A reporter investigates the darkest story of his life. His own.

David Carr was a very courageous and talented man. His life could have easily continued to spiral out of his control had he not made significant changes for the sake of his daughters. His book was a page turner.

It sounds like books you've read before; the true stories of a junkie's drug-addled existence, the downward spiral, the damage to friends, family and career. Like many of those books, this one too is written by the former junkie himself. But this book is not like the others. It's author, David Carr, is a journalist who decides to see how he fares when he turns the journalistic spotlight on his own past as a cocaine addict. He sets his book apart immediately from the others with one assumption: his own memories are not to be trusted.

As Carr points out, human memory is proven to be a strangely untrustworthy source for solid information. The memory of a junkie? Carr knows any reporter worth his salt would need to do better. So Carr does.

Carr re-creates his years as a cocaine addict the way he would a newspaper story about someone else. He interviews former friends, girlfriends and associates to check their memories versus his own. He looks back at police and court records and he connects dots. The results usually paint an ugly picture of the man Carr used to be, but he never seems to back away from his task even at times when he's clearly uncomfortable with what he's discovered.

Carr's fresh approach takes a story that has the potential to be good, but undistinguished, and turns it into something that makes you feel like you're reading something special and unique. It's the non-fiction version of A Million Little Pieces (at which Carr takes a shot without ever using its name).

Highly recommended for anyone who likes addiction chronicles or for anyone who just appreciates a successful attempt to do something new and different.

Very gritty story told by NYT columnist David Carr, and his fight with alcoholism, drug addiction, and Cancer. He was motivated to turn his life around by his two precious little girls, that he came out on top of a remarkably horrendous volley of seemly cascading problems. He talks about his previous life in a documentry; Page One: Inside the New York Times. I highly recommend this book.

His tired story is tiring, predictable and just plain boring. I could not finish it. I know addiction memoirs are about the author, but he goes too far with this overblown ego trip. I know he had friends and fans, but I could not buy his story or his recalled memories.

This gripping memoir by New York Times reporter David Carr is like a three-hundred-eighty-five page-pre-paid ticket for a roller coaster ride to drug-hell. Once the reader climbs aboard, this roller coaster travels straight down ninety-percent of the time. The author will lead you through the hellish remains of the way his life used to be... going from pot and alcohol, to cocaine addiction... and then to the final barren chamber, in the deepest darkest, dungeon of all addictive drug hell... smoking crack cocaine. He was in such bad shape, that even all of his main drug buddies, undid their seat belts and jumped off the ride... as the roller coaster and author flew way off the rails. As David attempts to tell his story... he suddenly realizes that he can't remember what really happened to him. He starts off telling his "romanticized" version of his drug-crazed exploits... but when he finds his old friends and family members (that actually lived through the self-destructive atomic haze) he very quickly found out, that what he thought he remembered, differed completely from the other "survivor's recollection... including the night one of his best friends put a gun to his head... as alluded to in the title. The only problem with that scenario, is that his friend contacted twenty years after... states that David pulled the gun on him. David quite "clearly" remembers that he never owned a gun. But, then he tracks down another friend from the past who tells him, that twenty years ago, David had him go to his house... to get his gun out... before the cops... that the author was fleeing from... got there to search his house.

The outright marvelous writing and colloquialisms that the author paints his story around, are certifiable genius, and makes the potential reader hope the author continues to publish more books of this genre, whether in autobiographical or novel form, before you've even read one-quarter of this book. When the author realizes that he can no longer vouch for any of his raucous, debauchery, depraved, self-destructive former life... he decides to buy video and recording equipment, and hunt down the role players from his past, and interview them, to get their perspective on his time in self-imposed hell. And thus the statement:

*** "PEOPLE REMEMBER WHAT THEY CAN LIVE WITH MORE OFTEN THAN HOW THEY LIVED." ***************************

As the author's drug use spiraled out of control his innate writing talent would give him temporary employment until employers couldn't look the other way anymore. In hindsight David says: "SOMETIMES ADDICTION SEEMS MORE LIKE POSSESSION, A DEATH GRIP FROM SATAN THAT REQUIRES SUPERNATURAL INTERVENTION." If there is a bottom that is lower than "BOTTOMING-OUT" then David takes you there with a little help from his friends. Is it possible to descend any lower as a human being, than when Anna was pregnant with the author's twin girls and "SHE WAS USING CRACK WHEN HER WATER BROKE, SIGNALING THAT THE TWINS HAD ARRIVED TWO-AND-A-HALF MONTHS EARLY. I WAS THE ONE WHO BROUGHT HER THOSE DRUGS."

Throughout this guided tour of soulless descent, the author demonstrates literary "chops" that the leading writers of detective yarns could only hope to emulate. In describing one of his former dope dealers he says: "PHIL COULD BE FUN AS HELL WHEN HE WASN'T "CONDUCTING", WHICH IS WHAT HE CALLED DEALING, FULL OF STREET LORE, PHILOSOPHY, AND MIND GAMES. SOME GUYS LOOK TOUGH. SOME GUYS TALK TOUGH. SOME GUYS ARE TOUGH. PHIL HIT FOR THE CYCLE." A simple off-hand throw-away comment about cokeheads: "the eyes that saw too much because they did not close often enough." A simple off the cuff statement about a stop on a typical night out would make Robert B. Parker and Robert Crais proud: "WE WENT BAR HOPPING AND ENDED UP AT "STAND UP FRANK'S, THE KIND OF PLACE WHERE A SCREWDRIVER WAS A GLASS FULL OF VODKA THAT THE BARTENDER WHISPERED THE WORDS "ORANGE JUICE" OVER BEFORE HANDING IT TO YOU."

This is an immensely talented writer... who doesn't need to make up street-jargon... he lived it. If he stays clean... and doesn't relapse back into the world he already lived in... but just truly discovered on this follow-up journey... that for example... he was actually in treatment centers five times... even though for the last twenty years he thought he was only in four times... then the reading public as a whole... has an awful lot of exciting literature to read and enjoy in the future.

Remember David... ONE DAY AT A TIME!

As a recovering addict, I was looking for a recovery story that was inspirational. The author's ploy of fleshing out the dimly remembered past by using journalistic techniques constructs a self-serving narrative long on war stories. I found the disclosures of what a "super bad" dealer/womanizer the author was to be appalling at first and ultimately obnoxious. I suspect the book was mercifully remaindered after a brief life on the shelves.

if he was drugged out and his friends were drugged as well, whose word will stand. and who cares? this is a self-centered account of a lost time in this man's life. i could not connect with him as he did not arise any feelings inside. all very matter of fact. i have read the robert evans book and enjoyed it somewhat, but his impressions of his own experiences almost feels like he misses this wasted time. as a reporter i am sure he did well,but he can't reach inside himself enough or maybe that's all there is.

