|
| 
| Author: David Carr
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00
Buy New: $17.16
You Save: $8.84 (34%)
Rating:  149 reviews
Sales Rank: 11733
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
Publication Date: August 5, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
|
| Customer Reviews:
 The truth, the whole truth--- with a big dollop of laughter July 20, 2008
9 out of 20 found this review helpful
Imagine James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces" on a dose of truth serum, suffuse it with some cynical humor and a good handful of self-deprecation, and you get David Carr's remarkable and immensely readable memoir, "The Night of the Gun."Hats & Eyeglasses: A Family Love Affair with Gambling
If the story sounds familiar, the approach will not. The result is excellent. August 11, 2008
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
It sounds like books you've read before; the true stories of a junkie's drug-addled existence, the downward spiral, the damage to friends, family and career. Like many of those books, this one too is written by the former junkie himself. But this book is not like the others. It's author, David Carr, is a journalist who decides to see how he fares when he turns the journalistic spotlight on his own past as a cocaine addict. He sets his book apart immediately from the others with one assumption: his own memories are not to be trusted.
As Carr points out, human memory is proven to be a strangely untrustworthy source for solid information. The memory of a junkie? Carr knows any reporter worth his salt would need to do better. So Carr does.
Carr re-creates his years as a cocaine addict the way he would a newspaper story about someone else. He interviews former friends, girlfriends and associates to check their memories versus his own. He looks back at police and court records and he connects dots. The results usually paint an ugly picture of the man Carr used to be, but he never seems to back away from his task even at times when he's clearly uncomfortable with what he's discovered.
Carr's fresh approach takes a story that has the potential to be good, but undistinguished, and turns it into something that makes you feel like you're reading something special and unique. It's the non-fiction version of A Million Little Pieces (at which Carr takes a shot without ever using its name).
Highly recommended for anyone who likes addiction chronicles or for anyone who just appreciates a successful attempt to do something new and different.
 Jekyll and Hyde? October 23, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
While I like the premise of the book (using investigative techniques to confirm author's memories), I have to say that I don't care for the book itself very much. Part of that is due to the fact that the author doesn't come off as a likeable character, and I think that for an autobiography to really work, that's critical. While he's honest about his (mis)treatment of women during the time he was using drugs, I find it hard to believe that he doesn't still have an issue with them when he's sober. (I do not subscribe to the theory that alcohol and/or drugs turn you into Mr. Hyde, capable of things the sober Dr. Jekyll would never consider.) I find it interesting that there's really not much from his family on his drug abuse and eventual recovery, and there's nothing from his wife, and only from one of his daughters. Did they all value their privacy, or was there another reason why he didn't include conversations with them? I would not recommend this book.
 Great Story In Need Of An Editor August 26, 2008
5 out of 7 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.
disappointed reader September 9, 2008
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
if he was drugged out and his friends were drugged as well, whose word will stand. and who cares? this is a self-centered account of a lost time in this man's life. i could not connect with him as he did not arise any feelings inside. all very matter of fact. i have read the robert evans book and enjoyed it somewhat, but his impressions of his own experiences almost feels like he misses this wasted time. as a reporter i am sure he did well,but he can't reach inside himself enough or maybe that's all there is.
|
|
|
Copyright 2008 BetterEditor.net
| |
