About this title: In bold, dazzling prose, Flynn tells the story of two lives and the trajectory that led him and his father into a homeless shelter, onto Boston's streets, and finally to each other.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Edition: First Edition, First Printing
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York and London
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780393051391ISBN:0393051390
Description: Good in Fine jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. 347 pp., illus.; 22 cm. Good+. Firm binding, clean inside copy. Dogeared. Stated "First Edition. " Fine DJ. "'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 ... read more
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Date Published: 9/12/2005
ISBN-13:9780393329407ISBN:0393329402
Description: Fine. 0393329402 NEW/UNREAD! ! ! Text is Clean and Unmarked! --Be Sure to Compare Seller Feedback and Ratings before Purchasing--Has a small black ink mark on outside edge of pages. May have light shelf wear to cover from storage, if any. read more
Edition: First edition. 1st printing
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780393051391ISBN:0393051390
Description: Fine in very good dust jacket. Clean pages, tight binding. Dustjacket bright & smooth with slight shelfwear at top rear corner, now in a clear mylar cover. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 347 p. Dustjacket has black background. No illustrations in the text. read more
Edition: Illustrated.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780393051391ISBN:0393051390
Description: Fine in fine dust jacket. Very slight wear, pages clear and unmarked. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 288 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780393051391ISBN:0393051390
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. text clean and tight. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 368 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780393329407ISBN:0393329402
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Edition: First Edition; First Printing
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, New York
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780393051391ISBN:0393051390
Description: Near Fine in Very Good dust jacket. 9780393051391. Very small tap at head of spine, very small bump at top back board. DJ has a couple small bumps and a few small creases.; A bright, crisp, unread copy.; #AA380. read more
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, Scranton, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780393051391ISBN:0393051390
Description: Very Good in Very Good jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. "Flynn gets the details of the family down cold--egomaniacs with inferiority complexes, forever burning the bridges in front of themselves, cursed with a thirst for which enough is never enough. Gorgeously wrought. " This book is in very good condition and has only some minor shelf wear on the jacket. Order now before it goes to another! read more
Edition: NEW ED
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: FABER AND FABER Country = UNITED KINGDOM
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780571214082ISBN:0571214088
Description: BRAND NEW PAPERBACK. 340 pages. (340 pages) already one of the most talked-about and eagerly anticipated literary debuts in the usa this year, this is a novel comparable to recent american memoir successes like 'a heartbreaking work of staggering genius', 'a million little pieces' and 'the liar's club'. edition new ed (Paperback) read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780393051391ISBN:0393051390
Description: Very good+ 347 pp, pages clean & tight, Dustjacket has light wear to extremities, slightly rubbed, now under mylar. Story of an unconventional union between father and son. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
Date Published: 2004-09-30
ISBN-13:9780393051391ISBN:0393051390
Description: NEW. Hardcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780393051391. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780393051391ISBN:0393051390
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
"Good poetic prose and difficult, no, hardcore, topics including a mother's suicide and a father's absence, homelessness and alcoholism. It's interesting how Flynn, the son, is somehow charged with telling his father's story, the book that Flynn, the absent alcoholic father, stores inside himself, but just can't seem to get out. The writing is always coming along splendidly, but nothing ever materializes. Rather, it all vanishes along with his monthly government checks into the blind mud of alcohol. So Suck City is the son's memoir and the dad's memoir.
This is also an intense book on the level of trying to understand human behavior. Why, for instance, does Nick go back to see his father over and over, even though he was abandoned by him, and even while the brother/other son has the exact opposite reaction, refusing to see the old man? What does it mean to feel responsible for the suicide of your mother, who killed herself after reading a story you wrote portraying your life with her? And then to continue writing through these true life troubles, a memoir recounting it 'all'?
These questions can't be answered directly, but it's amazing to look into the window of a life wrangling with such issues. Each experience is interconnected somehow. Stories and people and memories. There are no simple answers, only valuable studies, such as this, into a complicated humanity."
""In Moby-Dick, the eponymous whale doesn't appear until the last fifty pages. The story of the whale appears earlier, but the actual whale only breaks the surface for a moment at the end, just long enough to wreak havoc and pull Ahab under. The whole book is about a whale and the whale isn't there. In the end the central mystery remains unfathomable--what was it exactly that Ahab gave his life to? We know he lost his leg, and that that loss became a story, and the story became the obsession that in the end defined, and ended, his life. We have to be careful of the stories we tell about ourselves." -Nick Flynn"
"I love Nick Flynn's poetry. Some Ether is one of my favorites. I figured that I would read his memoir, and it has a great title!
It's about him meeting his father for the first time in the homeless shelter where he worked.
I'm not that far into it, but already stunned by the double entendres/subtext that describes what's happening in the story as well as the emotional landscape.
"I spent a lot of time while reading this wondering who I know that will be resigned to a fate similar to that of the father in these memoirs. Who will wind up past the prime of their life having talked for years of what they will accomplish and have really accomplished nothing? I can unfortunately name a decent sized handful of people who run this risk at this point in their lives. Closer to thirty than to twenty, and wasting months of their lives on drinking binges, babbling about their potential, but not wanting to do anything besides their current lifestyle. Of course, they hide their virtual uselessness by making (not especially good) music. And I'm a big fan of music, and realize that in order to make anything good you will probably make a lot of stuff that isn't. However, to pin all your hopes for your future on making it big in music just isn't that realistic. Even less so now that the music business has been in recession for longer than the rest of the nation can boast. I wish there were anything to be said about it that wouldn't be taken as annoying nagging, but these people will run the course of their lives however they see fit, regardless of what is good for them or what they're capable of. It's relatively foreign to me, having been raised to believe that anything you get in life should be something you have earned, and that if you didn't earn it, you probably don't deserve it. I believe life is all about working hard. Not that I've been doing much of it myself lately, but being in this position has only made me realize just how much it's not the life for me. My self worth is at an all-time low, and with where I stand on such things it damn well should be. Luckily, I will be starting to go full-time to school in about a month, and that should be repairing to my self image and mindset. Anyway, it's funny that the setting for these memoirs is Massachusetts, because it only drove the point home for me about the failings of the lifestyle, having grown up on the Cape. I know there are people everywhere that wind up on the streets, finally running out of people to use and possessions to hock. But I keep seeing people from back home confining themselves to the slacker, constantly partying social life. I feel that Cape Cod is a destructive place to live, and I'm beginning to wonder if there's something about the whole state. Or maybe even the coastal areas of New England. I doubt that is in fact the case, but wouldn't it be odd if somehow the places that birthed out nation are beginning to be left behind in disgust? Anyway, back to the matter of the book, it was definitely interesting, sometimes almost painful, and altogether hard for me to put down."
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