This interview has been edited for clarity and length.ī: “Dirtbag, Massachusetts” is being called a “memoir in essays.” How - and why - did you decide to approach your story with this structure? What did it allow you to do differently than a typical memoir?

“And that’s been brilliant too.”īut, the author stressed, he still thinks it’s a funny line.īelow, Fitzgerald shares more with about his new memoir, what he hopes readers take away from it, and the way stories can be “lifelines.” “And I’m very happy to report, because this stuff isn’t in the book, but the book is bringing some really important and really loving conversations that I maybe wasn’t expecting,” he said.

“So the thing that I can only hope for is that those lines of communication stay open and that we get to move forward as a family. … It’s still a growing, ever-evolving thing,” Fitzgerald said. “That is now the opening line of something that is really about my relationship with these two people and their relationship with each other, and where our relationship used to be and where our relationship is now. Gritty and clear-eyed, loud-hearted and beautiful, Dirtbag, Massachusetts is a rollicking book that might also be a lifeline.Fitzgerald - who was the first books editor at Buzzfeed, frequently shares reading recommendations on “The Today Show,” and is the author of the popular Substack newsletter “ Walk It Off” - told it is both moving and wild to have the opening line he’s held close for years now be the start of a deep examination of his childhood and family. 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. A TIME Best Book of the Summer * A Rolling Stone Top Culture Pick * A Publishers Weekly Best Memoir of the Season * A Buzzfeed Book Pick * A Goodreads Readers’ Most Anticipated Book * A Chicago Tribune Book Pick * A Book You Should Read * A Los Angeles Times Book to Add to Your Reading List

Dirtbag massachusetts review