"On the sixth day, God created the only animal that commits suicide."
Nick Flynn's The Reenactments is like no other book I have read. The situation is utterly unique; Flynn wrote a book (Another Bullshit Night in Suck City) about meeting his father for the first time in years when he walked into the homeless shelter where Flynn was working. He has also written book partly about his mother's suicide years earlier and his own slow fall into depression and addiction. Then, Flynn sold a screenplay based on his books and Being Flynn, starring Julianne Moore as his mother and Robert De Niro as his father, is the movie made from that screenplay. The Reenactments is Flynn's book about watching the film be made, so a memoir of a filmed memoir which sounds ridiculous and misses the point entirely.
Nick Flynn's mother tried more than once to kill herself and then, sitting in a dining table chair and using her handgun, she got the job done. Here's Flynn on the chair and other objects from her final moments he can not let go:
A white wooden chair with its back blown out, the last piece of furniture my mother's body would touch. I never fix the chair, I can't, it becomes a stool, I carry it with me from apartment to apartment, for ten years. It ends up holding a jade plant my mother had given me in high school-what have I done, what have I ever done but make these images mine?
This is not a work of grief however, it's about the surreal nature of seeing some of the worst parts of your life portrayed in front of you by other people. It's about Flynn's ongoing struggle to accept who his father is and the many ways in which he failed his family. It's also about his mother and how he can not let her go even though she chose to leave him. It's about memory, and learning to keep your memories close while also not letting them crush you.
The Reenactments is about survival but not in a manufactured way. It's not about challenging yourself to survive some climb or hike or swim or race. It's about walking home and there she is and she's dead. Or sitting at work and looking up and there he is and he's homeless. It's about surviving your family; surviving who you are. It's really like nothing else I've ever read and I can't help but wonder if writing this book helped Flynn, or if it is just what he has to do now; if the writing is the only way he can survive.
I should note that the structure is unusual - short chapters split into single page entries that forms a chronology. It moves easily back and forth in time but focuses primarily on the movie making and interactions with his father. Flynn was at work on a book (or article) about the Glass Flowers at Harvard and their creation weaves in and out of narrative as well. Having seen them (amazing) I can attest to what he says here - you don't believe they are real the first time you pore over the cases; you can't imagine something like them could truly be man-made. I love what he writes about the flowers.
I have not read any of Flynn's poetry yet but I plan to now. He cuts to the heart of the matter so effectively; I'm sure even when he is not this personal his words are still intense and beautiful.
SF Gate review of The Reenactments