The book started off strong. The idea of doing an investigative report on one's own life is intriguing. Carr raises interesting issues in the beginning about truth and memory. But the early promise of the premise never pays off. The stories he collects from those he interviews are mostly tales of how wild and bad-ass he and his gang of friends were in their youth.

The biggest problem with this book is that the reader begins to sense an irritating self-aggrandizement in the guise of mea culpa. He lovingly indulges in stories of his addiction and debasement, all the while supposedly reviling this earlier self who lost jobs, hit women, wrecked relationships, etc. But he was smart and funny and charming and had lots of friends! And they had FUN! Over 100 people attended his 30th birthday party! All wearing matching t-shirts claiming to be Dave's best friend!

Even more, there's more than a whiff of misogyny here, even in his present-day "reformed" self. He describes Fast Eddie, his buddy who taught him the important lesson that real men don't fetch food for stripper "cun*s" as a great guy--the best friend anyone could have. When Carr's former girlfriend, Doolie, whom he beat with some regularity, tells him that he was like "the catcher in the rye," just wanting to save people, you have to wonder just how critical of a look he's seriously taking at himself.

The book is well-written, and the change Carr was able to make in his life is impressive. But the irritating narcissism underlying the supposed self-critique becomes more and more hard to stomach as you progress.

I have read my share of drunkalogs and drugalogs by people in recovery. The best ones not only recount all the wacky/awful/terrifying/truly repugnant things that happened to the person between the time they started drinking or drugging and now, but also tell a pretty compelling story. One would think that David Carr, being an award winning journalist, would be extra good at the storytelling part. Unfortunately he isn't, so this book is really just a bunch of disjointed wasted episodes in the life of somebody who honestly doesn't sound like he would be all that interesting to get to know.

I do give Carr a point for the approach of going back and seeking out people in his life to confirm or deny or present their alternative, "Rashomon"-like views on what actually happened in some particular crazy situation; the "Night of the Gun" involves an incident where a chemically impaired Carr got into a serious fight with his best friend who he claims pulled a gun on him, except that the best friend remembers it as Carr pulling the gun - something Carr can't quite get his head around, since he claims to hate guns. This triggers a whole series of ruminations on how memory is faulty, memory in people who had addiction problems and did bad things as a result is even more faulty, and how Carr, recognizing this, set out to find the truth by interviewing dozens of people from his past. The portrait that emerges of Carr is frankly not very pretty - he's a jerk who abuses tons of substances, hangs around with many people who do the same, beats up on women and men alike, cheats on women, ends up fathering two crack babies with a dealer. There is no real motivation for him to choose this path, except that his father had a drinking problem and several of his siblings are also in recovery so apparently they are just a bunch of chips off the old block.

Along the way, we're reminded numerous times of what a talented journalist, crusader for truth and justice, and all-around popular party guy Carr is. Most of the people he is popular with also seem to have ties to the drunk/ drug world and think it is fun or at least "business as usual" to risk their lives on a daily basis. After the tenth story of someone operating a plane, boat or car while impaired, it ceases to be interesting except from a standpoint of thinking it's miraculous more people, including innocent bystanders, aren't being killed by the behavior. Carr also tells stories that are supposed to be touching or funny but miss the mark, for example about how his friend "Eddie" "taught him manners" by refusing to buy tacos for a stripper Carr was dating and who Carr pretty much describes as a stupid trashy girl who he was just dating in order to make the other strip club customers jealous. Way to go Carr and Eddie, you refuse to do one human thing for this lady (buy her a cheap taco dinner) who you are already treating like something lower than your shoe, and that makes you heroes of Emily Post etiquette? It makes you jerks.

Aside from "our hero" being mostly dislikable, the book is way overlong. Carr needed an editor. The point about faulty memory could have been made in a couple pages. Instead Carr goes on for pages and pages and pages about it and then presents each new "revelation" from the interviewees (which for the most part are not as dramatic as "who had the gun") as some big surprise to the reader. Newsflash: Most of us know that different people remember the same incident differently, and more so when one or more of the people are wrecked at the time the incident happened years ago. It's simply not that big of a deal.

I truly hope for his daughters' sake this guy stays sober, but he seems to be so in love with all these tales of his messy past that I didn't feel confident he would stay on the wagon. I also did not get a sense of why anyone would like him at all unless they wanted part of his drug stash.

The 'character' of David Carr in Night of the Gun is an awful person. He hates on women throughout the book, has no redeeming characteristics, yet he wants you to believe he is top-dog. Top-dog in what a smart and cool druggy he was, a good father, a great human being. He puts himself on a pedestal for taking care of his children when their mother couldn't, well good for him. Carr admits to domestic violence toward women and to using 'troubled' women. So is it because of my dislike for him - his character - that I didn't give this more stars? Perhaps.

Night of the Gun is broken out into 2 parts. The first part was written in a very chaotic style depicting his life using drugs. The second part is after his recovery and was written in a narrative fashion with a slower pace. As far as styles go, Carr had a good idea to write his pre, and post recovery writings in two styles but the first is hard to read because of the pace and chaotic nature of it.

Carr conducted video/audio interviews with past and present associates which were used to help verify facts. The transcriptions of the recordings were used in part to write the book.

I read this book as part of my research on memoirs for my graduate school final project. I cited it on the style of the writing. I also used a video of Carr speaking to the genre in my presentation.

It seems strange to write a negative review after he passed away, but to be honest, I couldn't understand why the book got such praise other than the fact that perhaps the reviewers knew him or liked that he wrote for the New York Times, I don't know. Great title that actually didn't have much of anything to do with the book other than one small mention. The visual presentation of the book included a great cover design on the first edition hard cover 2008, nice graphics, and the photos inside brought me closer to the story.

The premise for this memoir is cute: rather than the familiar stylistic trope of allowing the book to be driven by a single, often unreliable narrator who'll inevitably sharpen their strengths and downplay their flaws, New York Times journalist David Carr puts in the effort to track down and interview significant figures in his past, to see whether they can put the record straight. Carr was addicted to cocaine and alcohol earlier in his life, so his memory is even less reliable the average autobiographer.

This device could've been a gimmick, and probably would be in any lesser writer's hands. Carr's prose, however, is razor-sharp, allowing far more room for self-flagellation than self-pity. He sits in the awkwardness of putting a recorder and camera before ghosts from his past, many of whom he wronged in various ways. That takes balls. The book's title is central to the dichotomy of voices contained within: Carr remembers his friend waving a gun at him on the night that ended their friendship, but maybe he's had it wrong all along.

To me, 'The Night of the Gun' serves two primary functions. First, it's an intriguing meditation on the notion of human memory. We all tell stories about ourselves; some are rooted in reality, some not. Reading this book prompted me to re-examine some matters in my own professional past, with surprising results.

