Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man: A Memoir - Couverture rigide

Clegg, Bill

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0316054674 ISBN 13 : 9780316054676

Editeur : Little, Brown and Company, 2010

Synopsis

Book by Clegg Bill

A propos du livre

Revue de presse :

PRAISE FOR PORTRAIT OF AN ADDICT AS A YOUNG MAN:
"Bill Clegg's Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man stands up to Frederick Exley's great memoir of alcoholism, A Fan's Notes . . . . But really, forget comparisons. Read the book." (Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours)

"Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man is an instant classic. Anybody who knows anything about addiction will feel morally altered by this book. To an extraordinary degree, it has both beauty and truth. It goes beyond its own revelations to become a book for everybody, a work of art. I suppose we live for the magic of these things." (Andrew O'Hagan, author of Be Near Me, Winner of the Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction, 2008)

"Bill Clegg's memoir is a startling, hair-raising, and compulsively readable account of one man's descent into the hell of addiction. That Clegg lived to tell his story is amazing. That he has captured the details of his experience with such beauty is even more so. Unforgettable." (Danielle Trussoni, author of the memoir Falling Through the Earth, named one of the Ten Best Books of 2006 by the New York Times)

"It's a remarkable achievement when a writer can evoke the most desperate episodes of addiction with the unflinching honesty required to make such a memoir worth reading, yet somehow manage to completely transcend sleaze, sordidness, and vapid self-justification. Bill Clegg's story of a man-largely locked in hotel rooms, engaged in a desperate, heart-wrenching battle with himself--is destined to become a cult classic of writing on drug addiction." (Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting)

"I devoured Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man, couldn't put it down. The writing throughout is beautiful, and all the while it is reportorial and efficient and honest--a rare combination of feats!" (Elinor Lipman, author of Then She Found Me and, most recently, The Family Man)

"For all the literary musings on drugs, the business of literature is a rather sober and cerebral place. That fact may explain why the memoir of literary agent Bill Clegg, which recounts a nosedive not so very long ago into crack addiction, seems as shocking as his ability to construct gorgeously poetic scenes seems intuitive.... Clegg barrels full force into a spiraling Manhattan phantasmagoria of hot-boxed hotel bathrooms, more-than-willing drug dealers, boyfriend betrayal, insane paranoia, days gone missing, and the endless hunger of wanting just one more taste of the very thing that's eating you whole." (Interview Christopher Bollen)

"You won't be able to stop reading until it's all gone - and you will crave more...what makes Clegg's book especially riveting is the remarkable speed of his vertiginous fall from grace....Portrait is a spare, elegant book, one that shows admirable restraint in the face of extreme, even pathological behavior (A Million Little Pieces this is not.) Clegg may not have been able to control his demons, but he is utterly in charge of this material, with a voice that is knowing and self-deprecating in exactly the right measure." (Vogue Jonathan Van Meter)

"It turns out there is room on the shelf for one more addiction memoir....Clegg spares no one's feelings, least of all his own; it's not the brutality that makes this worthwhile but rather the strange beauty of the stream-of consciousness prose. We're voyeurs, as helpless to stop the carnage as the author himself." (GQ Mickey Rapkin)

"Clegg...cuts through the addiction-memoir noise, recounting the glamour and pathos of self-destruction with efficiency and disturbing clarity." (Details)

"Bill Clegg... has written a streamlined, hair-raising, high-torque memoir...Even though we know how the story must end, it's hard to believe Clegg will survive the ordeal he describes in such horrific detail." (Vanity Fair Jay McInerney)

Quatrième de couverture :

'A gripping, graphic memoir that pounds relentlessly to a climax' The Times

What makes one of the most gifted, charismatic and successful young literary agents in New York fall into full-blown crack addiction: a collapse that would cost him his business, his home, many of his friends and - very nearly - his life? In his utterly compulsive narrative, Bill Clegg leads us through the grimiest back-rooms of Manhattan's underbelly, through scenes of blank-eyed sex and squalor, into the febrile paranoia of a mind gone out of control. His story is intercut with terrifying flashbacks to his childhood, where a secret physical condition triggers shame, psychological abuse, and the beginning of a hidden life.

'Audacious' Rose Tremain

'Beautifully measured and adroitly paced...mixing a matter-of-fact eye for detail with just enough emotion to unsettle and engross... Addictive and masterful' Independent

'It has the power and precision of the best contemporary fiction. It does what the best writing always does, which is to make Clegg's experience part of your own' Andrew O'Hagan

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Little, Brown and Company
• Date d'édition: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0316054674
• ISBN 13: 9780316054676
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 240