I’m not a fan of memoirs, but I’m not sure why. They just feel claustrophobic, and what if you don’t like the person you’re stuck in the closet with? Which is really besides the point. A good memoir doesn’t mean the person has to be good or appealing. In fact, the opposite can be more riveting. Which relates to Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn and one of the subjects of this book.
Flynn’s memoir is about him and his father. Flynn’s father Jonathon was not a part of his life growing up. He was running scams, getting drunk, purporting to write his great novel. At some point he starts to write Flynn from jail, which is the start of a long series of letters that can best be described as lyrical ravings. He floats in and out of prison, housing, jobs and just about anything else that interferes with his drinking.
Flynn is working at a homeless shelter that his father eventually ends up in. Flynn’s mother—Jonathon’s ex wife—has died by suicide, Flynn is deep into substance problems himself and he splits his time between Boston and living on an old boat off of the coast of Provincetown. He had long been uninterested in a relationship with his father, but when Jonathon shows up at the shelter, Flynn becomes a witness and shade to his father’s broken life.
What you fear your whole life comes to pass. You end up living toward it, you spend your life running from it but your foot is nailed to the sidewalk. You circle around it until you wear yourself down.
Eventually, after a number of years, Jonathon has housing and Flynn visits him occasionally. This isn’t some heartwarming reconciliation story. Flynn is blunt, poetic, close, distant, funny, horribly sad. I *felt* this book and Flynn’s great ambivalence towards his father. It’s not love he has for him, but something more complicated, something that passes back and forth and shapes each of them, and those shapes change depending on the light. The events in the book are not maudlin or seen through a lens that forces things into neat boxes. It’s just a transcendent book on every level. This is not only the best memoir I’ve ever read, it’s one of the best books I’ve read, period. I can’t recommend it highly enough.