Book Cheer: Virginia Stanley Cheers for Bill Clegg's Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man
By Virginia Stanley Jun 14, 2010In our latest installment of Book Cheer-we're up to No. 6 already!-Virginia Stanley highlights the ever-popular memoir genre. Readers rarely tire of tales of triumph over chemical dependency, and that's just what Bill Clegg offers in Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man. The first ten librarians to email Jason.Bennett@hbgusa.com get a free ARC.-Heather McCormack
Name: Virginia Stanley; email: Virginia.stanley@harpercollins.com; blog: Librarylovefest.com
Title: Director of Library Marketing, HarperCollins Publishers
Favorite Genres: Coming of age, fiction, memoir, humor.
Lifelong Favorites: Books that I've held close to my heart over the years go from one extreme to the other: the innocence of Carol Ryrie Brink's Baby Island, a book from my childhood (which, I was thrilled to learn as an adult, is an all-time favorite of Nancy Pearl's); Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone (how did this man get Dolores's voice so right?); Frank Deford's Alex: The Life of a Child (beautiful and unforgettable, like the child herself); Malachy McCourt's Singing My Him Song (his own version of Angela's Ashes); anything by Mark Doty; and Lucille Ball's Love, Lucy (unearthed after her death and published back in 1997).
The Winner: The latest book I'm adding to my shelf is Bill Clegg's Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man (see our review in this issue's "Down with Summer Reading!: 19 Memoirs for the Recovery Crowd"), a brutally honest memoir of one man's descent into the hell known as addiction-and his struggle back to the land of the living. I don't know what drew me to it, the subject matter or the subject himself. You see, Mr. Clegg is a literary agent. And although I don't know him, our professions are interlinked. So, to be honest, my curiosity was piqued. How could an established literary agent, a person who was intelligent enough to create a boutique agency and cultivate a growing list of authors, become a crack addict, disappearing from his work, family, and friends for weeks-months-at a time? How does one go from living "the good life" with a beautiful home, money in the bank, and a rock-solid life partner to an emaciated addict crawling on the floors of crack dens, desperate to find any remnants of the drug that is stealing the life he once knew? How does that happen? What were the demons that drove him to this place? And how does he survive to tell his tale?
Portrait fills in the blanks-and makes you care. Writing in short, choppy paragraphs, Clegg introduces readers to a seemingly fulfilled person. His career and love life appear intact. However, a slight scratch on the surface tells a different story-and flashbacks to his childhood reveal in heartbreaking detail a condition that wreaks havoc on his self-esteem. Never, however, did I feel as if the author was playing the blame game. He owns his faults and beats himself up more than anyone else ever could. It's hard to watch, but it makes him even more sympathetic without being manipulative. Clegg leaves nothing to the imagination, describing everything from the anticipation and sensation of taking that first hit to the gnawing, horrific anguish when realizing his supply is gone. We are brought into a world of sordid dealers, seedy hotel rooms, anonymous sex, and drug-fueled paranoia. I found myself unnerved yet compelled to keep reading, pulling for the man and the boy inside to survive, to get clean, to live the life he (they) truly deserved. After turning the last page, I went back and reread the dedication, which literally tightened my throat and stung my eyes: "For everyone still out there." If you happen to know one of them, give them this book. There is hope.
