Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional

By Isaac Fitzgerald

* THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER *
* WINNER OF THE 2022 NEW ENGLAND BOOK AWARD FOR NON-FICTION *

'A heart on the sleeve, demons in check, eyes unblinking, unbearably sad, laugh-out-loud funny revelation' MARLON JAMES

Isaac Fitzgerald has lived many lives. He's been an altar boy, a bartender, a fat kid, a smuggler, a biker, a prince of New England. But before all that, he was a bomb that exploded his parents' lives – or so he was told. In Dirtbag, Massachusetts, Fitzgerald, with warmth and humour, recounts his ongoing search for forgiveness, a more far-reaching vision of masculinity, and a more expansive definition of family and self.

Fitzgerald'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. 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.

Gritty and clear-eyed, loud-hearted and beautiful, Dirtbag, Massachusetts is a rollicking book that might also be a lifeline.

'I felt more alive after reading these essays' ALEXANDER CHEE
'Isaac Fitzgerald will make you feel absolutely everything' ROXANE GAY
'This book will be a key in the lock of many hearts and minds' EMMA STRAUB

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Aug 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9781526659378

Isaac Fitzgerald

Isaac Fitzgerald appears frequently on The Today Show and is the author of the bestselling children's book How to Be a Pirate as well as the co-author of Pen & Ink and Knives & Ink (winner of an IACP Award). His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Best American Nonrequired Reading, and numerous other publications. He lives in Brooklyn.

Reviews for Dirtbag, Massachusetts

[froxgirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As a Masshole myself, it's hard to see what all the fuss is all about here. If you aren’t, and you think that everyone from our Commonwealth sups with silver spoons and attends Harvard as a legacy admission, maybe you'll be amazed and impressed by this novel. Plot: cis white man overcomes miserable home life in miserable central MA with miserably confused and mildly abusive parents, escapes temporarily into a boarding school, and lives to find a life as a drunk in the bars of San Francisco. There's hardly a woman mentioned in the entire book (probably better for all cis females). The two final chapters were a vast improvement over the rest. In one, Isaac, his sister, and their father climb Mt. Kilimanjaro on a whim. In the final chapter, Isaac receives valuable advice from a friend on how to avoid offending other dirtbags by reframing the alienating concept of white privilege. The author writes well but for me, the whole effort was neither thought-provoking nor notable on any level. Quotes: "Not once did I like what I saw in the mirror whenever I saw myself in it.""He'd been discussing privilege with his white friends back home and hit on using the word "blessings" instead. He knew it wasn't a perfect match, but it had helped some people get used to the idea - after they'd been talking a bit - before he substituted "privilege" back in. He told me that he'd had more than one friend come around."

[narshkite · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Fitzgerald is beloved by all the Brooklyn writers you know and love, but I am not sure I know why. I mean he seems like a sweet, if wildly self-involved guy, but I don't get the point of this memoir. A good memoir tells us something about the person writing it, the people who impact the memoirists life, and also it points to other more universal truths. Using that calculus:I learned something about Isaac Fitzgerald. I learned that he does not judge others, at least in part because he does not want others to judge him. (He judges himself plenty, and often unfairly, but he judges himself for things that are not real problems so he does not have to address the things about himself that matter.) I learned he is a drunk. I learned he is kind. I learned he stunningly irresponsible but charming enough that others save him from enduring the consequences of his (in)actions.Fitzgerald implies that his terrible childhood is to blame for many things, and he hints at his parents' bad behavior. Allowing the reader to know more about his parents and their behavior would therefore have added a lot of value. I cannot figure out why Fitzgerald chose not the tell us anything about tragic mental and physical abuse his parents inflicted on him until the last chapter. Mostly they just seemed like immature seeker types until then. He waits for the penultimate chapter to let us know about his siblings who are also an important part of understanding him and his choices. Without that context this was not a memoir, it was just a series of essays about chapters in Fitzgerald's life with nothing to bring them together.So that covers getting to know Fitzgerald, and the people who impact him, what about the universality. I missed that. I did really love the essay about his time in the kink community in San Francisco, but it did not really mesh with the rest of the book and it did not feel like memoir -- it was about the much more interesting Peter Acworth, Lorelai Lee and Princess Donna. I also felt the chapter about asshole Gavin McInnes was interesting, and also not memoir or confessional but rather cultural commentary.If I am going to read about irresponsible drunks who let other people pay their bills give me Bukowski. He at least is funny and insightful and writes like no one else. This was a complete waste of time other than the sections that were not memoir at all - those essays were good enough to get this to the 2-star. .

[pomo58 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Dirtbag, Massachusetts by Isaac Fitzgerald is a memoir in essays that is both engaging and entertaining. I almost feel guilty saying that reading about a person's ups and downs in life is entertaining but that is, I think (hope?) what Fitzgerald wants us to be. We actually can learn a lot when we are being entertained, that is the power of much popular culture.The general idea of the book seems to be presented early in an early chapter, we like stories and we relate to stories. So rather than simply a "this then that" chronology we have essays that in essence are stories. This allows each chapter in his life to be told as a story with both glimpses back and insights from the present. This format worked for me, I felt like each "story" represented a, for lack of a better term, lesson he had learned. Being in an essay made each feel like a completed building block in his life.I'm not sure my explanation of the style does it justice. This is still like most memoirs in that we move forward in time with each chapter but rather than trying to account for every moment from birth to present we get episodes that speak to the periods that are glossed over between them.I will also add that in a memoir one doesn't necessarily flesh out characters. That is fine in fiction but imagine trying to flesh out all of the people that have impacted your life. You would likely be wrong about what you added or anger them for making their personal details a big part of your life story. These are real people, not characters, and in a memoir they are there, whether you like it or not, to help tell the memoirist's story. Memoir = people. Fiction = characters.Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.