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    Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man: A Memoir
    Unavailable
    Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man: A Memoir
    Unavailable
    Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man: A Memoir
    Audiobook4 hours

    Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man: A Memoir

    Written by Bill Clegg

    Narrated by Joshua Ferris

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Bill Clegg had a thriving business as a literary agent, a supportive partner, trusting colleagues, and loving friends when he walked away from his world and embarked on a two-month crack binge. He had been released from rehab nine months earlier, and his relapse would cost him his home, his money, his career, and very nearly his life.

    What is it that leads an exceptional young mind want to disappear? Clegg makes stunningly clear the attraction of the drug that had him in its thrall, capturing in scene after scene the drama, tension, and paranoiac nightmare of a secret life--and the exhilarating bliss that came again and again until it was eclipsed almost entirely by doom. He also explores the shape of addiction, how its pattern--not its cause--can be traced to the past.

    Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man is an utterly compelling narrative--lyrical, irresistible, harsh, honest, and beautifully written--from which you simply cannot look away.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateJun 7, 2010
    ISBN9781607883586
    Unavailable
    Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man: A Memoir
    Author

    Bill Clegg

    Bill Clegg is a literary agent in New York and the author of the bestselling memoirs Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man and Ninety Days. The author of the novels Did You Ever Have a Family and The End of the Day, he has written for the New York Times, Lapham’s Quarterly, New York magazine, The Guardian, and Harper’s Bazaar.

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    Reviews for Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man

