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Title details for Dirtbag, Massachusetts by Isaac Fitzgerald - Available

Dirtbag, Massachusetts

A Confessional

by Isaac Fitzgerald
Isaac Fitzgerald
Audiobook
7 of 8 copies available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
7 of 8 copies available
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER USA TODAY BESTSELLER Winner of the New England Book Award for Nonfiction "The best of what memoir can accomplish . . . pulling no punches on the path to truth, but it always finds the capacity for grace and joy." -Esquire, "Best Memoirs of the Year" A TIME Best Book of the Season * A Rolling Stone Top Culture Pick * A Publishers Weekly Best Memoir of the Season * A Buzzfeed Book Pick * A Goodreads Readers' Most Anticipated Book * A Chicago Tribune Book Pick * A Boston.com Book You Should Read * A Los Angeles Times Book to Add to Your Reading List * An Entertainment Weekly Best Book of the Month Isaac Fitzgerald has lived many lives. He's been an altar boy, a bartender, a fat kid, a smuggler, a biker, a prince of New England. But before all that, he was a bomb that exploded his parents' lives-or so he was told. In Dirtbag, Massachusetts, Fitzgerald, with warmth and humor, recounts his ongoing search for forgiveness, a more far-reaching vision of masculinity, and a more expansive definition of family and self. Fitzgerald's memoir-in-essays begins with a childhood that moves at breakneck speed from safety to violence, recounting an extraordinary pilgrimage through trauma to self-understanding and, ultimately, acceptance. From growing up in a Boston homeless shelter to bartending in San Francisco, from smuggling medical supplies into Burma to his lifelong struggle to make peace with his body, Fitzgerald strives to take control of his own story: one that aims to put aside anger, isolation, and entitlement to embrace the idea that one can be generous to oneself by being generous to others. Gritty and clear-eyed, loud-hearted and beautiful, Dirtbag, Massachusetts is a rollicking book that might also be a lifeline. "Fitzgerald nestles comfortably on a bar stool beside writers like Kerouac, Bukowski, Richard Price and Pete Hamill . . . The book's charm is in its telling of male misbehavior and, occasionally, the things we men get right. The fights nearly all come with forgiveness. It is about the ways men struggle to make sense of themselves and the romance men too often find in the bottom of a bottle of whiskey . . . an endearing and tattered catalog of one man's transgressions and the ways in which it is our sins, far more than our virtues, that make us who we are." -New York Times Book Review "Isaac Fitzgerald's memoir-in-essays is a bighearted read infused with candor, sharp humor, and the hope that comes from discovering saints can be found in all sorts of places." -Rolling Stone, "Top Culture Picks of the Month" "Dirtbag, Massachusetts is the best of what memoir can accomplish. It's blisteringly honest and vulnerable, pulling no punches on the path to truth, but it always finds the capacity for grace and joy." -Esquire, "Best Memoirs of the Year" "Told without piety or violin strains of uplift, but rather, an embrace of the chaos of just getting by." -Chicago Tribune, "Books for Summer 2022: Our Picks" "Fitzgerald reflects on his origins-and coming to terms with self-consciousness, anger, and strained family relationships. His writing is gritty yet vulnerable." -TIME, "27 New Books You Need to Read This Summer" "Fitzgerald never stopped searching for a community that would embrace him. That search took him from San Francisco to Burma (now Myanmar), and he candidly shares the formative experiences that helped him put aside anger to live with acceptance and understanding." -Washington Post, "12 Noteworthy Books for July" "Fitzgerald's project of openhearted self-interrogation still feels refreshing in a culture where men are socialized to bury their pain, or worse, turn it back on the world as misplaced resentment . . . In their casual, looping...

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    July 19, 2022

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781696608299
      • File size: 208571 KB
      • Duration: 07:14:31

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Trust the author/narrator when he says this memoir is a confessional--because it is. And there may be some things about Fitzgerald's life listeners would prefer not to know. Nonetheless, this is an interesting listen about a person who's led a fascinating, if at times, shocking, life. Fitzgerald had a troubled upbringing and shares some heartbreaking stories of violence and neglect. He grew up in Massachusetts and managed to attend an elite prep school; his journeys also took him to San Francisco; Washington, DC; and parts of Asia. His delivery is partly matter-of-fact, partly full of wonder. Some might find Fitzgerald's accent difficult to place, but that doesn't distract from a memoir that will have listeners amazed, possibly appalled, but always engaged. J.P.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from April 18, 2022
      Journalist Fitzgerald (How to Be a Pirate) weaves a raucous mosaic of a rough-and-ready New England rarely seen with a transfixing story of his path to finding himself. In a series of essays, he recounts his impoverished childhood in 1980s Massachusetts and follows his escape from it through a litany of jobs and identities. In “Family Stories,” he charts the “stained and tattered map” of his dysfunctional Catholic parent’s lives and their bumpy road from “city poor to country poor.” A poster child of the “classic New England family, incapable of discussing... things openly,” Fitzgerald buried his past in drinking, drugs, and porn: “bonding relationships,” he writes in “The Armory,” “were based on the consumption of porn and communal jerking off.” By his mid-20s, he was “on the other side” starring in pornos. As he takes readers along on his search for salvation, he barrels through many venues—from San Francisco to Southeast Asia to Brooklyn to Kilimanjaro—recounting the “conversations that changed me” and eventually helped him overcome old ideals of masculinity and untangle his complicity in a racist society (in his case, “hipster racism”). “To any young men out there who aren’t too far gone,” he writes. “I say you’re not done becoming yourself.” The result is a marvelous coming-of-age story that’s as wily and raunchy as it is heartfelt.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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