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The Night of the Gun
by
David Carr
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. |