Carr also paints a crystal-clear picture of the dysfunction of addiction. A relapse into alcoholism late in his life, after fourteen years of sobriety, was rendered in such a striking manner that it allowed me to intellectualise the disease in a way I'd never been able to before, as a non-addict. The below quote is a fine example of both Carr's insight into that subject, and of his exemplary command of language.

"To people who do not have the allergy, there is no clear way to explain the unmanageability that goes with addiction. A drunk or an addict picks up a shot or a dose because, same as everyone, he just wants to feel a little different. But it never stops there. I could be drunk tomorrow or shooting dope even as you read this, but the chances of that are low as long as I make a daily decision to embrace who I really am and then be satisfied with that at the end of the day."

Kenny actually has a lot of fondness--in clinical terms, it would be called "euphoric recall"--for those days.

One of the best things about this book, David Carr's autobiography, is his no crying-over-spilled-milk, simple and non-alacrious style. It's not noir, it's just a very good author's voice, elegantly translated from his journalistic self.

The book is mostly about his addiction, the long years of addiction, where he had two children, went from school to real jobs, trying to sober up, trying to remember, trying to remember, trying to build himself up, etc.

Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. --<strong>LEONARD</strong>, A MAN WHO CANNOT MAKE NEW MEMORIES AND IS SEARCHING FOR HIS WIFE'S KILLER, <em>MEMENTO</em>.

One of the most interesting parts about this book is that Carr has interviewed people from his past: exes, former friends, bosses, drug dealers, people he went into sobriety with. He compares his memory of events with theirs. No surprise: when he was a full-blown addict, he didn't exactly remember a lot. Mind shot, blood shot, Allshot.

I know we did lots of "more." That's what we called coke. We called it more because it was the operative metaphor for the drug. Even if it was the first call of the night, we would say, "You got any more?" because there would always be more--more need, more coke, more calls.

The eyes that saw too much because they did not close often enough.

He relives his life through this book, his memoir, where he at the best of times seems very introspect and at the worst of times seems bloated and boasting. Thankfully, there's very little of the latter and a lot of critical moments, mostly turned on his self:

Every hangover begins with an inventory. The next morning mine began with my mouth. I had been baking all night, and it was as dry as a two-year-old chicken bone. My head was a small prison, all yelps of pain and alarm, each movement seeming to shift bits of broken glass in my skull. My right arm came into view for inspection, caked in blood, and then I saw it had a few actual pieces of glass still embedded in it. So much for metaphor. My legs both hurt, but in remarkably different ways. Three quadrants in significant disrepair--that must have been some night, I thought absently. Then I remembered I had jumped my best friend outside a bar. And now that I thought about it, that was before I tried to kick down his door and broke a window in his house. And then I recalled, just for a second, the look of horror and fear on his sister's face, a woman I adored. In fact, I had been such a jerk that my best friend had to point a gun at me to make me go away. Then I remembered I'd lost my job. It was a daylight waterfall of regret known to all addicts. It can't get worse, but it does. When the bottom arrives, the cold fact of it all, it is always a surprise. Over fiteen years, I had made a seemingly organic journey from pothead to party boy, from knockaround guy to friendless thug. At thirty-one, I was washed out of my profession, morally and physically corrupt, but I still had almost a year left in the Life. I wasn't done yet.

There's some great insight collected in this book. There's also repetition, but where repetition is due; I don't think one can really expect a person to go through rehab or trying to quit a sickness without being fully aware of it, every day of one's life, when it's come as far as in Carr's case (not that he's unique in the junkie's aspect, more like a copy); for conscience to be there, conscious repetition has to be in-place, otherwise things will fall apart.

Mornings for an addict involve waking up in a room where everything implicates him. Even if there is no piss or vomit--oh, blessed be the small wonders--there is the tipped-over bottle, the smashed phone, the bright midday light coming through the rip in the shade that says another day has started without you. Drunks and addicts tend to build nests out of the detritus of their misbegotten lives. It is that ecosystem, all there for the inventorying within twenty seconds of waking, which tends to make addiction a serial matter. Apart from the progression of the disease, if you wake up in that kind of hell, you might start looking for something to take the edge off. Nothing like the beer goggles and a nice bracing whiff of something to help you reframe your little disaster area. Hmmm, just a second here. A little of the hair of the dog. Yep. Now, that's better. Everything is new again.

In a broader sense, addiction can be enormously simplifying. While other people worry about their 401(k)'s, getting their kids into the right nursery school and/or college, and keeping their plot to take over the world in good effect, a junkie or a drunk just has to worry about his next dose. It leads to a life that is, in a way, remarkably organized. What are we doing today? Exactly what we did yesterday, give or take.

His writing on his abusive self is precious (and naturally horrendous):

I found out that as a birthday gift, her friends had surprised her with a naked young man hanging from the ceiling of her cabin. I was livid. "I can remember being at my cabin, and you giving me a black eye and breaking my rib and throwing me off the dock," she said. I had not remembered that last part, but as soon as she said it, I knew it had to be true. I did not so much move in with Anna as suddenly become someone who did not leave. Regardless of who is doing the remembering, some nasty, ineluctable truths lie between us. She was in the habit of slamming doors in my face--I called her "Bam Bam" in part because of that--and I was in the habit of coming right through those doors and choking her. She was using crack when her water broke, signaling that the twins had arrived two and a half months early. I was the one who had brought her those drugs. I treated her as an ATM, using her drugs and money almost at will, while she seemed more than willing to make the trade. In spite of the fact that I was the one who stepped up and raised our children, who shook off the Life, there are times when the moral high ground rests with her. I hit her, for one thing. For another, whatever she did, she did out of a kind of love. My presence in her life was far more mercenary.

All in all, very well written. Carr's style is so honed and he is so talented, that this reads like very few autobiographies that I have ever read, none of which are stylistically like this one, really. True, one could not towards Hunter S. Thompson, but all in all, this is very special and one to recommend for all, on the life of a man who - for a very long, cut-up time - did not care for responsibility at all, and now shows that he does.

Call on God, but row away from the rocks. --<strong>HUNTER S. THOMPSON</strong>

Cognitive Dissonance ruins most memoirs. You can sort of hear the author rationalizing their actions to you, or in other cases, so they're oblivious to the meaning of their own behavior that it renders the rest of their insights worthless. Memoirs about drug addiction or trauma are particularly bad, because it's difficult for people to deeply, and self-critically view how bad things were. The memoir of a crack-addict father of twins turned staff writer for the New York Times should be one of those kinds of books. This one isn't.

