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The Night of the Gun
David Carr
A reporter investigates the darkest story of his life. His own.
Simon & Schuster
August 2008
On Sale: August 5, 2008
336 pages ISBN: 1416541527 EAN: 9781416541523 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Memoir
Do we remember only the stories we can live with? The ones that make us look good in the rearview mirror? In
The Night of the Gun, David Carr redefines memoir with the
revelatory story of his years as an addict and chronicles
his journey from crack-house regular to regular columnist
for The New York Times. Built on sixty videotaped
interviews, legal and medical records, and three years of
reporting, The Night of the Gun is a ferocious tale that
uses the tools of journalism to fact-check the past.
Carr's investigation of his own history reveals that his
odyssey through addiction, recovery, cancer, and life as a
single parent was far more harrowing -- and, in the end,
more miraculous -- than he allowed himself to remember.
Over the course of the book, he digs his way through a
past that continues to evolve as he reports it. That long-ago night he was so out of his mind that his
best friend had to pull a gun on him to make him go away?
A visit to the friend twenty years later reveals that Carr
was pointing the gun. His lucrative side business as a cocaine dealer? Not all
that lucrative, as it turned out, and filled with peril. His belief that after his twins were born, he quickly
sobered up to become a parent? Nice story, if he could
prove it. The notion that he was an easy choice as a custodial
parent once he finally was sober? His lawyer pulls out the
old file and gently explains it was a little more
complicated than that. In one sense, the story of The Night of the Gun is a
common one -- a white-boy misdemeanant lands in a ditch
and is restored to sanity through the love of his family,
a God of his understanding, and a support group that will
go unnamed. But when the whole truth is told, it does not
end there. After fourteen years -- or was it thirteen? --
Carr tried an experiment in social drinking. Double
jeopardy turned out to be a game he did not play well. As
a reporter and columnist at the nation's best newspaper,
he prospered, but gained no more adeptness at mood-
altering substances. He set out to become a nice suburban
alcoholic and succeeded all too well, including two more
arrests, one that included a night in jail wearing a
tuxedo. Ferocious and eloquent, courageous and bitingly funny, The
Night of the Gun unravels the ways memory helps us not
only create our lives, but survive them.
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