    3.5/5

    143 ratings21 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Clegg's first book reads like a confessional. "Portrait" is a first-person account of the hell of a full-blown crack addiction, interspersed with shorter scenes from the narrator's childhood written in the third person. This device, while effective, is a bit rocky at first. Unfortunately, the childhood scenes, coupled with the narrator's scenes from psychotherapy sessions, are irritatingly cliched. The flannel-wearing father who drinks too much Scotch, etc. I had to keep checking the jacket to make sure I wasn't reading Sedaris.Nonetheless, the book is effective on several levels. First, Clegg makes passing reference to several different types of addiction therapists, one of which is a counselor whose job it is to schedule Clegg's use so that his crack smoking and drinking takes place on a regular schedule. His subsequent recounting of that experience as wholly ineffective is great exposition. It's a pity he didn't discuss more the laughable treatments available to crack addicts, rather than dwelling on trite narratives that had me, at least, skimming.The best aspect of the book is Clegg's portrayal of addiction as an all-consuming affair. The narrator emerges as someone whose entire life---the details of which are irrelevant---revolves around finding his next hit. The book is honest in conceding that the narrator is a professional with an outwardly legitimate appearance, who burns through tens of thousands and destroys his career. Yet his need, and especially his paranoia---that his colleagues will confront his addiction, or that he will have a run-in with law enforcement---is emphasized to the point that the reader is completely drawn in by it.Finally, the happy ending can only be forgiven if one concedes that the book is autobiographical. Otherwise it's pure schmaltz, finding God, white doves and all that jazz.
    • 4/5
      This is especially powerful and effective in the audio-book format -- read by the author. I did a one sitting "listen/read". Even though you know the ending was good (and I hope it still is for Mr Clegg), you find yourself telling him "No...Stop" et-all. I felt of course voyeuristic, but the writing and vocal delivery never made me feel as if I were gawking. A very honest and realistic detailing of a man's struggle with his inner monsters and demons...well worth a read or listen!
    • 5/5
      Powerful book. Writing style enforces the hopelessness that the author feels. Hard to believe anyone can survive such massive quantites of drugs & alcohol
    • 5/5
      Very emotional and down to earth book. Raw! Great author. I kept hoping he would get it this time. Bill Clegg helped me to understand that when a using Addict hurt you... they are hurt for hurting you. They care! Great book! Powerful how Bill was able to see things from perhaps his daddy’s perspective. Daddy was wrong, but Bill looked at his life! Wow, Noah totally practiced unconditional love!
    • 5/5
      As an addiction counselor without a personal addiction history, I need ways to better understand the experience and am convinced there’s no better way than through the words of a gifted writer. The author here made me feel as if I were that little 5 year old boy so lost and alone, then grown up and feeling like a fraud, desperate for relief, paranoid, hungry for connection, ashamed. I was riveted throughout the entire reading.
    • 5/5
      Talk about an emotional roller coaster! I've never read a book (or listened, in this case) that compared to anything like this memoir.
    • 4/5
      This read is intense! I’ve had friends who were/are addicts and at one point I almost turned it off. It’s very real. I’m glad it read the whole thing.
    • 4/5
      Gripping in it's detail, almost painful in its intimacy, this look at addiction will change your perspective on substance abuse. The author reveals his struggle in lyrical prose, shining the light upon both his life as an addict and his childhood traumas. Haunting.
    • 1/5
      can’t listen to it due to the worst narration, ever
      i dont believe a word of these other reviews.
      try it for yourself
    • 4/5
      The author's extreme drug use was both confusing and disheartening. I can't say I understand such self destruction. But he did well to explain his anxiety, insecurities and self-loathing, which clearly had a lot to do with his attraction to drugs and his downfall. However, I never got a sense of his goodness and charm. He seemed to have a lot of friends and supporters, so I'm sure he was indeed a likable person. Also, I would've liked to hear a bit more about his work and how he became so successful. This would have made his losses greater, I think, at least from a reader's perspective. We could've seen exactly what he was throwing away for his addiction. But it all came together nicely, especially at the end when he went back to a time that was peaceful and loving, and connected to his inner child and the world before anxiety and upheaval. I enjoyed the book.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      For the subject matter, this book was fairly boring. The author did a decent job telling his personal story about drug addiction but he did not make me particularly care too much about him our his messed up life.
    • 3/5
      This book was pretty engaging. There is a train-wrecky appeal and Clegg is pretty good with phrase. (I especially liked it when he described a woman's accent as "tricky.")I would have liked it better if he had really reflected on the way his race/class kept him out of jail. While I was really fascinated by the idea that there are secret crack addicts everywhere, Clegg could have been omre reflective about the fact that addicts who can't check into Manhattan hotels to get high and order vodka for room service, who stumble home to buildings that don't have doormen-- these folks go to jail forever or die.Maybe it's not fair to judge him for not having a social justice agenga, but I found myself wanting to shake him-- particularly when he is so high and disheveled that he can't check into a hotel--- I think it's the W-- so he goes to SoHo to buy a new cashmere sweater.The writing is strongest and most self-aware when Clegg recounts some really painful moments from his childhood. He employs a risky device of talking about his child-self in third person, but he pulls it off.