Clegg - Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man : a Memoir

Copyright 2010 by Bill Clegg

Reading group guide copyright 2011 by Bill Clegg and Little, Brown and Company

Excerpt from Ninety Days 2011 by Bill Clegg

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Originally published in hardcover by Little, Brown and Company, June 2010

Second eBook Edition: August 2011

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This book is a work of nonfiction. The names and descriptions of some of the people in it have been changed.

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ISBN: 978-0-316-08450-5

Bill Clegg has written an exceptionally fine addition to a genre largely bereft of style, intelligence, and moral complexity. Cleggs memoir is the gestation of a soul, as Richard Ellman once said of Joyces Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Beautifully rendered in spare and elegant prose, a rumination on the human condition that recalls William Styrons memoir of depression, Darkness Visible. He writes with rare precision and delicacy about the many-headed hydra that is addiction. For this reason alone, Portrait of an Addict deserves to become a classic of psychiatric literature. It should be read in a single sitting. No one I know has been able to put the book down. Bill Clegg has repaired his career and, with this book, he joins the company of writers worth hearing from again. Its plain to see that people stuck by him because they enjoy his company, because he inspires fierce loyalty. Now, at last, Bill Clegg seems capable of believing it.

Kirk Davis Swinehart, Chicago Tribune

Bill Cleggs Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man stands up to Frederick Exleys great memoir of alcoholism, A Fans Notes. But really, forget comparisons. Read the book.

Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours
and By Nightfall

Mesmerizing. Reading it is like letting the needle down on a Nick Drake album. Clegg tells his story in short, atmospheric paragraphs, each separated by white space, each its own strobe-lighted snapshot of decadent poetic memory. One of the reasons to stick with Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man is the lightly narcotized sensorium of Mr. Cleggs prose. He can write.

Dwight Garner, New York Times

This is a heartbreaking and completely absorbing look at the wreckage of cocaine addiction.

Vanessa Bush, Booklist

You wont be able to stop reading until its all goneand you will crave more. What makes Cleggs 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.

Jonathan Van Meter, Vogue

Cleggs descent into hell is pegged one cinch of the belt at a time, each new hole punched marking new depths plumbed. Few memoirs, so clearly, in crisp, absorbing prose, depict such a telling likeness of an addict.

J. David Santen Jr., Oregonian

Addictions highs and lows often level into tedium on the page, but literary agent Clegg avoids that trap in this devastating memoir of the years he spent under cracks spell. His book is both harrowing and hopeful: a triumph.

Kim Hubbard, People

Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man is a book that will not soon be forgotten. The narrative has a floating quality that manages to be at once brutally specific and oddly poetic. Cleggs descent is a skillfully conjured, slow-motion wreck from which its impossible to look away. His handling of time, especially wasted time, has an undulating, telescoping quality. I raced through the book in an evening. That Clegg survived and is well enough to write a book this good is incredible.

Susan Juby, Globe and Mail

Its 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 Cleggs story of a manlargely locked in hotel rooms, engaged in a desperate, heart-wrenching battle with himselfis destined to become a cult classic of writing on drug addiction.

Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting

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 thats eating you whole.

Christopher Bollen, Interview

Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man by Bill Clegg isnt coming out until June, and I hesitate to review it six months in advance of its publication date. But the book is so damn good (I read it in two sittings) that I dont want to wait and let its impact fade. This is going to be a big one, folks. Its not often Im floored by a memoir, and I am by this one.

Jen A. Miller, Goodreads.com

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

Details

Portrait reads like a detailed report from a particularly scalding corner of hell. The unwavering pursuit of oblivion is riveting, yet one of Cleggs achievements is that he manages to spin an enthralling account of addiction without the romanticism characteristic of many books about drugs. In light of the often horrifying subject matter, one of the charms of this book is its sheer sprezzaturataking a soul-shattering experience and transmuting it into a seemingly effortless narrative, from aphoristic paragraphs that create a page-turning momentum. Cleggs voice, in fact, is the real find herean illuminating, unflinching, whip-smart guide through a merciless delirium of his own making. Its a tour de force of self-examination and a heartbreaking tale of self-destruction. The moments of hard-earned atonement, when they finally arrive, are sharply beautiful.

William Morassutti, TORO Magazine

Bill Clegg has produced a lyrical, moving crack addiction memoir, Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man, that is utterly frank and utterly readable.

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