Back from Oblivion

Back in the day, not every night out with David Carr ended at Moby Dick’s, but I don’t recall ever being in old Block E’s most heavily policed watering hole without him. That’s another way of saying Carr always led the way in.

If you ran with Carr as a twenty/thirtysomething back in the early and mid-eighties—as a remarkably large number of local writers, musicians, scenesters, and players did—you knew that Carr, then writing for the Twin Cities Reader, was off his game if the night didn’t “finish” at Moby’s. At least that’s where it finished for everyone else. Those of us who’d hitch up with the Carr Local for four or five stops after work, all the time thinking we were the wildest damned cowboys west of CBGB’s, would eventually peel off and head home, working up some weak excuse for a glaring spouse. For Carr, though, the “finishing game” usually went on into the night, past dawn, and through the following day.

Eventually there was no start or finish. It was a constant cycle of booze, grimy bars, coke, crack, some dealer’s hellhole apartment, a circle of junkies licking their lips over someone’s fresh rock, and multiple failed trips through rehab before cratering with no place left to go other than Eden House, a druggie boot camp. There, Carr explains, confronting the colossal fuck-up that you’d made of your life and the misery you’d inflicted on everyone around you was the first step toward restoration.

It is a moderate-sized miracle that Hopkins–born Carr is both alive at fifty-two and enjoying something close to star prominence as media columnist and roaming lifestyle/trends/Hollywood feature writer-at-large for The New York Times.

This month brings publication of The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life. His Own, what Carr calls a “reported memoir” of his sometimes hilarious but more often nearly fatal junkie rampages through low-life Minneapolis during the 1980s and his long climb back to credibility. The book, which he largely wrote last summer at his weekend place in the Adirondacks, will be irresistible to anyone who knew him. And he being a gregarious, quick-witted, charm-you-out-of-your-shoes Irishman, those “who knew him” describes an impressive number of people around these towns.

Carr’s research for the book involved traveling to wherever old friends and victims of his former excesses live today and encouraging them to recall what a slobbering loser he had degenerated into way back when. The process included a visit to Tucson, Arizona, and a not exactly cheery walk down memory lane with the mother of his college-age twin daughters, conceived when both Carr and the woman—then a major coke dealer—were in the depths of full-blown crack addiction.

Working through concerns about “commoditizing” his bad behavior, worries about the effect his revelations would have on family, and the usual writer’s fears of doing a full-out “faceplant” (a favorite Carrism) in front of the media cognoscenti, the boy has turned in a remarkably engaging book, trading on the sordid horror to turn a nice buck—Simon & Schuster handed him an advance in the neighborhood of $300,000.

As someone who was close to the action, I’m probably not the best judge of broader audience appeal. Whether Carr advances our understanding and sympathy for the junkie life, whether he has moved the ball of “junkie lit” further down the field, I don’t pretend to know. What I do know is that from the day I first met him nearly thirty years ago, I knew he had talent. He understood the fundamentals of storytelling. A dogged reporter—a guy who fundamentally wants to know, and be in the know, about stuff—Carr could always weave the basics of an otherwise garden-variety news item into a narrative with setting, characters, and drama. Into a story. He still does, as readers of his Times material, his Monday media column in particular, know well.

But in The Night of the Gun, Carr’s writing is free of establishment journalistic fetters. Whether you have an interest in the often pathetic tale of a smart, glib guy in a self-immolating death spiral, the scenes flow—fresh, jangly, jargon-rich, and cinematic. Considering the material, the effect is ironically entertaining and compelling.

Publication of the book, with the accompanying publicity obligations, comes at a particularly busy time for Carr. In addition to his usual assignments, the Times, for reasons not entirely clear to him (it may be that they’ve picked up early favorable buzz about the book and want to exploit his ratcheted-up profile), is dropping him into the paper’s Democratic and Republican convention coverage, with tacit instructions to find and tell stories beyond the predictable ritual of these overscripted sales events.

You cover the media for the Times so you’re certainly familiar with the memoir genre, even the junkie memoir subgenre. What did you see in your story that convinced you it was distinctive enough to tell?

I’m not the one who needs convincing. Clay Shirky, a professer at NYU, told me that narcissism inhabits all demos, and I guess that includes me. In technical terms, the arc of my story—goofball who trips into pathology followed by redemption—is a very common one. But there are a few ripples in it—single parenting, cancer, professional luck—that give it narrative texture. And sometimes stories are less important than the way they are told. Whatever knack I have for storytelling is in this book.

