Are we all addicts?
A book review in 500 words or less: Isaac Fitzgerald’s best-selling, DIRTBAG, MASSACHUSSETS: A CONFESSIONAL.
by msminibookreview
One read of the new NYT’s best-selling memoir, DIRTBAG, is a series of essays of random adventures over the course of a white man’s life. The opening is funny yet somber: a family escapes challenges by moving from the city to the country. Chaos ensues. A family relies on the institution of the Catholic Church to provide direction, structure, hope. Chaos ensues. By the middle of the book, the author has sought out other institutions, albeit counter-cultural ones: motorcycles, a bar, a media company in a burgeoning class of business (ahem, porn). Chaos ensues.
In another read, an unintended one I’m sure, DIRTBAG is a non-traditional addiction memoir. Non-traditional in the sense that this confession is not an apology or a making amends. We don’t have a full tilt to resolution in any sense, unlike those addiction memoirs that neatly arc as follows: trauma, addiction, conflict, abstinence.
Fitzgerald doesn’t call himself an alcoholic (although notes he hasn’t given up the drink) nor a sex addict nor a food addict, but the reader feels a subtextual tension. DIRTBAG reminds me of another memoir I read over the pandemic called, QUIT LIKE A WOMAN by Holly Whitaker, in which Whitaker deliberately catalogues her gendered journey in the context of a self-diagnosed drinking problem. In a radical move, she abandons AA as a solution. Is this a trend, I wonder? Are self-discovery, body-hacking, and confession the new antidotes to addiction?
Maybe.
It could be the case that humans are just physiological molotov cocktails with psyche’s living in a post-modern world. Perhaps we need to retire the binary thinking that 1) there are addicts and non-addicts; and 2) the abstinence model is the sole solution. Perhaps we are all on a spectrum of addiction in these volatile times, and there’s healing in sharing our stories. Fitzgerald's story is a worthwhile one, with some tender and violent moments told with honesty and functioning levels of sobriety.
Title: DIRTBAG, MASSACHUSETTS: A CONFESSIONAL/Author: Isaac Fitzgerald/Copyright: 2022/Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing/Medium: Hardcover (240pp)/Genre: memoir
Purchased: Sandmeyer’s Bookstore in Chicago.
Summary: Precarious adventures of a white man.
Short Review: A thought-provoking journey for the addiction memoir enthusiast.
