Book of the Week

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

 is a book on my creative non-fiction reading list for school.   Of course, there are many books I can choose from, but this title practically screamed out to me.  I've been in a funk this week.  I've been an emotional one-man, three-ring circus...giddy one minute, raging another.  Being a hormonal female is really getting old.  Anyone? Anyone?

The other night, I got out of the house for a few stolen hours (to be honest, I think Dave actually kicked me out...or at least strongly but sweetly encouraged that I back away slowly from my family and go be alone).  I grabbed this book off the shelf since the title pretty much defined my emotional state.

I'm half way in and am pretty hooked.  It took a minute to understand the writer's voice, what he was going for, but now I'm really enjoying it.  Nick Flynn writes about his absent father whom he finally meets in a homeless shelter that he (Nick) is working at.  It's a great memoir of a boy/man and his relationship with his father.  It's really his unique voice that makes this story a stand-out.  His choppy, sentence fragments keep the story moving. His writing pops the reality of the homeless shelter in such a way that I actually smell the Bowery Mission I was at fifteen years ago.

Nick Flynn's writing is completely without bitterness or cynicism. He just tells it like it is/was.    I feel a connection with him and want to know how his life turns out.  How does he stay open to his father without being sucked into fear or losing his self? He writes:

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. A futon. A bed. But I never did.  If I let him inside I would become him, the line between us would blur, my own slow-motion car wreck would speed up. 

I'm enjoying this book. But, mostly, like you might have guessed, I really just related to the title 'cause it's another bullshit night in suck city when you are living in this body of depleted serotonin.