Perhaps more to the point, I really did not prepare financially for my twins to go to college. When I checked the cupboard, it was a little bare, save for my sordid backstory.

What were the obvious memoir paradigm pits you swore you wouldn’t fall into?

That part about your lying your ass off is something I thought I might steer clear of. And by going back and talking with other people who were present at events, I thought it would give the reader some hope of a truer story. And I do think bathos—which comes easily to me and so many other writers, especially when writing about the self—was something I did my best to stay away from. There are people who have lived through truly horrifying things. I’m not one of them. I grew up in Hopkins with a nice family and took that set of great cards and gradually set them on fire. I think the focus on self should not tip over into thinking and writing that there is something unique and ennobling about any bumps you may have had along the way.

You’ve mentioned to me an unease with “commoditizing” your life experiences, in particular your worst behavior. In the end, what argued in favor of ignoring the trembles of conscience that motivated that unease? Is every person’s story theirs to trade or sell?

People have the right to trade or sell everything they have—souls, bodies, family heirlooms. The wisdom of that choice is another matter. Part of my trouble with taking on the book is that many people told me for years that I should write about the fact that I used to be a crackhead and I consistently said I never would. Too common, too clichéd. I eventually came around to the idea that reporting the story rather than just ginning it up from memory had literary—and perhaps economic—value. Once I got the idea, which was really just a notion, I wrote the proposal in two days and my agent sold it the following week. So my bluff got called.

Beyond that, there is an audacity to the genre that belies a proper humility. Hubris both enabled me and nearly killed me, so there is risk in the relentless focus on self. And, for the record, I’m not over my unease, but I cashed the check and opened up the vein. The blood will be flowing to a bookstore near you soon.

It seemed to me two obvious mistakes you could have made, but I think avoided, were, A, telling the tale without any sense or acknowledgment of the physical, emotional, and social high of the druggie life, at least on the upper recreational end, and, B, letting any reader leave the story with a picture of you as some kind of world-class player. Where was the line in recounting the raucous hilarity that went on for many years? It seems to me there were at least another couple of short chapters of the goofball, mostly harmless party animal stuff.

Glad you asked. I think people see someone crippled by addiction and wonder why anyone would make that choice. And the answer is, It didn’t start out that way. It was fun as hell for a very long time. Others in the vicinity—no names need be mentioned here, Brian—can testify to that. Why do trained rats push the bar over and over unless, once upon a time, something splendid came down the tube? But a few of those ‘Geez, we were a riot, weren’t we?’ stories goes a long way. A friend of mine who read an early version of the book with more of those happy warrior tales said to me, ‘Hey, you know, we all did crazy stuff back in the day.’ True that.

And in terms of my resumé as a dealer and a wannabe crook, I had a strong impression that I was a Man about My Business back in the day. Not Pablo Escobar, but not nothing. But nearly everyone I talked to laughed in my face when I went there in my reporting. I had felony pretensions, but misdemeanor execution. One of the cops who booked me after a run took a look at me and said, “Lemme guess. Lurking with intent to mope, right?”

The book is presented as a “reported” memoir in which you seek out others for corroboration or more complete explanation of what went on with you. In the end, as a reporter looking at what they gave you, do you find their recollections all that more accurate than your own?

I tried not to print anything that was demonstrably untrue, and that included other people’s takes on events, regardless how dear their memory. My reporting was in the nature of a conversation—a rolling, organic effort at triangulation. And things I heard from one person and doubted were then repeated by someone else. Some of those “reveals” form the heart of the book. That does not mean the book contains all manner of objective truth—only that it was as close as I could make it.

Some fairly proper—i.e., straight—business-minded people gave you chance after chance after chance. You were never anyone’s idea of the average junkie. There was too much there. What do you say if I suggest it was talent, charm, or some combination of the two that actually saved you?

A pal told me that writing saved my life, that I could not stand being out of the game, but it seemed both true and almost too trite to say. I don’t think charm was one of my life preservers, though, because the pathology of addiction took me to a place where charming did not land in my neighborhood very often. And if charisma or skills were a fair metric on survival, what of some of my more charming friends who did not make it? My dad thinks I’m alive because nuns prayed for me, which is his way of saying I got lucky, I think.

You’re Irish. Your mother, you once told me, was “career Irish.” You’ve heard Freud’s line that the “Irish are the only race who cannot be helped by psychoanalysis.” Too many contradictions. Too adroit with an argument. Impervious to rational thought processes. Do you disagree? Have you ever disagreed?

