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The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of his Life--His Own | 
 enlarge | Author: David Carr
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 703
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st Simon & Schuster Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 1416541527
Dewey Decimal Number: 616.860092
EAN: 9781416541523
ASIN: 1416541527
Publication Date: August 5, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
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Amazon.com
Amazon Best of the Month, August 2008: In his fabulously entertaining The Kid Stays in the Picture, legendary Hollywood producer Robert Evans wrote: "There are three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth." David Carr's riveting debut memoir, The Night of the Gun, takes this theory to the extreme, as the New York Times reporter embarks on a three-year fact-finding mission to revisit his harrowing past as a drug addict and discovers that the search for answers can reveal many versions of the truth. Carr acknowledges that you can't write a my-life-as-an-addict story without the recent memoir scandals of James Frey and others weighing you down, but he regains the reader's trust by relying on his reporting skills to conduct dozens of often uncomfortable interviews with old party buddies, cops, and ex-girlfriends and follow an endless paper trail of legal and medical records, mug shots, and rejection letters. The kaleidoscopic narrative follows Carr through failed relationships and botched jobs, in and out of rehab and all manner of unsavory places in between, with cameos from the likes of Tom Arnold, Jayson Blair, and Barbara Bush. Admittedly, it's hard to love David Carr--sometimes you barely like the guy. How can you feel sympathy for a man who was smoking crack with his pregnant girlfriend when her water broke? But plenty of dark humor rushes through the book, and knowing that this troubled man will make it--will survive addiction, fight cancer, raise his twin girls--makes you want to stick around for the full 400-page journey. --Brad Thomas Parsons
Product Description
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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| Customer Reviews: Read 24 more reviews...
A dark, harrowing, and uncompromising memoir September 7, 2008
David Carr's The Night of the Gun is something that you have to read to believe. A memoir of Carr's drug addicted past, The Night of the Gun is a dark, harrowing, often riveting, and definitely uncompromising portrait of a talented journalist, with some very bad habits, that lead him to do some very bad and very regretable things. Ranging from wreaking havoc on the lives of his loved ones, to going so far as to smoking crack with his pregnant girlfriend as her water is breaking, saying that it's hard to feel sympathy for Carr is saying it lightly. Yet, with hsi unabashed honesty and uncompromising depiction of himself, his ultimate triumph nevertheless makes The Night of the Gun a worthwhile endeavor. As far as memoirs go however, The Night of the Gun isn't without it's flaws, as the structure of Carr's tale sometimes makes it hard to follow at some points. Also, as said before, The Night of the Gun is not something that is easy to swallow, and is often hard to read. That aside, The Night of the Gun is a worthwhile, dirty trip down Carr's own drug raddled memory lane, and it is very effective, and will manage to stay with you for some time afterward.
 Disturbing but excellent September 7, 2008
I found myself alternately filled with admiration and then with repulsion as I read David Carr's story of drug addiction and redemption. David is sometimes an incredibly good writer; he has the knack of drawing rich images in your mind. I'd no doubt read anything else he writes just because of that, but I really found "Night of the Gun" darkly disturbing.
Maybe it's because David's stark introspection makes me wonder about myself. I never have had any addiction issues, but it's there in my extended family and I've certainly seen it in friends and a few others. I think my unvoiced thought has always been that there is something fundamentally different about people with such problems: they aren't like me, they are flawed, weak.. "others". I could never be an addict, not because my genes are different, but because my resolve is stronger. No slippery slopes for me..
Oh yeah? David's writing makes me question that. It's not "there but for the grace..", it's "sheesh, I can see how that could happen". And that's more than a little scary.
Probably some reviewer is going to say something silly like "a must read for anyone close to addiction". No, this is a must read for people like me, people who have never looked hard into their own selves and recognized how easy it would be to screw it all up like David.
I hope David stays clean. He has genuine talent and it will be a shame if that gets buried yet again.
Wow!!! September 7, 2008
This book is so brutally honest that it is sometimes difficult to read and yet I could not put it down. This man and his family and friends went through hell, both during and after he became sober. It is a true testament to the human condition and just how strong we are. Strong in all the wrong ways at times and strong in all the good ways we can be. I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone. Today there is almost no human being who has not been touched by addictions of all kinds so that this book speaks to everyone.
Superbly crafted and soul-shaking September 6, 2008
Oh, this book stripped the marrow from my bones. I am someone who has never even seen any drugs, but it still gripped me with an insider's harrowing sense of recognition. A very close family member of mine was a coke addict who also was rescued because of her ultimate love for her child. I have endured all the tribulations (too weak a word) that a family member can in watching the endless self-destruction that addiction brings, along with the attendant neglect of a baby. I was victimized countless times by the constant theft and deception that an addict trails in his or her wake, but much worse was trying to help keep the baby alive and flourishing when the baby's mother was out of her mind. Thank God that eventually this relative's desire to give her child a life provided sufficient motivation to get clean and so far to stay clean.
Furthermore, besides being able to relate too well to the wrecked lives Carr details, I thought his writing was spectacular. Many times I reread a superbly crafted line because it so brilliantly conveyed his emotion or some circumstance. I found the entire "reporting" device to be supremely effective and was profoundly moved all along as the Carr of 2007 met again with the people from two decades before, and as he discovered what had really occurred when he was too drug-damaged to know.
It was also informative to access the website that accompanies the book. Hearing from the actual characters in his narrative augmented my understanding of his life.
Here is hoping that David Carr remains on the straight and narrow to enjoy his life with his wife and three girls.
 "Clean and Sober" meets "Memento" meets "Naked Lunch". September 5, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a book about addiction -- the author's. In fact, David Carr was so addicted and living in such an addled state that he literally could not accurately remember his life story. Thus, this is not really an autobiography but rather a memoir written with information provided by others via interviews of his friends and acquaintances during his harrowing experiences of dependency, relationships, relapse, family, and the destruction of just about everything good in the author's life. He lived to conduct his research and based upon what he discovered (including the truth and himself), he's a very, very lucky man.
Born of necessity, the concept of an autobiography based upon the research of one's own life is a brilliant one and if one is interested in the depths of addictive despair, this is often an interesting read. However, Carr's writing style prevents what might have been great. He recounts his interview information in a somewhat linear fashion, but jumps around based upon the interviewee in question. Dates get mixed up from one paragraph to the next, so I found it difficult to follow and this deals a blow to the arch of despair and redemption I believe he's tried to create. It's as if his writing exists only for his own consumption rather than with the reader primarily in mind. I have never experienced addiction at this level and would at least appreciate a cautionary tale if not a thoroughly visceral ride.
More specifically, Carr treats us to sections of introspection that are often quite effective both in specific terms of addiction and the more general human condition, but then he'll suddenly recount a story of binge drinking and coke snorting or some really terrible way he treated someone due to his downward spiral coupled with one liners from various authors he constantly quotes throughout the narrative. The quoting is an odd device because what I wanted from Carr was the authenticity of his own observations of self-discovery; initially, I thought this and the generally jarring style might be deliberate and that the writing would become settled as he began to recover his family and his life, but it doesn't.
Carr has a built-in favorable audience because we root for his recovery from the opening pages and he has his readers' respect for every success and empathy for every failure -- especially the realization that failure, like victory, is only temporary. And it's important not to read "The Night of the Gun" like a novel. Carr's a talented writer and obviously very bright and I wish him success. I also wish this extremely intriguing idea had been written less self-indulgently and more with the reader in mind.
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