Nick Flynn

 

Rodney Phillips: All of your three published books are really different. Can you please describe each of them in a sentence? 

Nick Flynn: I think you should describe each one as well, then we can have a contest. And besides, there are four books: 

Some Ether:

Blurb: an act of shameless self-mytho-poeticising, where Flynn tries to subvert his narrative tendencies by forays into invented "forms."

Over-riding emotion while writing it: Desperation. 

Soundtrack: Plastic Ono Band.

Blind Huber:

Blurb: Hoping to break out of il nuovo confessione, Flynn writes a series of persona poems, which seems to allow messier emotions (self-pity, bitterness, small-heartedness) more free-range, but sends him headlong into pathetic fallacy hell.

Over-riding emotion while writing it: Embarrassment.

Soundtrack: Philip Glass, The Photographer.

A Note Slipped under the Door: 

Blurb: The money-maker, which sank like a stone.

Over-riding emotion while writing: Self-righteousness.

Soundtrack: Donna Summer, I Feel Love

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: 

Blurb: a dodgy slip back into the myth factory, where Flynn appears, or wants to appear, to be free of self-pity and judgment, and to show his shadow side, yet finds it is all still a construct, that the self is a persona, that memory is fiction.

Over-riding emotion while writing it: "This is a big mistake."

Soundtrack: Johnny Cash, The Man Comes Around.