I hesitate to say it lest my credentials as a shanty Irishman get revoked, but I am a highly therapized individual. True enough, most of it bounced off or was manipulated to my own ends, but I eventually found a therapist who had my number. In sobriety, she helped me learn to become the man I pretended to be. I know that sounds really foofy, but it is what it is. That said, the need for people to endlessly roam around their past, deconstructing their relationship with their mother, mystifies me. I believe in cognitive approaches to changing and improving ourselves—sometimes assisted by able nutcrackers—but the answer to all that family origins stuff is that everyone did the best they could. Case closed.

If the book doesn’t break new ground in the junkie lit genre—it may, I don’t know—I find myself recommending it on the basis of verve and vernacular alone. The adrenalized, cinematic, journo-street patois is very entertaining, especially to writers. Anyone of our generation will hear the chimes of Hunter Thompson, Tom Wolfe, and, to some extent, Richard Price. It often reads as though something released. Did you make a conscious decision on the style? Did you find it liberating?

I am soooo totally blushing right now. We all believe we are hacks and are pretending elsewise, no? This book is just my idea of a book—a first-time author’s, no less—so when I turned it in and people started treating it like it really was a book, part of me was stunned. That said, I read it for an excerpt not long ago and, in sum, I am proud of the book, if not always the story it tells. Parts of the book are written—built to last—and there are undoubtedly parts that are just typing to get from one place to another.

I wrote the book at a cabin in the Adirondacks on a tight schedule, and I worked whether the muse was present or not. The tone you are talking about is something I recognize, but cannot conjure at will. When it appeared in a sustained way, it came out in big, long ribbons. I’d put the iPod on shuffle late at night, start typing, and have some kind of nicotine-caffeine fever dream where I was not completely present. (Ever the addict, eh?) When I looked up, there was light coming through the pines and some small magic on the page.

The anticipated meeting with your twin daughters’ mother in Arizona feels a bit anticlimactic. Do you think you held back from fully dissecting that encounter? Because she is the girls’ mother?

One of the nicest things that ever happened to me—the twins—happened with Anna. I am both grateful to her and fond of her. She would say that I did not cut her any slack, that I took out an axe and hacked as I wished, but I probably could have gone deeper and rendered it in more brutal terms, but that didn’t feel right. I’m Irish, tribal in my loyalties, and this is the girls’ mom after all. The sad part for me is that Anna, who I talk to occasionally, has done amazing things since the book was finished. She has dealt with some significant medical issues while working hard helping folks who have mental health and chemical dependency issues. That makes for a better story that I’m hoping will be part of a paperback, if there is such a thing. The other thing that probably made it seem anticlimactic is that while Anna and I both have our share of delusions, we are pathologically disposed to disclose. Anna is not a liar, and I’d like to think I share the trait. We should probably hate each other, but we don’t.

If the disease of addiction is in large part an issue of unchecked, unregulated compulsion, do you think you’ve shifted compulsive energy to something else? Work?

Well, lemme see, it’s going on midnight and this Q & A is not due for four days, but here I sit. Today, I got up at 6 a.m. and finished off a 3,000-word story for the business section right after writing a big heave about a documentary on Hunter Thompson. Then there was a podcast, an appearance on NY1, and lots of work on the videos for the website of the book. I won’t belabor the tick-tock, but this weekend I have more of same—so, yeah, I have some issues, deep abiding ones. Some people can look in the mirror and validate their existence while I seem to worry that if I don’t have a story, I might not exist. Part of it is genetic—I may come from drunks, but they were earners—but my need to always produce suggests a significant pathology. Somewhere along the way, for reasons I am at a loss to explain, I got the feeling that if I slow down, flying monkeys might drop out of the ceiling and kill me. It’s an adaptive professional characteristic in this file-and-faceplant era of journalism where productivity is a means of survival, but not a very charming personal one.

I have always wondered why I like going to movies so much, and awhile ago I realized somewhat shamefully that it is the only time when I sit still and quiet. Something about silence intimidates me. Memoirs to the contrary, I’m not real big on self reflection and I read before bed until I slip to the edge of a coma.

In the past month, I took a fishing trip to the bayous of Louisiana and a weekend trip to the music festival called Bonnaroo, and, as my wife, Jill, pointed out, I managed to turn both of those fun things into work, writing and blogging about the experiences. I did take a bike ride with Maddie, my eleven-year-old, yesterday and did not check my BlackBerry once. I did bring it with me, though.