Flynn's Bullshit Night in Suck City Pt. 1

"You are kept alive but limited," states Flynn in his sorrowful memoir Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. Free but limited is a theme that courses through each character's life. Johnathan, Flynn's father, is not forced into his lifestyle, but chooses haphazardly (or so it seems) to lead nomadic life; making sporadic decisions of how he will heal the world, of how he will fix what has been tainted, and will do this with his words--with his writing. However, through his actions, it is revealed that Johnathan is mentally unstable; Flynn does not admit this in the book. A reader seeking hope will do so in vain, as the tale is one of pavement beds, makeshift homes, chosen isolation, and many lost faces (lost souls). The characters are lost in the storms of their own lives and minds.

Flynn's prose is mournful but realistic as it captures the hopeless journey his father and so many others are bound to travel. Another Bullshit Night in Suck City is a cruel tale of irony and Flynn's connection to his father; a connection to an extension of himself; a self he denied existed, until he looked saw Johnathan Flynn within himself.

"We are on this earth to help other people," Flynn's father writes in one of his letters; one of many written to Flynn. The irony of this line exudes from the page as Flynn desires to stay away from his father, but cannot. Flynn is drawn to his father and even though they are eventually united it is not the climax of Flynn's life. More tragedy and loss as his mother reaches for a gun. A blood stained pajama. Flynn is reading books upside down. He quits school. Grappling with his own sadness and trauma, Flynn seeks isolation on the ocean--floating in solitude, in his chosen isolation.

Flynn recounts great detail of his father's life, but remains silent about his mother. An explanation, of what really happened, piqued my interest. However, Flynn did not touch the loss of his mother in great detail. It is clear that Flynn's silence about his mother is a reflection of his (on going) grief over her death. When asked if he blamed himself for her death, he answers "Do you really think I am gonna answer that here?"

Honest and troubled, Flynn recounts a tale of how a family drunk with dreams and high off self-illusion, reaches escape through liquor and drug money. It seems as though Flynn will never recuperate. However, hope is whispered in Flynn's life, as Dharma and a Zen Master start to give answers. Answers that will give him some sense of place and guidance in the cosmos. Answers that he listens to and even hopes will cure and repair what his mind, father, and life had created.

Flynn is able to use his writing as a way of ultimate escape; he is able to live in the present and remember the past. Remember that his father told him, "you are me," and as the book created some relief for his father, it also did for Flynn.