In fact, it's a testament to how good a book can be without falling prey to the narrative fallacy. The first few chapters explain what I'm talking about well and I won't waste time trying to translate it here. As a bit of a sad ending, I know someone that saw him drinking recently which sort of puts a disappointing conclusion on the whole thing but who knows, it can always turn around. Finally, there is this really good line in the book that he cribbed from a 12 step group that is something like "The answer to life is learning how to live" - very similar to something from Viktor Frankl in Man's Search for Meaning.

Although I've worked in media/journalism for decades, I had never heard of David Carr until he died recently. I was intrigued by this book since supposedly he is an amazing journalist. However, for me this book did not live up to its potential. Carr mentions early on how he loves journalism (as opposed to writing fiction) because he loves digging into the facts. But I feel here, "digging into the facts" becomes an excuse for not really digging into your feelings. I never got a sense of...

1) Why he ever got addicted in the first place, except that he started with marijuana and it snowballed. He touches on possible reasons a few times (trying to bring excitement into a boring suburban life)? but doesn't dig deeper. Being addicted certainly doesn't sound fun--although he tries to make it sound that way, most of the time he didn't even remember what he did, so how fun is that?
2) How those closest to him were affected - sure he interviews lots of former drugging and drinking pals and co-workers, but what about his mom, dad, six siblings? Yes, some of them are dead by the time he writes this. But could he have, say, asked his dad about what his behavior did to his mom? I feel he is hiding from the reality of how painful this would be to him.

As others have noted, Carr seems to want to put a gloss of honesty on his past by investigating it in journalistic fashion, but the book stays at the same level all the time, lacking the depth that would indicate true honesty about his behavior. For example, he mentions how any single dad who simply provides basic care for his kids is lionized and that this isn't fair to single moms, but at the same time he benefits from it. He mentions how so many addicts focus on their jobs while ignoring their families, but doesn't dig into why this seems to be his own modus operandi (he starts relapsing at the very time his job is going its best). He constantly talks about how narcissistic this memoir is. But talking about it doesn't make it any less narcissistic. It seemed like false modesty to me.

Throughout the book he promotes his twin daughters as the reason for his recovery and makes it seem as if despite their horrendous start in life (crack babies) they grew up great. Only at the very end we find out how many problems one of the twins has. Whether this is partly hereditary (he comes from a family of addicts), at least some of it must indicate that the twins' childhood was not without scars, much as Carr wants to believe it was.

I also couldn't help wondering - since the whole conceit of this book is that memory is fungible--why did Carr assume that the people he interviews have more accurate memories than he does? Really, does someone who interviewed you for a job 17 years ago remember THAT much detail about the interview, what was said, etc.? (You must be awfully memorable if that's the case...it's odd that not one person says to him, 'Oh, who are you? I don't remember knowing you". You see, he is just SOOO memorable and changed all these people's lives....

I am not an addict so perhaps this book is more useful to other addicts, but it seemed more like Carr was pretending to be humble and changed while underneath still being boastful and macho about how "wild and crazy" he used to be. I would have never wanted to hang around this guy, drunk or sober.

On the plus side, this book inspired me to read "Infinite Jest" again - a book with far more depth and sensitivity about addiction.

In a memoir that sometimes evokes the dark corners of Trainspotting and Permanent Midnight, David Carr takes us on a tortured journey of drug rehabilitation that straddles the line between stark confessional and obsessive, pitiless introspection. Over the course of the book, one gets the feeling that as Carr slowly and painfully gathered a sense of self-worth, he may have gathered a bit too much. As others have noted, the man has been accused regularly of outright narcissism. While he's certainly entitled to patting himself on the back, the degree to which he eventually takes pride in himself can get distracting.

It's also unclear how much the method of his writing -- turning his investigative journalism skills on himself -- improves our understanding. Sometimes it feels like a novelty used to dress up a story that is depressingly common. Other times, one wishes for a more emotive response from the writing. It can get pretty dry and matter-of-fact, considering the nature of the material. I prefer reads with content that stands on its own, no matter how the writer frames it. Take The Perfect Storm, for example. Even the mediocre film adaptation couldn't blunt the power of that story. Recall the notorious embellishments in A Million Little Pieces.

Without such distinctive set pieces, one is left with the chronicle of human darkness whose lessons are already familiar to readers familiar with the subject. If you've never read a drug recovery memoir, this is not a bad place to start. But once you have a few under your belt, this one does not strongly distinguish itself from the rest.

The James Frey (A Million Little Pieces) debacle seems to have caused memoirists, actual and potential, to nervously quake like aspen leaves in a mountain breeze. If the author's memory emits a version of an event that is remembered differently by someone else who witnessed whatever it was, he could end up on a stage sitting next to Oprah while she stares daggers at him and venomously tells the world that he's a liar.
Thus, when David Carr made the decision to write about a years-long dark period of his life, during which his memory was clouded and altered by an almost constant drug induced stupor, he called out the troops. He interviewed friends, co-workers, his therapist, his daughters' foster family--just about everyone he could think of--to get their side of his story. Why he put more value on the memory of his friends than on his own is a mystery since most of them were users and dealers and often as wasted as he was. But, those parallel opinions do give him an out, should he be accused of fabricating his life story. He can claim it was a group failure.
Carr is not going to win any awards as world champion boyfriend or husband, best-ever employee or father of the year during the many years he bounced in and out of re-hab. But, the birth of his twin daughters served to put him on the path of re-hab success, finally getting clean to be a stand-up guy for the girls, whose mother, fighting her own drug demons, had split for the southwest.
Carr, a professional journalist, gives us a look at his life post-addiction--marriage, another child, relocation to a few cities as his career mushroomed (he's now at the NY Times) and, after 16 years of sobriety, a relapse into drugs and alcohol. After a couple of false starts, he managed to finally get it back together.

Carr has a writing style that appeals to me. It has an easy flow about it. The story itself is frustrating at times but it is what it is. To have told it any other way wouldn't have been Carr's story, would it?

Autobiographical tales featuring survivors of drug addiction and substance abuse have always been popular. There is something intriguing about listening as someone describes hitting rock bottom, and then somehow managing to miraculously turn themselves around.

Of course, such books are so popular that one must sometimes wonder whether the facts have been embellished for the sole purpose of entertainment. The debacle surrounding A Million Little Pieces alerted the literary community to the dangers behind that. While biographies involve investigations on behalf of the author, autobiographies become suspect, as the possible motivations of the self-diarists make them unreliable witnesses at best.

This is where David Carr's book steps away from the rest of the pack. The Night of the Gun almost doesn't qualify as an autobiography. He remembers very little of what actually occurred during his days of drug abuse, and what he does remember is almost wholly unreliable. So, be an investigative reporter, he uses the skills on hand to delve into the mystery that is his own life.

