My complaints have to do with what he chose to emphasize (the bar) and whether he’s a good storyteller (he passes that test with flying colors). This is a memoir, so I’m not going to complain about what the writer does with his life. His ode to a bar got old, and I was sick of hanging around in that dive. Most of the first half of the book is about his bar worship (he even got to work there after many years as a customer, which was a huge delight to him). This is basically a plain memoir about a guy who drinks too much and whose greatest joy is a bar in California. I’m not saying this memoir is bad-not at all.

(And the accolades are even in boldface, just to make sure you see them all bright, that you see how important they are.) Throw in a few gushy, trusty reviews, and this drooling, itchy book addict didn’t stand a chance of saying No to the Book!

Gritty and clear-eyed, loud-hearted and beautiful, Dirtbag, Massachusetts is a rollicking book that might also be a lifeline.ĭamn blurb-land! Oh, sure, the blurb is just overflowing with compliments “best of” all over the place. From growing up in a Boston homeless shelter to bartending in San Francisco, from smuggling medical supplies into Burma to his lifelong struggle to make peace with his body, Fitzgerald strives to take control of his own story: one that aims to put aside anger, isolation, and entitlement to embrace the idea that one can be generous to oneself by being generous to others. In Dirtbag, Massachusetts, Fitzgerald, with warmth and humor, recounts his ongoing search for forgiveness, a more far-reaching vision of masculinity, and a more expansive definition of family and self.įitzgerald's memoir-in-essays begins with a childhood that moves at breakneck speed from safety to violence, recounting an extraordinary pilgrimage through trauma to self-understanding and, ultimately, acceptance. But before all that, he was a bomb that exploded his parents' lives-or so he was told. He's been an altar boy, a bartender, a fat kid, a smuggler, a biker, a prince of New England.

Dirtbag massachusetts goodreads