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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: $3.90
You Save: $10.05 (72%)
New (31) Used (33) Collectible (2) from $3.90
Avg. Customer Rating:  38 reviews
Sales Rank: 40124
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
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Very good condition
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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 33 more reviews...
 Having lived on the streets of Las Vegas... October 13, 2007
3 out of 4 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.
 A fascinating take on fathers & sons August 23, 2007
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
I was directed to this strange book because of another recommended work here at Amazon. Much to my surprise, I absolutely enjoyed this strange twilight or maybe it's--"permanent midnight " ? view of a mixed-up and gifted son looking at his life from all these bizarre angles.
One being the fact that the son, (here the author himself) as a young adult, ends up taking a job at a homeless shelter and in a voyeuristic vision into his own possible future, sizes up the very man who brought him into the world as he wanders his bleary-eyed way into that very shelter one late, inebriated evening.
Chilling depictions like this, along with Flynn's dark-humored view of his father in all of his guises (house-painter, check-forger, would-be writer, etc.) keeps you turning the pages. At its core is the fact that all this grit is true. And as a memoir, it is so beautifully rendered and it's one that's so worth reading. (surpasses the James Frey, Augusten Burroughs fare by a long-shot!)
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