True Tell All Too Tedious (2009-06-20)
Pretty soon writers will be strapping themselves into lie detectors before they sit down at their computers to write.

It's getting ridiculous. All these disclaimers and now this! Well, just because you document a crash and burn to make it honest doesn't mean you make it interesting. It just means you watched James Frey crash and burn after writing a memoir about a crash and burn. I don't mean to sound harsh but I was unable to finish this book. Even with the outstanding writing.

I was lured in by the numerous endorsements from highly-respectable sources printed on the jacket and after passing it up for a while thought I'd give it a try.

i'm glad Mr. Carr has been able to turn his life around and take responsibility for his actions and there are great insights here, but it wasn't compelling enough for me. As I said, I did not finish the book. I read up to the point where it looked like everything was going to be okay. So I can only comment on the part I read. And frankly, I found it hard to sympathize with him.

I think I need to read something really funny next.

Investigative Journalism meets Addiction Memoir (2009-06-10)
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.

A Walk Through The long Tea Time of The Soul (2009-05-30)
Have you ever been with a group of friends and you remember a story one way and everyone else remembers it differently than you? That is the basis of "Night of the Gun". David Carr spent a great deal of his life strung out on drugs and this is his story. It starts as him and a friend remembering a different version of the same story involving Carr waving a gun. Carr decides to ask a different friend about the incident and the second friend confirms the story of the first. Carr then decides to interview people from his past to see what everyone remembers. His theory is that you remember only what you can tolerate.

"Night of the Gun" is David Carr's personal walk through Hell. A talented writer who was caught up into drugs that almost destroyed his life. He interviews "friends" from the past to help him put his personal history together. He is frank about not being a nice man. He lied , cheated, hurt his loved ones and smacked around his wife while doped up. Not everyone is glad to see him or talk to him, which gives the tale true realism. Carr has picked episodes from his past that he barely remembers or not at all and compares what he was like at the time and what his friends were like at the time.

This is not your typical I hit bottom, got cleaned up and look how well I am doing now story. The reader will find this is not an easy life and not everyone makes it back. The majority of survivors are badly damaged and do not return to "normalcy". They manage or don't depending on the person. Carr had a few breaks because he had talent as a writer and someone lent a hand hoping he would clean up. He even had respect from a former dealer to him that saw he was smart and had potential. That was Carr's one saving grace, others saw potential in him.

The last third of the book is his return to civilization. It was not easy and he writes about his recovery and later stumble in great detail. He writes about a family member sticking with him through the worst and another helping him when he was putting his life back together. He writes about his daughters and how well they turned out considering how they started their life born to addicted parents.

"Night of the Gun" is a harrowing tale. It is told honestly and yet is not self flagellating. It is neither smug nor self congratulatory. What it is is one great read you will not want to put down. Highly Recommended.

Lookng for Mr. Veracity (2009-05-27)
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.

Recovery memoir with a twist... (2009-05-20)
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.