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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:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 244
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 (New: Last 30 Days)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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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 8 more reviews...
 Didn't like 1st half; 2nd half is better August 29, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I think the idea of this book was a good one: To compare and contrast the author's memory with others' memories - other people who were actually there.
My main gripe with the first half of the book was that I was bored. The one bright spot in that first 100 pages for me was when Carr explained his first writing assignment - THAT was interesting. Otherwise, all - and I do mean ALL - of his reminisces involve drinking, drugs, and more drinking and drugs. Only the scenery changes (drinking/drugs while fishing, drinking/drugs while at the bar, at parties, including a wedding reception, drinking/drugs in the car, going to get more drugs, getting drugs to other people, etc. etc.)
I also didn't particularly care for Carr's attitude in the beginning of the book. At first, he says he can see where he made some mistakes; he made some unsavory choices that split his existence into half bad guy, half intelligent guy who just went down the wrong path. He admits to some pretty rotten things but then instead of keeping that mind set (meaning some semblance of humility), he jumps into co-workers' glowing reports of his genius ... oh no, this one didn't focus on his drug addiction; all she saw was his great work! And then after that, when remembering (or rather, not remembering) being arrested for assaulting a cab driver, he jokes, "I'm sure the guy deserved it." I didn't think it was funny.
The book changes for the better in the second half. The cancer obviously impacted him hard, and I felt more sympathy and admiration for him when he details his caring for his young girls while he was ill. The best part of the whole book for me was his meeting Jill, his wife. Pure magic. "She wasn't my type." But she was his kind - a good woman who is interesting in her own right.
If you could chop the first half of the book off I'd have been much happier with the book. Yeah, he was addicted to drugs and it was hell (and sometimes seemingly humorous to him) and I get it - but I'd have got it without a lot of the repeating of the same act, different day/setting.
Great Story In Need Of An Editor August 26, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
David Carr has a remarkable story to tell, and he is without question a gifted writer. He also pulls no punches, time and again laying blame where it belongs -- with himself -- for terrible judgments made in a life of addiction, recovery, and backslides to trouble. Carr also takes an interesting approach to reporting his own story -- conducting interviews and research as though he were investigating another person's story. The difficulty is that Carr overwrites, or repeats himself, all too often. There are too many musings about that sort of self-investigation; far too many espisodes of crack-addled madness; too many aphorisms about second chances, missed chances, and so on. I believe the manuscript runs close to four hundred pages; it could have been pared by a hundred or so pages, and made for a far better book.
You Can't Know the Whole Truth August 22, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
So says David Carr. "But if there is one, it lies in the space between people." Something haunting in that line, and relevant to anyone regardless of whether they share Carr's story of self-destruction and recovery. This reformed thug, drug addict and spiraling loser pulls out of the dive at a critical moment, rescues his infant twin daughters (or is it the other way around?) and rebuilds a shattered career to become a columnist for The New York Times. It's a harrowing story -- part crime saga, part family heartwarmer -- but the remarkable thing is how he did it. Not trusting his own memory of events, Carr retraced the steps from That Guy to This Guy, using his skills as a journalist to interview his old friends, junkies, dealers, lawyers, counselors, to connect those dots. What makes The Night of the Gun transcend the everyday memoir is his exploration of the vagaries of memory -- who remembers what, and when. Stories retold become mythologized, sins he can't bear to see forgiven absolve themselves through forgetfulness, and the question of who pulled that gun on whom becomes more existential than whodunnit. Carr shows that memory becomes a biased informant, whispering that things weren't so bad, not our fault, and yet the truth can be found for those daring enough to confront it. As a fellow reporter, this book was especially compelling. An excellent, riveting read.
The Nigh of the Gun August 22, 2008
0 out of 11 found this review helpful
Even though I haven't read this book yet. I WANT TO. It sounds interesting. Ever thought of making it a search inside the book feature for your book? Can't wait to buy it.
A looooonnnnng night August 21, 2008
8 out of 14 found this review helpful
The concept behind David Carr's memoir is intriguing. Stoned and drunk for much of his early life, the fact that he couldn't trust his own memories was brought home to him when he was shown that he completely misremembered an incident with a gun (hence the book's title). So, reporter that he is, he set out to interview people who knew him back in the day. He became an investigative reporter tracking down the young David Carr. Along the way, he discovered lots of things he said and did, but of which he has either no or distorted recollections.
So the angle that Night of the Gun takes is attractive. That's the good news. The bad news is that Carr can't quite deliver. For starters, the book is way too long and so the episodes Carr recounts (often with cinematic speed and compactness) tend to become repetitious. So there's a lot of words but not a lot of depth. Moreover, the lack of depth is reflected in the tough guy, Mickey Spillane style Carr chooses to write in, a style that comes across as inauthentic and, within just a few pages, incredibly annoying. Perhaps the point of the style is to create a living-on-the-edge ambience. But it doesn't work very well.
Ultimately, and most seriously, it's difficult to see what the point of Carr's book is. Is it to draw attention to the mysterious ways in which our memories deceive us? But if so, there's precious little real reflection on the issue, and most of it consists of unenlightening one-liners. (What a lost opportunity.) Is it to impress upon us the terrible things that drug and alcohol addictions do? But surely this has been done a bazillion times already in other memoirs as well as in films and novels (read anything by Hubert Selby, Jr., for example). Is the book intended to be a sort of celebrity confessional? But if so, it falls short of the mark because Mr. Carr simply isn't a celebrity.
I'm glad that Carr has straightened out his life. But I'm afraid his book rates no more than two and a half stars. For more authentic and better written recent memoirs of the addicted life, I recommend Lee Stringer's Grand Central Winter, David Sheff's Beautiful Boy, or James Salant's Leaving Dirty Jersey.
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