Oct 07 2008
The Night of the Gun
It’s a question that has to come up fairly regularly in the publishing community, and certainly in the recovery world: how much of what I remember really happened the way I remember it? David Carr decided to use his skills as an investigative reporter to investigate his own life. Instead of just writing his memoir of addiction from memory, he took a video camera, pulled legal and medical records, and crisscrossed the country tracking down old sources, dealers, family and friends to gain a different perspective on what those coke snorting, crack smoking, hard-drinking years were like from the other side. The result is The Night of the Gun.
“A drunk or a junkie will end up finding fellow travelers in the course of things. If you are a drunk, the guy down the bar who falls off his stool and then gets up, sits down, and orders another is your friend. He may be a peckerwood whomakes speeches about the Twins or the Vikings or the mayor, but he is, after a fashion, your guy. In the same way, an addict will find his or her own level and his or her tribe to go with it. As in a lot of cities in the mid-to-late eighties, coke was ubiqutous in Minneapolis. But while vast swatches of people did a line here or there, there was a self-selected tribe who did little else.”
Unfortunately, reporting on one’s addiction seems to be a lot less interesting than remembering it firsthand. What the memoir gained in accuracy, it lost in intimacy and raw emotion. The most interesting tidbit for me turned out to be Carr’s high praise for his buddy Tom Arnold, whom he credits with being one of the most solid and supportive people in recovery he has known. His memoir I’d like to read!
