Junkies and drunks frequently end up putting a megaphone to their own pratfalls in the form of memoir because they need to believe that all of the time they spent with their lips wrapped around glass, whether is was a bottle of vodka or a crack pipe, actually meant something. That impulse suggests that I don’t regret the past — it brought me here to this nice, happy place — but I’d also like to squeeze something more from it. ~ David Carr
My good friend Anna Z sent me this story from The New York Times by David Carr that is actually an adaption from his book, The Night of the Gun. I usually stay away from the drunk and druggy memoirs because like I always say, the people and the places may change but we all work off the same playbook. Mr. Carr however adds an interesting twist by not only relating his story, but by going back as a professional journalist and separating the past world as he remembered it from the reality that occurred backed by eyewitness accounts, documents, and personal interviews.
And then he ponders the questions we all ask: Why? Why we tell our tale different from the way it happened, why it matters in the present, and why we tell it all. Mr. Carr does not just sew up his past into a suit of sober clothes to proudly display, instead he takes it off one piece at a time to expose the person he really was.
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