Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man
A Memoir
-
-
4,2 • 28 notes
-
-
- 12,99 $
-
- 12,99 $
Description de l’éditeur
Bill Clegg had a thriving business as a literary agent, a supportive partner, trusting colleagues, and loving friends when he walked away from his world and embarked on a two-month crack binge. He had been released from rehab nine months earlier, and his relapse would cost him his home, his money, his career, and very nearly his life.
What is it that leads an exceptional young mind want to disappear? Clegg makes stunningly clear the attraction of the drug that had him in its thrall, capturing in scene after scene the drama, tension, and paranoiac nightmare of a secret life -- and the exhilarating bliss that came again and again until it was eclipsed almost entirely by doom. He also explores the shape of addiction, how its pattern -- not its cause -- can be traced to the past.
Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man is an utterly compelling narrative -- lyrical, irresistible, harsh, honest, and beautifully written -- from which you simply cannot look away.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A rising publishing industry star trashes his life during a bender in this intense but callow confessional. Clegg, a literary agent with William Morris Endeavor, tells the story of a two-month crack binge in which he smoked away his literary agency partnership, his $70,000 bank account, 40 pounds (he's forever cutting new holes in his belt to cinch it to his wasting frame), and his relationship with his devoted long-suffering boyfriend. There's crazed excess and tawdry sex, but also a sharply etched portrait of the addict's mindset: the veering between paranoia and a compulsive sociability with the random crackheads he picks up to party with; the shrinkage of the planning horizon to the search for the next hit; the bliss of the high ( the warmest, most tender caress... then, as it recedes, the coldest hand ); the bender's unstoppable acceleration until, like a cartoon character running off a cliff, it has nothing left to sustain it. The author's efforts to impart psychological depth to his addiction he writes of wan collegiate debauches and a childhood complex about urinating are less convincing; it's clear that the binge will end when his money runs out. Though richly rendered, Clegg's crack odyssey feels like an epic bout of self-indulgence.
Avis des utilisateurs
Amazing
Simply amazing. I blazed through this book in an afternoon and am speechless.