Review of Kirkus Reviews' Review of "Another Bullshit Night in Suck City" by Nick Flynn PDF Free Download
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chris miller
www.fairwriting.com
September 26, 2006
Review of Kirkus Reviews’ Review of “Another
Bullshit Night in Suck City” by Nick Flynn
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 biography. “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 complier 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 his 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 blond 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.
