Its familial sadness reminded me at times of Nick Flynn’s memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, about his mother’s suicide and working at a homeless shelter, also in Boston, where his father was a client. SPIN: Isaac, to start with a cliché, I couldn’t put your book down until I finished it. SPIN caught up with Isaac in the middle of an extensive book tour. Fitzgerald himself has ink spelling out C-O-M-E spread across the knuckles of his right hand and the letters H-O-M-E, finishing the sentiment, across the knuckles of his left - a message to someone who lost their way? Or could it be a reminder to all of us to remember where we came from?Īlso Read Ani Di Franco Calls Writing A Children’s Book ‘A Different Bag of Doughnuts’ Isaac Fitzgerald is the author of the bestselling children’s book, How to Be a Pirate, and coauthor of Pen & Ink and Knives & Ink, two books about tattoos and the people who wear them. And it is through that devotion to literature that Fitzgerald finds himself eventually championing other writers - first as the books columnist for Buzzfeed, and most recently as a critic recommending books as part of a regular segment on The Today Show.

He’s settled in Brooklyn now, where he has been living for a number of years.Īs somewhat harrowing and frenzied as the book can be, the essays also trace indelible moments of joy and a lifelong devotion to books and reading. That past spans living in the Catholic Worker’s homeless shelter in Boston, to living and working in the bars of San Francisco, to acting in a few porn flicks, and to round things out, Fitzgerald spent time in Burma, working with a group called Free Burma Rangers smuggling medical supplies over the Thai-Burmese border. Alexander Chee’s blurb on the back of Isaac Fitzgerald’s recently published bestselling memoir, Dirtbag, Massachusetts, reads: “He’s a ringleader for the circus in the House of Love.” And after reading this book, I think most people would agree that Isaac Fitzgerald is certainly at least that, and then some.ĭirtbag, Massachusetts is a memoir-in-essays about how a lost soul with a diamond heart manages to figure out - after a series of jet-fueled, drug-addled escapades - how to put together a life out of all the pieces left in the wreckage of his past.

Isaac fitzgerald dirtbag