My Talk With Nick Flynn

8/14/2019 My Talk With Nick Flynn

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My Talk with Poet and Author

NICK FLYNN

Nick Flynn is a poet and the author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, a memoir about his relationship with his

estranged, alcoholic and homeless father. His latest book, The

Ticking is the Bomb (http://www.nickflynn.org/bio.htm), is a

memoir that interweaves reflections on his childhood, his

relationship with his father, his mother’s suicide, theimpending birth of his daughter, and his outrage and

obsession with the torture depicted in the photos from Abu

Ghraib. The text that follows is a condensed version of our talk. If you want to listen to the entire interview you can do

so here: http://bit.ly/NickFlynn.

[Photo of Nick Flynn by Geordie Wood.]

Tom Matlack: One of the things I really love The Ticking is

the Bomb is the way you write about the way we all get lost. I

think many of us men are at a crossroads. You realize this the



morning you get up and look in the mirror and don’t

recognize who you are.

Nick Flynn: I think it’s hard to tell when you are actually lost.

It’s hard to remember that it’s actually a common

experience—and maybe just a human experience, and almosta necessary experience—to get lost, and not to assume thatone’s life’s going to go in some sort of clear trajectory where

everything’s recognizable. I just don’t think that’s realistic.

But it also can be very dark and very troubling. Some people

don’t get out of it either. For some people that’s the end of

the road. I’ve had a few of these experiences in my life. It’sthe nature of life. There’s some element of suffering in life. It

comes to all of us. And it’s almost impossible to know how to

navigate it until you’re in it.

It does feel a lot like the things I did in Boy Scouts. They

drop you in the woods, and you have to survive for the

weekend, with a knife and a match and a tarp or something.There’s a reason that the Boy Scouts do that. It’s a metaphor

for what’s going to happen at other points in your life—how

are you going to figure your way out of this thing? Andhopefully you figure out somewhat healthy ways out of these

things. The thing that led you into there might not have been

that healthy. Or it might just have been necessary. It could just be circumstantial. Certainly life blindsides you.

TM: You write about the impact of realizing that you were

going to be a father. How do you view fatherhood as

potentially transformational?

NF: It wasn’t that I suddenly realized I was going to be a

father. It was a choice. It was actually a very active choice.

But the choice was something that had to be navigated. I hadto step up to make that choice. The pregnancy was no

surprise. And yet even within this sort of conscious decision,

there was a lot of uncertainty. There was a lot of wondering if I was actually up for this moment, that I would be able to

show up for it, that I’d be able to be a father. That was really

abstract.

My wife [actress Lili Taylor] didn’t put any pressure on me

any way. She was very clear. She was like, “This is what I

want to do, this is the time for me to do it, and I’d like to do itwith you. If you’re not ready to do, we’ll move on.” And it



became very clear that it was really my choice. It was

remarkably clear and simple that whatever I have to struggle

with is what I have to struggle with. And it was not aboutmaking her happy or saving her. It was really very clear that

she would prefer that we did it together.

I realized I hadn’t really approached our relationship in thatway before. It always felt like there was some sort of burden

of responsibility on me to take care of women or to save

them, that there could be some crisis if I wasn’t there, somevery serious consequences. And this didn’t seem that way at

all. It seemed clear that I just had to wrestle with whatever

was inside me and it gave it room to be dragged out into theopen.

TM: So in terms of your impending fatherhood and your

relationship with your own father and then your awareness of torture, how did all of that get stirred up in your mind?

NF: The book started as a meditation on the Abu Ghraib photographs. I sort of had done all the research and written a

draft of a book. But I sensed that I hadn’t quite followed it

deep enough. Since this isn’t journalism, it’s not just aboutwhat happened; it’s really about why this thing that happened

is affecting me. That’s what a memoir is: an individual’s

interpretation of events, rather than just what happened.

When I started looking into why these images snagged sodeeply in my subconscious, I followed those threads back,

and they led back to stuff I had touched on in the first

memoir—my father’s time in prison, my mother’s suicide—

but they went more deeply into them. In my father’s case, hehad been tortured in federal prison; he’d been experimented

on. And he would tell this story quite often. He was sleep-

deprived, had been put in isolation and sexually humiliated.And as I was writing the book, I started realizing that these

were the things that also were talked about at Abu Ghraib.

One of the books I read was by the historian Alfred McCoy.

It details the CIA’s involvement in developing the torture

techniques we saw at Abu Ghraib. They had a 50-year program to develop those techniques. McCoy talks about how

the federal prisons had been the site of early experimentation

of these torture techniques. And some of those prisons were

prisons that my father was in. So his stories suddenly took onthis other resonance.