This is where Carr's book leaves the others behind. He wanders through the down and out periods of his life with a grim curiosity that never lapses into self-pity or melodrama. He could be writing about somebody else entirely, and in some ways, he is. His style isn't emotionless; one would have to be truly cold and indifferent not to feel something while looking back on some of the things Carr did had had done to him. But there is a slight detachment from the source material that keeps his observations from becoming self-serving or, even worse, self-pitying. He not only makes no excuses for his own actions, he doesn't even understand some of them himself.

Carr's book will appeal to fans of similar books, such as Permanent Midnight, but don't expect a carbon copy of the format. If Carr's story doesn't appear to have the obviously uplifting ending or tone that you were expecting, that's because it wasn't meant to be that kind of book. Carr isn't telling us his story so we can learn from his mistakes. He exploring his own painful past, like probing the raw nerve beneath a sore tooth, because he just can't bring himself to leave it behind, at last not without knowing what it all must have appeared from the outside looking in.

Carr -- now a respected New York Times reporter and new-media personality -- reports on his miraculous recovery from the depths of hard drug and alcohol addiction, a serious bout with cancer, poverty-level living, and custodial parenting of his twin daughters born to a drug-dealing girl friend who left town during their infancy.

His quiescent writing and reporting skills were crucial to his regaining a livelihood after he determined to take recovery seriously. They are wonderfully on display in this gripping memoir. Describing a collection of dilapidated fishing shacks his family used for summer weekends: "It was the sort of like the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, but without the football, ocean, or yachts -- a white trash nirvana."

Describing family and friends' worries amidst his cancer battle: "There was enough avoidance in all that concern that I began to think I had a case of 'It,' instead of cancer. How is it going? Did they get all of it? What's its status. Oh, do you mean this giant cancerous tumor on my neck that is tipping my head over? 'It' seems to be doing fine. The host is a little freaked out though."

Even more intriguing than the courageous saga of how Carr surmounted his financial, addiction, and health challenges to build a new life complete with trophy wife, trophy job, and reporting trophies (as well as 3 great kids) are the musings about memory's role in self-identity. Carr had forgotten much that occurred when his troubles peaked in the late 80s and early 90s; where he did remember, his version of key events frequently differed from versions told by friends and family whom he interviewed for the book. The Rashomon-type "What is historical truth?" questions which biographers and historians routinely struggle with are even more bedeviling when the investigator's recounting of his or her own past is filtered through the screen of how they feel about their life today.

Much gratitude to David Carr for all his efforts to reconnect with so many people with whom he was then down and out to put together the near-tragic story of the life he once lived.

David Carr knows better than most that memory is an unreliable source, especially when it's own our memories about our own pasts. We tend to remember events in our lives as having been either better or worse than they were, but rarely as they really were. In Carr's case, many of those memories were formed through the prism of drugs and alcohol. Other memories were simply non-existent.

David Carr is an amazing writer and this book is full of clever analogies, unique perspectives, and witty commentary. He knows the lowest point of the bottom very well because he's been there more times than he can remember.

What really fascinated me about this book, though, was that Carr was (and is) a successful reporter who had to turn to the tools of the trade in order to dig deep into his own past and try to somehow make the pieces fit together and perhaps explain how he got to the present. In order to do this, he had to turn to the very people he hurt in the past and interview them about a subject he thought he knew and understood: himself. What he found was that his memories were often distorted and sometimes completely wrong. And tracking down people from a distant past to talk about the darkest days of his life opened up old and bitter wounds.

Carr long believed that it was his friend who pulled a gun on him during a dispute, but years later it was that friend who said it was Carr holding the gun. He doesn't remember dragging a cabbie out of the car and beating him, much less why he would do something like that. He has had to rely on police reports to get details of times he was arrested. He's used drugs, sold drugs, attacked and threatened friends, and has hurt more people than he wants to remember.

This is, in many ways, David Carr's mea culpa. It's a dark story. And it's a sad story. It's also a frustrating story because it isn't clean, it isn't neat, and the climb from addiction to recovery isn't consistently upward-bound. This isn't a story about a hero, not in the traditional sense anyway. It's a story about a very damaged and less-than-noble man who also happened to be blessed with a gift that no amount of drugs or alcohol or failure could take away. It's a story about a man who found a reason to change his life and had friends and family willing to help him climb up out of the black hole his life had become.

"To the normal person, [addiction] can seem completely baffling," he writes. "In my case, why would someone who was quick out of the gate as a writer with nothing but future piss it all away through self-seeking self-destruction? But civilians are equally baffling to the addict. I've watched people drink a glass and a half of wine and push away the rest. What exactly is the point of that?"

It's amazing that Carr was able to maintain a successful career for as long as he did given how out of control his life was. It wasn't uncommon for him to interview and work with cops and politicians one day and finding himself in handcuffs the next. Want to know how awkward it is to fight back a cocaine-induced nosebleed while sitting in the office of a prominent politician you're trying to interview? Carr knows. He's been there and done that.

If you don't mind opening yourself up to the muck and dirt of Carr's past, this book promises to take you on an adventure through some dark alleys only an addict would recognize. If you're hoping for a wonderfully triumphant ending, you're not going to find it here. Instead you'll find a gradual and often difficult climb to something resembling a normal life. Carr does a great job making that struggle tangible for readers who might otherwise not be able to relate.

I can't say this was an enjoyable book to read. There's nothing enjoyable about walking with the author through the nightmares of his past. On the other hand, Carr is an excellent guide and his ability to write so honestly and with such skill makes his tale fascinating. The book is well-worth the time to read.

Ever since the "Million Little Pieces" scandal, there has been extra scrutiny over the subject of memoirs. And it raised many questions: how can memoir ever really be considered non-fiction when it's based on one person's memories, which are, by default, faulty? Whose life is really interesting enough to warrant a several-hundred page book and, if your life doesn't happen to be ALL that interesting or follow in a logically pleasing timeline, is it ok to change it a bit to make the memoir more compelling? If your memoir is serving a purpose (e.g. teaching people about redemption and conquering substance addiction) is it ok to fabricate a little in order to better convey your message?

David Carr tackles many of these issues in his memoir. The Night of the Gun is, to a degree, inspired by a fault memory. In the midst of a drug-fueled night, Carr gets into a physical fight with a friend, who winds up driving off and leaving Carr stranded. Carr drunkenly staggers to his friend's home, where he begins banging on the door to continue the fight, frightening the man's wife, who refuses to let him in. Carr then attempts to break in through a window and, as he remembers it, his friend pulls a gun on him and tells him to leave before the police show. The problem is, decades later, when Carr has cleaned up his life and is discussing that night with his friend, he learns a startling fact: The gun, according to his friend, was in Carr's hands.

