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ANOTHER BULLSHIT NIGHT IN SUCK CITY BY: NICK FLYNN

Another bullshit night in suck city

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Page 1: Another bullshit night in suck city

ANOTHER BULLSHIT NIGHT IN

SUCK CITYBY: NICK FLYNN

Page 2: Another bullshit night in suck city

ABOUT NICK FLYNN

• Born January 26, 1960 (54)

• Was raised by his mother

• Recently married his wife Lili Taylor (2009)

• American author and playwright

Page 3: Another bullshit night in suck city

• Another Bullshit Night in Suck City is a memoir of the life of Nick Flynn and his

father.

• Jonathan is the father who disappears in and out of Nicks life for about 20 years.

• Because he was a conman and alcoholic this lead Jonathan to live in homeless

shelters and not have a stable home.

Page 4: Another bullshit night in suck city

NICKS MOTHERNicks mother left his father when he was 6 months old.

Nick had a young mother, when she left his father she was 20 years old.

She was trying to raise nick and his two younger brothers.

Though her many boyfriends and one other marriage that did not last they ended up in Scituate, Massachusetts.

Because of her issues eventually killing herself nick ended up in Boston.

Page 5: Another bullshit night in suck city

SCITUATE, MASSACHUSETTS

• The second most alcohol consuming town in the US.

Page 6: Another bullshit night in suck city

• Nick became introduced to alcohol at the age at 12,

he started drinking beer

• At the age of 17 he started drinking to get drunk.

• During all this nicks mother was involved

and most of the time drinking and/or doing drugs with him.

Page 7: Another bullshit night in suck city

“UNFORTUNATELY, WHEN IT COMES TO ADDICTION, THE CONCEPT OF NATURE AND NURTURE IS HARD TO UNTANGLE. THERE’S COMPELLING EVIDENCE ON

BOTH SIDES, AND SOMETIMES, A PERSON MIGHT HAVE A RISK FROM

BOTH GENETIC FACTORS AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS.”

- UNKNOWN AUTHOR-

Page 8: Another bullshit night in suck city

Nick

Page 9: Another bullshit night in suck city

• Later on in life nick and his father both ended up in Boston.

• Nick is 27 years old and is working as a caseworker within the Pine Street Homeless Shelter.

• He runs into his father who had recently been evicted from his government house.

• Throughout the end of the book over a 15 year span, nick and his father reconnect and discover all the letters that his mom had wrote over the years about his father.

Page 10: Another bullshit night in suck city

To find out what happened after nick and his father reconnects he wrote other books to explain their new relationship. The most famous book telling about their relationship is called, Being Flynn.

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ABSTRACTAlcoholism Nature vs. Nurture

Nick Flynn's intensely personal memoir of his relationship with his father, Jonathan, an alcoholic con man who physically disappears from Nick's life for the better part of twenty years, but never leaves his son's mind completely. Constantly resurfacing in letters and stories, Nick is never lost of his father's reputation as a criminal, deadbeat father, and town drunk who has burned nearly every bridge he has crossed.

Unlike his father, though, Nick is able to pull his life together. After years of transience, he settles in Boston, taking a job at the Pine Street Inn, one of the nation's most active homeless shelters. Nick's details of the nightly activities at Pine Street at times overpower the main narrative of the story as he describes night after night of men as lost as his father drifting in and out of the Inn. Nick gets to know several of the men by name, knows their stories, how they ended up there, and makes a type of personal connections with them that he will never be able to make with his father. One could speculate that Nick is using these men to help his father by proxy, and that may be right, but whatever the case may be, Nick's job certainly keeps his father in his mind, waiting for the day when Jonathan will show up at Pine Street looking for a bed.

When Jonathan reappears in Nick's life, it causes him to have an intense personal crisis. Nick cannot allow himself to treat his father different than any of the other men who show up nightly at Pine Street. As Nick writes, "If asked directly, I'll say he's just another drunk, that's what I've always heard, a drunk and a con man, he has nothing to do with me." Nick's disassociation is a defense, but a necessary one as he fears that letting his father back into his life will ruin all of the things that he has achieved for himself: "If I went to the drowning man the drowning man would pull me under. I couldn't be his life raft."

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REFERENCES:

"Alcoholism Nature vs. Nurture | Dual Diagnosis." Dual Diagnosis. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2014.

"Being Flynn." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2014

http://www.simplypsychology.org/naturevsnurture.html