This is BS!

Another Bul***it Night in Suck City is the story of Nick Flynn's journey to manhood. It is a rough journey. Flynn's father is never really around, partly because of a stint in prison for check fraud, his mother struggles to provide for her children and kills herself when Flynn is 22, and Flynn interacts with the most desperate people in the city of Boston while working at a homeless shelter there. During this gig, Flynn's father shows up at the shelter broke, mentally ill, and uncooperative. The author's detailed, finely-crafted reports on the homeless situation in Boston are eye-opening though many readers may find the intimate portraits of such dire straits to be unsettling. Flynn relays a good deal of information about his own struggles with alcoholism and drug abuse as well. This is certainly not light reading, but, as indicated by its receipt of the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir, it is a masterfully written, thought provoking piece of literature.

If the above piques your interest in the finer points of BS, fear not, we have that covered. Harry Frankfurt, professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University, has published an excellent exposition of BS fittingly titled On Bul***it.


-- Steve, Main Library