Carr's entire memoir is an exploration of life as fact vs. life as fiction. He decides to go back and investigate, as a journalist (he currently writes for the New York Times, so he IS a trained journalist) through taped interviews and official records, his history has a cocaine-addicted junkie and alcoholic, and how he eventually cleaned up his act and gained sole custody of his twin daughters. The book opens with Carr asking you a question (and I'm paraphrasing here), what would you think if he told you his was a story about a recovered addict who, as a single parent, successfully raised two daughters, even while fighting off cancer (all true) or if he told you his was a story of a man who once beat the mother of his children and one night had left his twin baby girls alone in the back of a car in the middle of winter so he could score another hit (also true).

The fact is, life isn't simple, and the stories we tell ourselves about our lives are almost always skewed by our current perceptions and recreations. Carr didn't simply pull himself up by his bootstraps once his kids dropped into the world. There were ups and downs, triumphs and relapses, moments of greatness and moments of great sadness. I'd say what I got out of this memoir was not a story about conquering addiction, though that certainly happened (to a degree), but more a book that makes you consider the stories and anecdotes you tell others about your life. How true are the tales, really, that you tell people when you're revealing who you are. How many dark secrets has your own brain buried in order to form who you are today? It's a very interesting question--not one I'd want to investigate personally, as it seems for Carr that it was an incredibly painful process. He berates himself constantly in the book for who he once was, and for the false self he almost remembered himself to be. That's not something I'm ready to go through at this stage in my life, but it sure makes for a compelling book.

Ever since the "Million Little Pieces" scandal, there has been extra scrutiny over the subject of memoirs. And it raised many questions: how can memoir ever really be considered non-fiction when it's based on one person's memories, which are, by default, faulty? Whose life is really interesting enough to warrant a several-hundred page book and, if your life doesn't happen to be ALL that interesting or follow in a logically pleasing timeline, is it ok to change it a bit to make the memoir more compelling? If your memoir is serving a purpose (e.g. teaching people about redemption and conquering substance addiction) is it ok to fabricate a little in order to better convey your message?

David Carr tackles many of these issues in his memoir. The Night of the Gun is, to a degree, inspired by a fault memory. In the midst of a drug-fueled night, Carr gets into a physical fight with a friend, who winds up driving off and leaving Carr stranded. Carr drunkenly staggers to his friend's home, where he begins banging on the door to continue the fight, frightening the man's wife, who refuses to let him in. Carr then attempts to break in through a window and, as he remembers it, his friend pulls a gun on him and tells him to leave before the police show. The problem is, decades later, when Carr has cleaned up his life and is discussing that night with his friend, he learns a startling fact: The gun, according to his friend, was in Carr's hands.

Carr's entire memoir is an exploration of life as fact vs. life as fiction. He decides to go back and investigate, as a journalist (he currently writes for the New York Times, so he IS a trained journalist) through taped interviews and official records, his history has a cocaine-addicted junkie and alcoholic, and how he eventually cleaned up his act and gained sole custody of his twin daughters. The book opens with Carr asking you a question (and I'm paraphrasing here), what would you think if he told you his was a story about a recovered addict who, as a single parent, successfully raised two daughters, even while fighting off cancer (all true) or if he told you his was a story of a man who once beat the mother of his children and one night had left his twin baby girls alone in the back of a car in the middle of winter so he could score another hit (also true).

The fact is, life isn't simple, and the stories we tell ourselves about our lives are almost always skewed by our current perceptions and recreations. Carr didn't simply pull himself up by his bootstraps once his kids dropped into the world. There were ups and downs, triumphs and relapses, moments of greatness and moments of great sadness. I'd say what I got out of this memoir was not a story about conquering addiction, though that certainly happened (to a degree), but more a book that makes you consider the stories and anecdotes you tell others about your life. How true are the tales, really, that you tell people when you're revealing who you are. How many dark secrets has your own brain buried in order to form who you are today? It's a very interesting question--not one I'd want to investigate personally, as it seems for Carr that it was an incredibly painful process. He berates himself constantly in the book for who he once was, and for the false self he almost remembered himself to be. That's not something I'm ready to go through at this stage in my life, but it sure makes for a compelling book.

The premise of this book fascinated me and led me to choose it. The idea that someone who is now a very accomplished writer and successful member of society could have been so whacked out on drugs that they literally had to conduct an investigative journalism exercise to rediscover their past is fascinating to me. And I will say that after reading the book, I was not disappointed.

I had my fears, though... So many books/movies of this genre tend to be preachy. The authors tend to vary between the "my pitiful life, feel sorry for me" perspective and the "look how strong I am now; you can do it too!" exhortations that can become so tiresome. Carr is not only a great story teller, but he writes about himself with such detachment that it almost feels like you are learning about his past alongside him, with the same sense of wonderment (and shame) that he is experiencing.

This book is far more than just a narrative of "one man's struggle against addiction" (I would not have made it all the way through it that had been the case!). Carr's self-deprecating humor, his knack for highlighting the unique (and uniquely flawed) characteristics in himself and the people around him, and his style of writing make you forget that you are reading what is essentially an autobiography.

There are scenes that will horrify you (especially if you are a parent), and scenes that will make you laugh out loud. But mostly, this book is a study of human character flaws and the relationships that people create that help them deal with those flaws.

I'm not usually much of a biography (or autobiography) reader, but I found this book very enjoyable, well-paced, and insightful. One of my measures of a "good book" is that I can learn from it, or there are elements that linger with me into life; Night of the Gun definitely did that for me. In fact, I am planning to look for more work by David Carr.

Kudos to Carr for no only picking himself up finally to create this work, but also his honesty and the straightforward tale he tells of his life for us to enjoy!

Written in reaction to the backlash over "the more fiction than truth" memoirs like A Million Little Pieces, David Carr's Night of The Gun takes a nearly scientific approach to the reporting of a life of addiction and recovery.

At the start the book is a fascinating musing on the difference between what actually happened and how we remember it. But the novelty of this device ultimately tires and we are left with a brutal account of an ultimately unsympathetic character who makes it nearly impossible to root for him.

Night of The Gun does have it's high points, but most of them come in the first half of the book. The backside of the book is an exercise in endurance with Carr turning his focus to the tragedies of the people around him and an account of him watching his carefully constructed world fall a part.

At the end of this little experiment of a book I came away feeling exhausted and unfulfilled. The conclusion I reached was that I'd rather read the mostly true recollections of someone going through he'll than the blow by blow reporting based on the mostly true recollections of others.

A Million Little Pieces may be filled with a million little white lies, but I enjoyed that book a million times more than this one. Memoir isn't really pure nonfiction and that's a good thing as a storyteller will always triumph a reporter when it comes to creating a compelling personal stories.

With many memoirs, writers can tend to build themselves up in such a way as to glory in the things they have done. Or experienced. Or seen.

