RollnSmoke Reviews: PORTRAIT OF AN ADDICT AS A YOUNG MAN by Bill Clegg

Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man by Bill Clegg (Little Brown, 2010).

This debut memoir by an emerging New York literary agent recounts a la punchy, sometimes disjointed vignettes his slow and paranoid spiral into crack addiction. The gritty present tense, of a professional literary agent on the run from a second intervention and at the ugly bottom of his [final] crack binge, alternates with flashback of a strange boyhood toilet panic, college partying antics and a slow evolution of his sexual identity. The writing is strong, the frenetic pace makes for a quick read and the details of descent are compelling, though little is offered in the way of new information about addiction (7.5/10).