Nick Flynn (1) (1960–)

This is Flynn's second memoir, after Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, and my second 5-star review for a Nick Flynn memoir. Flynn's books are stunningly smart, complicated in the best way, achingly sad, and somehow manifestly necessary.

Though similar themes pervade both books the books are very different from one another. This book, a series of essays, is far less linear than Suck City, and it covers more ground. For those who have not read Suck City (and you should get on that), or who have only seen the very mediocre film adaptation called Being Flynn, that book covers a time when he is reunited with his father, who had walked out on the family years earlier. One night Flynn's father shows up by coincidence at the homeless shelter at which Nick is working as he struggles with addiction issues of his own. A fair chunk of this book takes place during the time Flynn was writing Suck City. Nick is rambling about, bouncing from one country to another. Though housed and in a relationship with a woman (there is always a woman) in many ways Nick is no different from his rootless father. After some years of this wandering Flynn finds himself bouncing between two US cities and in love with two women. In a blaze of toxic masculinity Nick decides he will marry whichever one gets pregnant. (He was roughly 50 at the time so it was not the hubris of youth.) As it happens fecundity does not end up being the deciding factor, though in fact one of the women does become pregnant and it is the woman he ends up with. (He calls her Inez in the book, but it is Lili Taylor, unless he also had a baby girl with someone else actually named Inez at the same time.) The book juxtaposes Flynn's lived experiences with research he is doing at that time on Abu Ghraib. He mentions he had been planning to write a book about Abu Ghraib. and he shares some sickening stories from men who endured torture under the leadership of George W. Bush, but I expect he found there was not a book there. The lessons of of Abu Ghraib can be simply stated, and piling on the stories of the Abu Ghraib victims without furthering understanding or awareness would eventually become some sort of sick entertainment. Instead Flynn blended the prison stories with the process of getting the stories and with other events that. The interwoven stories lean to big questions about the value of life, the building of empathy, what it means to be a good person and more. I can't say these things are always woven seamlessly, but I certainly understood why he chose the life events he did as foils to the Abu Ghraib stories. To some extent all comes together with the birth of his daughter and the absolute rightness of fatherhood and the decision to be with and stay with one partner, In a way this is a coming of age story, if one comes of age at 50.

Flynn is a poet, IMO a very good one, though I am no expert (If I read 10 hours of poetry a year it is a banner year and my school days provided me little beyond the basics -- the Lake Poets and godawful stuff like Trees.) Trained by the rigor of poetry Flynn shows a facility with words that is breathtaking regardless of form. His prose sings, and there is not a wasted word. He draws connections that are profound and sound like nothing I have ever before heard. The man is brilliant, though cursed with the need to keep himself unhappy, as if grief and pain (whether some else's that he feeds on or his own) are the only things that will keep him rooted to the earth. He is a good man, despite the issue with the two women whom he loves but pits against one another to be his incubator. There are other things that might make you question his goodness, but so many more that make it manifest. And that goodness, that kindness, that truly radical empathy, is even more surprising when you read about his childhood and realize how little it was modeled to him. Any more than this will lead me to spoilers. With all my heart and all my brain I recommend this book. (But read Another Bullshit Night in Suck City First.)… (altro)

Nick Flynn conoció a su padre cuando ya tenía veintisiete años y trabajaba en un albergue para indigentes en Boston. Jonathan Flynn, un aspirante a escritor, se había marchado de casa cuando su hijo tenía seis meses. Cuando Nick ya era un adolescente recibió algunas cartas desde la cárcel, donde su padre estaba condenado por estafa, en las que decía que la experiencia le serviría para ser el Dostoievski de su generación, o el nuevo Solzhenitzyn, el nuevo cronista de las prisiones, el autor de las contemporáneas memorias del subsuelo. Nick, entretanto, comienza su propio viaje por la literatura, la desesperación, el alcohol y las drogas y trabaja para un antiguo novio de su madre, un veterano del Vietnam que, junto con otros pequeños mafiosos del lugar, ha creado una considerable organización para el tráfico de drogas y, posiblemente, blanqueo de dinero. Tiempo después, su madre se suicida (...) Y Nick quiere salvarse. Y escribir sus propios libros...… (altro)