David Carr seems to take a different approach by weaving in a reporter's knack for getting to the bottom of things with a life that was lived between the space of true cognizance and a drug induced oblivion. That knack for reporting is what makes this book truly interesting as Carr unabashedly discloses the reality of who he was through other peoples' eyes.

Though I myself have never been addicted to drugs or alcohol, it's easy to relate to Carr's experiences as his story is interrupted by love, faith and community. None of this looks perfect, but whose life does? At the end of the day, there's an honest sense that he is where he is because other people helped him to get there - and that's an amazing theme for life in a culture whose subtext can more often be that of self reliance rather than interdependence.

At the end of the day, it's a great read because it causes the reader to reflect whether or not our interpretation of "what happened," is even close to accurate...even for those of us to teeter through life as generally sober. It's a wonderful look at how the people that loved David helped him to become a person who loved back and how they are helping him to stay in that mind set even now.

This is not a book about super heroes.
It is not a book about the self made man.
It is a book that acknowledges how truly broken our lives can be and how much we need other people. Thank you for the read, Mr. Carr.

Looking to describe the structure of THE NIGHT OF THE GUN and how it shapes or subverts the structure of the hero's journey, the myth of rehabilitation starts with the expected narrative arc. Starting in media res (with the night of the gun), it goes back to the start of the author's life. The expectation is that this will be the Addict's Progress and that this will be similar to the basic Joseph Campbell heroic journey arc (specifically alluded to on p. 167 and, indirectly, in the Intermission chapter).

The structure follows the hero (Carr) through his rise (in the profession), fall (to addiction) and his resurrection, inspired by the need to care for his twin (crack baby) daughters that leads to his restoration of his position in the profession and in society. But the resurrection is limited. The trajectory back to life has been affected by relapsing into addictive behavior and the realization that he is vulnerable to further recurrence. This is the narrative arc he comments about on pp. 167-68.

Following the introduction, on p. 23, of memory as setting out the direction of the "addict's progress", which Carr proposes to check with interviews, use of public records, and other tools of the investigative reporter, the structure of both the research and the recollection are intertwined together in the narrative. Yet Carr is aware of the limitations of his approach, as he points out on p. 68, no one in retrospect ever owned a gun, however important they may be in the more forceful memories and on p. 132, quotes that "we often edit or entirely rewrite out previous experiences - unknowingly or unconsciously - in light of what we now know or believe". Another quote (from Salman Rushdie) on p. 183 says memory "selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies and vilifies also. But in the end it creates its own reality, its own heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events and no sane human being ever trusts someone else's version more than his own".

This awareness of the limitations of memory is subversive of the "addict's progress" narrative arc of degradation and redemption (at least partway). The structure imposed may reflect the expected conventions of the genre rather than anything claiming to be objective reality. The preponderance of the evidence presented, leads me to suggest that Anna was right when, on p, 238, she states that "any narrative that suggests that I was a fair and good man is a false memory". So the narrative arc is likely not to be an accurate depiction of reality.

When William Burroughs came to his senses after a prolonged addicted binge, he had in his hands fevered writings he somehow managed to pump out which quite well represented the giant black hole in his memory that occurred during his time reeling chemically out of his mind. Not very many people have been so lucky, and the description of addiction from addicts is rife with complications because of the very altered state of consciousness between soberness and drug use. David Carr tried a different approach: as an investigative journalist, why not investigate his own addiction? The result was pretty interesting, to be sure.

History and memory is probably one of the single most dysfunctional bounds of human experience, and when it applies to addiction relative truths can get unsubstantiated to the point of absurdity. The oral history recreated by Carr's interviews are interesting both in the ways in which they match up to create a character Carr doesn't recognize (himself) and the ways in which they disagree due to the altered points-of-view of the interviewees (some of which were hopped up on drugs themselves at the time of Carr's darkest moments). To be sure, the driving force behind this book isn't so much the addiction, after all, but the constant surprise and fascination with the different ways a character is revealed that has almost no personality relationship to the very man who was that personality.

--PolarisDiB

Memory is a strange, mysterious, and elusive function. That's the real theme of The Night of the Gun, by David Carr. How is it that one guy can honestly recall that the gun belonged to his friend and that it was his friend who used it? Yet, the alleged-gunman/friend remembers the same scene -- exactly in reverse.

Secondary to Carr's fascinating revelations about the way humans remember the "details" of our lives, this book comprises a bold confession by a man helplessly addicted to any and everything he could get a hold of to alter his consciousness. In a litany of jaw-dropping revelations, this gifted journalist admits to raising his children in drug-infested squalor and exposing them to severe peril, all the while destroying nearly every relationship, job, and opportunity that came along, by pulling off of some of the most fool-hearty, insane, bone-headed stunts ever recounted in print.

It's an inventive concept for an investigative reporter in recovery to attempt to reconstruct his own sordid past by interviewing the very people he hurt, ripped off, and deceived. I salute David Carr for airing his soiled laundry and unveiling his skeletons. There but for the grace of the pen go so many.

Rand Bishop, author of Makin' Stuff Up, The Absolute Essentials of Songwriting Success, and Grand Pop.

Reformed-junkie memoirs are common but New York Times contributor David Carr's The Night of the Gun is a nice change of pace, even if he a little too proud of himself.

Carr uses very choppy and direct style while describing his progression from experimental drinking and dope-smoking to injecting cocaine and smoking crack. He struggled to maintain his career as reporters and editors. During his lowest point he also had twin daughters. Carr is sorry for his behavior that included neglect of his daughters and the abuse of his friends. Being in such a fog he searches for the truth based what he can find in the public record. This evidence reveals truths about himself and the nature of addiction. Like many addicts he fell back to his addictive behaviors becoming once again dependent on alcohol. He is sober once again.

As one without an addictive mind it can be frustrating reading this book. You want to smack him upside the head many times. In the end, though, this book gives the reader an empathy for those with addictions. We all need such empathy if we are to ever change the way we treat the addicted.

In "The Night of the Gun," New York Times reporter David Carr returns to his Minnesota home to research and recapture the truth of the dark days, twenty years before, when he ravaged the lives of his family and friends as a crackhead and small-time criminal. Carr's life story, like every other autobiography of a recovered addict, is dark, but its value is mainly in that even now Carr refuses to let himself off the hook. "It is one thing to talk about how back in the day you were a narcissistic, abusive loser," he writes. "It is another to show up two decades later in apparent sound mind and body and proceed to engage in reporting your own life, a vainglorious endeavor that is presumptuous in the extreme."

Carr's reporting is unremittingly honest, and he is unafraid to admit that the truth about his behavior in those bleak days was often far worse than he remembered. "The Night of the Gun" is a tense and often fascinating story of a man headed toward total destruction who reclaimed his life at virtually the last possible moment.