TM: If it’s OK with you, I’d like to ask you 10 questions that

we call the Manhood Quiz. The first question is who taughtyou about manhood?

NF: It would be a series of my mother’s boyfriends when Iwas growing up. There were about 10 different boyfriends,and each sort of taught me a little piece of it. So it’s very

much a mosaic of 10 different guys—and I actually feel

fondly about nearly all of them. They all have contributedsome piece to the puzzle.

TM: The second question is how has romantic love shapedyou as a man?

NF: I think that whole idea of romantic love was probably

almost too strong an influence early on—getting caught up inthe lyrics of pop songs or something and trying to figure out

what that meant. I think that can separate one from having

actual genuine interactions. And that also brought some sortof a competition with other men over women, which seems

very unhealthy in retrospect.

TM: What two words would you use to describe your dad?

NF: Vodka and charm.

TM: How are you most unlike your father?

NF: Well, he’s pure id. And he doesn’t have any sort of

container for that. I’m probably the exact same. I’m no

different from him. It’s just that I’ve figured out how to keepit in a container a little bit more.

TM: From which of your mistakes did you learn the most?

NF: I think attempting to maintain more than one relationship

at a time. The energy it takes is really not worth it. And theenergy and the attention it takes away from any one

relationship.

TM: This is a two-part question. What word would the

women in your life use to describe you, and do you believe

it’s accurate?



NF: I’m always reluctant to put words in anyone else’s

mouth, but it’s something I really do often ask, like what

people feel about how they’ve been portrayed in my book.

TM: How about your wife? What does your wife say about

you?

NF: Oh, she’s very supportive. I get good feedback from her.

We’re doing well. So whatever the word would be—I hate to

give her a word—but it’d be on the positive end of thespectrum.

TM: My wife’s word is narcissistic, and it’s accurate.

NF: There are darker moments when I feel like I’m not quite

living up to my potential, but for the most part I do take in

what she says, so I’ll say it’s accurate.

TM: What dad in your life do you really admire for his

parenting skills?

NF: For years before I became a father I would try to spend

as much time as I could with my friends who were parentsand their kids. And I was really impressed. They all sort of

managed to do it, and do it gracefully. I felt like there was

something about this generation, that they had learnedsomething from the previous generation about showing up

and being really present as fathers. And it also made meimagine that I could maybe do it. And it felt like it was really

just about showing up and being present for it. I don’t mean

to disparage my father in any sense, but those were things

that he was not able to do.

TM: I have three kids. My experience is that showing up is

90 percent of the battle.

NF: So far that’s working. That simple formula seems to be

working.

TM: How old is your daughter now?

NF: She’s 2.

TM: The next question is have you been more successful in

public or in your private life?



NF: I feel comfortable with both at the moment. I have a

book out right now, so suddenly I’m in public life, or back

into public life. That’s the thing about a book: You’re in the public life for a little bit, and then you sort of go away for a

little while—several years in my case—and then you come

out again, hopefully. It went well. The public thing went wellthis time, so I feel comfortable with both.

TM: When was the last time you cried?

NF: I can weep pretty easily. I can get tears in my eyes from

a beautiful work of art. I get pretty emotional around the time

of my mother’s death, so I probably cried around then, just amonth or so ago. [Flynn’s mother committed suicide when he

was 22; he’s now 49.]

TM: In December, right?

NF: Yeah, so there was a cry around that.

TM: How long has it been since your mom passed away?

NF: It’s a long time—over 20 years.

TM: The next question is what advice would you give

teenage boys who are trying to figure out what it means to bea good man?

NF: There’s this sort of male energy that we have that can

seem very destructive. But it doesn’t have to be. It actually

can be a very positive force. A lot of the ways the male

energy’s channeled in the society is in very negative ways:the violence or pornography, there’s all sorts of sexism, and

there are all sorts of ways that energy is manipulated. But it’s

actually a very beautiful thing, and to honor it for what it isand to try to use it in some positive way is the best we can do.

TM: And last but not least, what’s your most cherished guyritual?

NF: Well, it’s really about the baby right now. In the last twoyears I’ve seen basically every sunrise, which has been sort

of amazing. At a certain point you’re not sure how many

more sunrises you’re going to see. And then I’ve seen every

one since she’s been born. We get up together, and we havethis sort of meditation thing in the morning for two or three



hours—until her mom gets up—where we’re just together,

just in this really quiet time that I really cherish.

Tom Matlack is a fan of all things cool and good. That

includes his wife Elena, three kids, Ray Allen, Lady Gaga, Laura Munson, and Nick Flynn. That's today. Tomorrow he'll have a new list (except for the wife and kids, they are for

keeps).

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My Talk With Nick Flynn