Defining Noah Webster Book

Bill Clegg had it all: a glamorous, prestigious job as a literary agent; a handsome and caring indie filmmaker boyfriend; a gorgeous Manhattan apartment; a glittering social life; J. Crew catalogue model good looks...



But he risked throwing it all away - along with tens of thousands of dollars - because of his addiction to crack cocaine, a downward spiral he chronicles with frank honesty in the harrowing, hard-to-put-down memoir Portrait Of An Addict As A Young Man.

Clegg interweaves tales of his scoring drugs (he had several regular dealers, but would also often simply get into a cab and ask, "Do you party?") with sequences from his childhood. As a boy, he suffered from a mysterious condition that prevented him from urinating normally; this caused a rift between him and his father, and provided a well of guilt, shame and secrecy that followed him forever.

At 12, he stole a bottle of whiskey from his dad's liquor cabinet and drank it with a friend in the woods; at 15, he began taking crystal meth regularly. He graduated to pot, smoking it daily, before being introduced to crack in his mid-20s by a man nearly three times his age who also seduces him.

Here is part of Clegg's description of that first crack high:

"He draws slowly as he sees the white substance bubble and pop in the flame. A pearly smoke makes its way down the stem, and he draws harder to bring it toward him. Fitz tells him to go gently and he does. Soon his lungs are full and he holds it the way he would hold pot smoke. He exhales and is immediately coughing. The taste is like medicine, or cleaning fluid, but also a little sweet, like limes. The smoke billows out into the living room, past Fitz, like a great unfurling dragon. As he watches the cloud spread and curl, he feels the high at first as a flutter, then a roar. A surge of new energy pounds through every inch of him, and there is a moment of perfect oblivion where he is aware of nothing and everything. A kind of peace breaks out behind his eyes. It spreads down from his temples into his chest, to his hands and everywhere. It storms through him - kinetic, sexual, euphoric - like a magnificent hurricane raging at the speed of light. It is the warmest, most tender caress he has ever felt and then, as it recedes, the coldest hand. He misses the feeling even before it's left him and not only does he want more, he needs it."

Amazing, right? Clegg certainly knows how to describe things. There are scenes detailing such bad decisions that I felt like crying out for him to stop as I was reading them. His paranoia is so extreme that he believes DEA agents and police are after him, in collaboration with taxi drivers. (These suspicions are never proven or disproven.)

What's most satisfying is that Clegg never makes facile conclusions about why he's hooked on drugs. He discusses feeling like an imposter; he details his mother's bout with cancer and his parents' separation. But he is too smart to provide a direct link between these things and his need for self-immolation.

Earlier this year, Clegg published a sequel to Portrait called Ninety Days, about his eventual recovery. I want to read it. He's such a perceptive writer, and I'm looking forward to discovering what he's learned.

But I think I'll wait until I've fully recovered from the intensity of his remarkable first book.

UPDATE:
I should have mentioned before that Clegg's then boyfriend, Ira Sachs, made a (fictional) film about this period in their lives - from his point of view. It's called Keep The Lights On and it's definitely worth checking out, before or after reading this. I reviewed the film upon release here.