I began reading Carr's story with high hopes. The idea of a recovering addict applying journalistic principles in order to piece together a puzzled past grabbed my attention from the onset. Through the first 100 pages or so, I couldn't read fast enough to satisfy my curiosity.

Then the story hits a wall. The stories within the story begin to overlap, and repetition becomes a common occurrence. Carr's memoir slowly grinds its way toward what I would consider a happy ending, considering the circumstances.

The story touches some very interesting points along the way. The concept of memory and how we form memories is an intriguing topic that is touched upon numerous times throughout. The idea of misremembering as time passes really makes you question some of your own memories. The "capers" are endless. Some of them are amusing while others are just plain astonishing.

David Carr is not a literary genius. The book is long and there are some dry spells throughout. It won't go down as one of my all-time favorites, but the book is worth the read if the subjects of addiction and recovery are something you are interested in.

I acknowledge agreement with another review that the device writer David Carr uses - basically writing about his life of drug & alcohol addiction in the third person through interviews & records of his past like a reporter (which he is) - can at times make the reader feel once removed from the writer's actual feelings; however, I found the device entrancing, bringing fresh life to the genre of "I-focused" tales of the horrors of addiction and the joys of recovery. Certainly worth a read by anyone trying to understand how an addict can do the things they do.

Narcissism of the highest order. Some wonderful details -- track-marked forearms in Dreft come to mind -- but the warts Carr exposes are slick with concealer. No feeling beneath the exhibitionistic revelations. I far prefer Susan Lydon's memoir of addiction. Carr's show is just that: a performance. No searing shame. Just a lot of "look at me." The cover photo makes my blood run cold. Not the sweet and expressive twin girls, but the narcissistic tilt of his smug face. A reminder that no matter one's resume -- and his, at the end, was certainly impressive -- all the cleverness in the world cannot erase terrible misdeeds.

What an amazing opportunity: to actually make it through an addiction, and then have the resources to investigate the chronology of that addiction, with a clear head. "Memories" and "facts" just don't hold up. Law enforcement professionals should all be required to read Carr's account, if only to realize how questionable "eyewitness" accounts can be if influenced by substance use. (One presumes that Carr could have passed a polygraph, so fervently did he believe the inaccurate history of his life.)

Now that it's evident that at least some substance abusers can make their way back to sober society, it's time to stop condemning them for life. Just this week, on one of the reality shows, the "boss" fired a young woman in recovery when he learned of her DUI history, and acknowledged he'd never have considered her candidacy if he knew of that history. It's too bad that we'll never know of most of the Carrs of the world, because they must remain in the closet for their lives to continue.

In the crowded field of addiction and recovery memoirs, it's hard for an individual book to stand out. "The Night of the Gun" does so strikingly, because Carr approaches his autobiography as the journalist he is--by interviewing those close to the subject of the story in an effort to obtain verification or additional insight.

Of course, in this case, the subject of the story is Carr himself, and Carr is astonished to discover that many "facts" he was completely positive about were, actually, not true at all. As such, this book is a wonderful testament to the unreliability of memory. It also serves the useful function of making us forever properly suspicious of any autobiography we might read in the future.

This twist on the classic addiction memoir is both its strength and weakness. Hearing what others in Carr's life had to say about the events that transpired was fascinating, but after the 10th (or was it 20th) obsessively long monologue about the untrustworthiness of memory and memoir, it got a bit tedious.

Finally, I wish Carr had devoted more time to discussing his relapse after over a decade of being clean. I am sure I am not the only reader who wanted to take him by the neck and ask "how could you be so stupid as to throw all that clean time, and your restored life, away?!" But this part of his life is described briefly, and the question of what compelled Carr to mix those dregs of leftover party glasses and drink the slop down is left to the readers as a complete mystery. Maybe it was a mystery for Carr, too.

"The Night of the Gun" is well-written and an unflinching portrait of the author in a highly unattractive light. That Carr is willing to portray himself so honestly, warts and all, is a testament to his skill and commitment to his craft. For those reasons, this is an addiction memoir worth reading.

Kaleidoscopic view of self-destructiveness and redemption... cathartic endeavor for author... revelatory for readers who seek better understanding and insights to addictive personalities... highly empathetic, often humorous and frequently sarcastic rendering for the compassionate inquisitor... Unfortunately, for this reader, I simply didn't care about the intricacies of his personal cataclysms.

This alternative approach to the memoir, a genre that seems to dominate the touchy feely partition of the market nowadays, is competently written as well it should be with consideration to the author's professional credentials. In many instances, his methodology bordered on virtually clinical objectivity to the intimations of his resource pool: friends, associates, acquaintances and loved ones who were typically willing participants on, or observers of, his trek to the bottom of the abyss and his many attempts at recovery, both the genuine and the feigned. Yet, there is little to distinguish his story from legions of others not equally as well positioned to bring their plight to the attention of the wider community. Reliance on the recollections of many who may have been equally as disoriented, or acting upon personalized contradictory agendas, failed to bring anything new or genuinely innovative to the discussion. The contrasts between documented events; arrest records and incarcerations, rehabilitative stays, loss of mementos and awards and his skewed remembrances of them seemed to be endemic of personal defensive devices employed by a much wider complement than merely the addicted.

Addiction is a pernicious disease, one that a number of people are powerless to confront whilst some segments of society refuse to recognize the bona fides associated with the varied afflictions. If Carr's work is beneficial in repositioning the thoughts of a number of individuals who find the addicted to be a homogenous group only indicative of a lack of self-control, there is value here but the course of investigation turned out to be less than compelling.

Essentially, the book impressed me as another variation of the preaching to the group already adorned in choir attire.

To my mind this book should have been titled "The Night I Left My Babies in the Car Alone for Hours in the Middle of Winter in Front of A Crack House So I Could Go In and Score." That scene was the emotional core of the book as far as I'm concerned.

"I walked toward the darkened car with drugs in my pocket and a cold dread in all corners of my being," the author writes. "I could see their breath. God had looked after the twins, and by proxy me, but I realized at that moment that I had made a mistake... I made a decision at that instant never to be that man again."

Well, the author's intent was good, yet still it took quite a few rehabs to sober up. But at least his story, and that of his children, ends well. To see his byline in the New York Times these days makes you realize how easily he could have been just another obit in the same paper.

The hook of a journalist investigating his own story was what drew me in. But, truthfully, I really didn't care whose memories among this sorry, addicted lot were accurate and whose not. That one of them wielded a gun one night - the author? the author's friend? - isn't a particularly shocking event sandwiched as it is between hundreds of similarly depraved scenes.

I read this book in batches. I had to. The sordidness got to me every few chapters and I had to put it down. If I could just summon a little more of that prurient interest the bottom-feeding public is so widely credited with having, I might rate books like this higher than I do.