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Wow. Scary and completely fascinating. Bill Clegg relates his experience with a crack addiction as he spirals toward rock bottom. Completely non linear, a fast and absorbing read.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Well I don't really like memoirs, but I've read a number of them and this one is no different. Like many of the addiction memoirs written since the early 90s, it's written in the present tense, with nonlinear chapters switching between first and third person. The writing is clear and compelling enough but not particularly deep or critical. The title says it all: it's a portrait of an addict, not of an addict's recovery. It's a sort of depressing picaresque, reminding me of one of the problems that can come with episodic narrative: repetition without change or insight. The author doesn't get sober until the last few pages of the book, and I genuinely wonder about the 200 pages of drugalogue before that. Is it narratively necessary to see so many scenes of the author using? There's very little character development, ultimately, so I don't care at the end that the author is maybe getting clean for real this time. I guess I kept reading it because I'm still curious about people with unlimited wealth and privilege. Why am I still curious about this? I wish I wasn't. I blame capitalism.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      I picked this up on a whim, since I've been sitting in the biography section, and I recognized the name. This is the literary agent guy who had a big crash from drug addiction that I heard about! And the book was pretty slim, and the prose looked interesting at first glance, so why not, I thought?I suppose this book was worth about a whim, but it didn't really get me anywhere. Clegg narrates the story of his addiction and ultimate final binge by alternating chapters between said binge and tales of his growing up, the psychological problems he had that manifested as physical symptoms (here, difficulty with urination), the rise of his attraction to men, etc. This seems like a fine enough structure, but the writing is facile; it really does feel too light for the subject matter much of the time. For the content of the book, which is heavy - an accomplished professional throws it all away for crack! - it doesn't feel like there's much depth to it. It's all surface-y, and what writerly techniques he trots out don't really strike home.I guess you don't really get that much of a sense of how much he has to lose, his life as a success, because he doesn't really ever accept that he was successful as such himself; he just accepts he has the outward markers of success. And when he does bad things, and people offer to help, you don't really get a sense of why; the other people in the story of Clegg's life as presented are pretty one-dimensional. The binge itself and the paranoia it brings on are written up well, but the backstory side and people besides Clegg don't really come together for me. On the whole, I feel like this was less than the sum of its parts; although he made a lot for this memoir, Clegg might do well to stick to the agency work, now that he's recovered, I think.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      NYT writer David Carr, in his review of Cleggs book, (the preposterously and pretentiously titled (choose whatever derogatory word starting with p- you like)), Portrait of the Addict As A Young Man, compared the story of an addict to watching the devastating aftermath of a car crash. Driving by slowly, you resolve not to look or stare carnage in the face, yet, cannot turn your eyes away, have to witness the destruction and mangled bodies. Perhaps its this very compulsion that draws an audience to addiction memoirs. We like to revel in others misery, maybe live vicariously through it. Addiction stories tend to serve what we think of as a useful purpose. I imagine they’re not only read by suffering addicts, but probably by those who’ve lived long enough to come out on the other side, and probably by those that perhaps think they have an addictive personality. Unfortunately, reading Bill Clegg’s book feels like watching a poorly executed cat burglary of the White House. Clegg’s memoir is filled with prose about as light and thin as the crack addict he portrays himself as in its 222 pages. The entire work operates from the same stream of consciousness conceit James Joyce used almost a century ago in “Portrait of the Artist...”. Whereas Joyce used his literary conventions to explore what it was like to break free from familial/religious bonds Clegg mercilessly lists the binges in his life with the pace of a Nascar race, always heading toward the next event, the next score, the next hotel to set up shop, which is probably what it’s like for most people struggling with addiction. Everything else that mattered takes a back seat to wanting to feel the relief that sixty full glassine bags can give. Supporting characters, immediate family, boyfriends, escorts, dealers, mostly dealers, float in and out of his life without so much as a thought given to why they’re there or stick around for as long as they do.Clegg timejumps between the present and the past where he mines his own troubled childhood, afflicted by an unknown condition where he can’t properly urinate and is excoriated daily by his has-to-be-bad father. It insists upon itself to make this connection via Occam’s Razor...frankly there’s little else to connect. He lists several ‘first’ experiences, men, woman, alcohol, and drugs, and by the end, seems to be aware enough to pinpoint a definitive conclusion for why he feels the need to be fucked up all the time. Clegg replays the anecdotes of his downward spiraling life without pausing to look back and reflect. I wonder if Clegg’s prose is intentional. Because reading this book (only took a few hours) felt like one long binge. If we’re to believe the ending, (which I’m going to spoil here, only to outline its ridiculousness) where a 2-year-old Bill, just learning to walk, begins to run and stumbles and falls, apparently forging some kind of need for hurting oneself and the want to recapture that feeling, then we have to wonder how much of anything in our life is in our control (and it’s very true that genetics can play