozen employees, most of whom do not function in any literary capacity, it’s not surprising that their above “review” could easily have been produced without anyone there having read the book, that it could (and should) apply to pretty much any well-written manuscript.
If you are expecting technical finesse, fearless style and rich language, then Another Bullshit Night in Suck City might disappoint. Even if you are expecting a story per se, as with a beginning, middle and ending, you might be let down. It’s a memoir written by a young author still close to his material. At times it struck me almost as a blog in the way it incorporated media events like the Patricia Hearst saga, at other times a character study and detached social discourse qua anecdote and reflection—again, almost a collection of poetry.
It’s mid December, just before Christmas. Still brain-dead from an after dinner presentation on entry-field coding considerations for bi-directional languages like Hebrew, prickly from a long hot soft-water soak in the jets, I lie upon one or the other of my big beds-for-two and flip back and forth through a hundred or so TV channels, trying to find something interesting. Twenty stories down and to the south, Jonathan Flynn is freezing on a wooden bench, nursing a mickey and trying to appear lost in thought.
To critique Another Bullshit Night in Suck City from a technical standpoint is to completely miss its greatness. Even to say I enjoyed it would be inaccurate. It did not entertain me, it disturbed me. The father’s, Jonathan Flynn’s, gradual transition to homelessness could be the most disturbing thing I’ve ever read. He’s been evicted from his room, and is living out of a cab that he leases and drives. So to his mind he’s still not really “homeless” per se. At worst he’s “between” places. Even after he loses his cab to drunk driving, he’s not really homeless. He hangs out in the library until closing, then a donut shop, trying to project that he belongs, that he has business there, wherever—that he does not have nowhere to go. Late that night, he sits on a bench. He tries to look absorbed, purposeful. He is not a vagrant. When he spends time in banks’ 24/7 ATM kiosks, he periodically fills out deposit slips for grandiose amounts. He has every right to be there. He is a writer. He has almost completed the great American novel, the one that’ll change everything, the one that’s going very, very well but that no one ever sees, the one he expects a two-million dollar advance on because Kissinger got that much for his—“and he’s not even a writer.” He sits on the bench—all night—trying to be nonchalant and somehow comfortable—every night. In the winter he jostles for position on a crowded warm-air grate (that makes me think of a life raft… his uncle “invented” the life raft). “Grist for the mill,” he says in one of the many letters serving as fodder for his son’s memoir cum his own autobiography. “Another bullshit night in Suck City,” he says. He loses his toes to frostbite.
“The Homeless Pay my Rent” was Flynn’s suggestion for shelter workers’ t-shirts. And it ticked me off a little that his idea got kyboshed. I mean, it’s not just true of shelter workers. We could all wear one. At least that’s kind of how I felt trying to decide which bed to lie on up there in the Sheridan.
“Brothers… I have none / But that man’s father is my father’s son.” This is what Jonathan says to the shelter workers when he applies for a bed. Not wanting to confuse job and family, Nick has requested that his father not stay at the shelter where he works. But Jonathan’s options are kind of limited. That it takes Nick a year to solve this riddle probably speaks to the functioning of his brain then.
I have no brothers either. It’s a little weird and disconcerting and uplifting that I came across Flynn’s memoir in my son’s blog. That man’s father is my father’s son.
There’s a “Gays and Lesbians with AIDS” thing going on at the same time as the OS/2 seminars. I ask half-a-dozen IBM reps if OS/2 is dead. I’ve invested two years porting a QNX XBase compiler to it and am a little concerned for my future. The reps all tell me that OS/2 has a bright future. “You think I’d be here if I thought OS/2 wasn’t viable?” I’m assured in some bullshit afternoon workshop high above Suck City.
My parents are still alive and together. At 53, I’ve never spent a night in a hospital, although I was circumcised at 21 and might have broken my finger once. But, I’ve been down pretty much the same substance abuse road as Flynn. And where Flynn spent a lot of years working for a homeless shelter, both inside and on the street, I spent a lot of years working with society’s spent and dysfunctional in nursing and retirement homes. And also, I can totally relate to his disengaged, sort of ubiquitous, sense of hopelessness and failure. I follow the news. Like my father, and even more like Flynn’s father, I’m a writer too.
There’re a bunch of really stupid questions in an addendum to the book. Some are so stupid, Flynn doesn’t even answer them. For example:
Q: Do you think you shot yourself in the foot with the title?
So please, allow me:
A: No, you moron. Did you even read the book? It won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir, and has been translated into ten languages. The title is perfect on many levels.
For example:
Q: Do you still blame yourself for your mother’s suicide.
Again, allow me:
A: Of course, you moron. That’s why suicide is called The Cruelest Death.
I have a few moronic questions of my own. For example, I’m kind of left wondering how, or even if, Flynn managed to become substance free. One session with a counselor who threatens to commit him via a simple phone call and demands he join a 12-step program doesn’t seem like it’d cut it. I also wonder how he managed to avoid burnout and its associated cruelties while working all fucked up and underpaid with society’s quintessential derelicts and losers, or if this facet of his career was somehow omitted. I wonder a little why he’s never married. Maybe his mill has enough grist.
There’s a good looking blonde doing Tarot card readings in the lounge prior to some evening presentations. Everyone seems to be ignoring her, so I sit down and ask her, How much? Her services are complimentary. But when I tell her I’m with the IBM conference, she says she’s only supposed to do the AIDS people. I tell her I could have AIDS. I have had unprotected sex in the last three months. She says since she’s not busy she’ll give me a mini-reading on any specific topic of my choosing. I ask her about my relationship future. My big posh empty suite has me wondering if I’ll be single, as in doing the serial monogamy thing, forever. She asks me if I’m looking for a long term relationship. And I tell her that I am, that I’m tired, that I want to settle down. Then the cards inform us that this is just around the bend.
I emailed Nick a link to the above, and he actually replied. He wrote:
hi,
thanks for the review, though at times I was unsure you actually liked it. but thanks anyway.
nick
Okay, not a glowing review of my review, and it made me feel a little anal for using the shift key so much in all my correspondence, but I was blown away that a successful author like Flynn would even reply. And the thing is: Nick—dude—I loved the book. I thought I made that pretty clear, eventually.
Awesome review of the book and the review. Thank you Chris