The Ticking is the Bomb

Description

In 2007, during the months before Flynn's daughter is born, his growing outrage and obsession with torture - exacerbated by the Abu Ghraib photos - leads him to Istanbul to meet some of the Iraqi men depicted in the photographs. Haunted by a history of addiction, a relationship with an unsteady father and a longing to connect with his mother who committed suicide, this memoir artfully interweaves passages from Flynn's childhood, his romantic relationships with women and his questioning of terror, torture and political crimes - unimaginable horrors, but part of humanity all the same. The time bomb of the title becomes a vehicle for exploring the fears and joys of becoming a father. Here is a dazzling, inventive memoir of profound self-discovery - of being lost and found, of painful family memories and losses, and of the compulsion to run from love, but the ability to embrace it.

Nick Flynn is the author of two collections of poetry, Blind Huber and Some Ether. In another life he worked as an electrician, a ship's captain, and as an educator in New York City public schools. His words have appeared over the years in The New Yorker, The Nation, Fence, The New York Times Book Review and The Paris Review. One semester a year he teaches at the University of Houston, and then he spends the rest of the year elsewhere.

[Flynn's] efforts to reconcile the tattered pieces of his life--his determination to find love and redemption in a world gone mad--feel gutsy, hard won, and utterly true. [Flynn's] search for the meaning of fatherhood in the era of terror is remarkable not only for the nimbleness with which he pulls these threads together--observations of former prisoners are woven with meditations on loss--but also for its empathy and unshrinking honesty.--Elissa Schappell What does it mean that America tortures? . . . This is the question that haunts Nick Flynn's devastating new book . . . the best passages here are simply astonishing. Flynn writes with great tenderness about the terrors and joys of fatherhood . . . a disquieting masterpiece.--Steve Almond Reading this book is like experiencing a very skilled surgeon performing an operation on his own insecurities and new found fragile maturity. The written operation may be painful but watching the scars heal on the page is a true delight. -- John Waters, director and author A gleaming, brutal, beautiful book. As I read it, I kept thinking of all the people I wanted to give it to. -- Aimee Bender, author of The Girl in the Flammable Skirt Another Nick Flynn book means another marvel. The Ticking is the Bomb is bold and brave and the prose will blow you away, as well his insights on love and being. Behold. -- Anthony Swafford, author of Exit A