a part in addiction, a small point brought up in a catharsis-less conversation with his mother). At the same time, I also think it’s an easy label to paste on oneself.I can certainly understand the motivations for why a person would want to tell their own addiction story but none of the ideas that are brought up in this book are explored in much detail or add anything new that hasn’t been done to death, other than the occupation of the addict. Thinking back to that Frey novel (“A Million Little Pieces”) from so long ago I wonder if Clegg thought that too much detail would detract from the ‘truthiness’ of the whole. Alright, I can already feel the snarky tone working itself into this review. It’s not that I feel that addiction memoirs don’t have their place because I do. This one, however, walks a fine line of being labeled as a ‘me-too’ addiction story and a tedious exercise in stream-of-consciousness writing. Nothing is touched on in specific detail, only in bright, excruciating brushstrokes and shades. What it feels like to get high, night after night, coupled with daily ingestion of Vodka. There’s no work to be done on the part of the reader and almost feels as if it was written to be digested in one sitting with little afterthought. What happens to Clegg’s family? To his failed agency? The partners (both personally and professionally) that tried to make it work and ultimately left under duress? I’m not precisely sure what bothers me about this book but I certainly feel a strong reaction to it and there are more than a few things I can immediately point to. Everything from the title to its style seems to insist upon itself. Apparently this was a big scandal in the publishing world back in 2005 and perhaps that’s what gets to me. He talks repeatedly about not being cut from the same cloth as his ivy-league graduate colleagues but for fuck’s sake what else do you call having a bank account with $70K, owning a grand apartment in Manhattan and your own literary agency by the time you’re 30? It smacks of selfish posturing. Clegg peppers his threadbare explanations within the backdrop of several Manhattan hotels before his ‘bottoming out’, which he realizes is when he attempts to check in at a hotel before being turned away and left to contemplate his own gaunt and craggy appearance. Why not explore it in full literary style like David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, which prominently featured alcoholics and addicts in recovery?What is the function of an addiction story? Because I’ve always felt that if you’re recreating your worst nightmares you would at least want to add as much insight as possible. Yet, Clegg rattles the events that form his $70K spiral into hell and adds little in the way of clarifying interpretation. It seems to me that the purpose of an addiction story is to help others recognize or at least provide a guidepost toward that addiction. And the best way to do so would be to recount those experiences in full detail. It makes no sense to gloss over the years of his life and reduce his experiences to simple paragraphs and clauses. It doesn’t do his own life justice and certainly won’t do much for other addicts other than to say, “yeah, I’ve been there too.” But where’s the redemption? Where’s the want and the struggle to be a better man?Here’s the thing. Most addicts aren’t as lucky as Clegg and perhaps that’s where my vitriol forms. Most addicts aren’t literary superstars who can afford to throw 70K away in a single drug binge. Most addicts struggle daily with their adult demons or worse, become functioning addicts. But Clegg CAN afford to bounce around from therapist to shrink...from a recovery house to Paris to the Sundance Film Festival. It’s sad to see someone throw their life away who’s never had too far to fall in the first place, that we feel never had a chance. But it’s especially sad (in the way that it’s just disappointing) to see someone with so much power and influence, fall prey to the very same problems. And maybe that’s the draw here. Looking at a picture of Clegg in jeans and a boyish smirk looking like those stupid Patrick Wilson ads for ‘A Gifted Man’, you’d probably be hard-pressed to say a man like that was ever hooked on crack. Despite the lack of interpretation on his end, maybe there are deeper motives on ours...to want to see someone like this fail.Seeing how Clegg has bounced back from his addiction it would be easy to say that he’s just another privileged kid who gets what he wants with the connections and means to get his literary pop culture footnote of a book published. I mean, if you really want to help people why not become a drug counselor or work with others who were at one point in his shoes. I don’t know his entire story and maybe that’s exactly what he’s been doing. Yet, despite admitting that his publishing days are behind him he’s welcomed back into the fold. Some of his old clients drop new managers just to be with him. Reportedly, Clegg was given a $350,000 advance for ‘Portrait’. His newest book, “90 Days”, details his time at a rehab clinic in Chelsea. Some people have all the luck...

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      i couldn't put it down ! i could relate to it eerily well, and this is a true story without any fluff or exaggerations of the life.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      This book was like crack to me. I couldn't put it down, but I found myself repulsed by the very substance I couldn't resist.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      A friend of mine passed along her copy of this book to me, and I was hooked pretty quickly. Ok, bad pun for this particular story, which is (like the title says) about an addict. This world feels so foreign to me, but Clegg's writing captured my interest. Some parts are clear, concise prose, and others are more like stream of consciousness (or unconsciousness). At times, it is very graphic and scary and raw, so it is not a book for the faint of heart. Still, a fascinating story about an amazing journey.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      This book was like crack to me. I couldn't put it down, but I found myself repulsed by the very substance I couldn't resist.
    • 1/5
      Follows the journey of Bill, a Literary Agent, into his demise due to drugs and his eventual will to beat the habit.