The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of his Life--His Own

"Reformed-junkie memoirs are common but New York Times contributor David Carr's The Night of the Gun is a nice change of pace, even if he a little too proud of himself.

Carr uses very choppy and direct style while describing his progression from experimental drinking and dope-smoking to injecting cocaine and smoking crack. He struggled to maintain his career as reporters and editors. During his lowest point he also had twin daughters. Carr is sorry for his behavior that included neglect of his daughters and the abuse of his friends. Being in such a fog he searches for the truth based what he can find in the public record. This evidence reveals truths about himself and the nature of addiction. Like many addicts he fell back to his addictive behaviors becoming once again dependent on alcohol. He is sober once again.

As one without an addictive mind it can be frustrating reading this book. You want to smack him upside the head many times. In the end, though, this book gives the reader an empathy for those with addictions. We all need such empathy if we are to ever change the way we treat the addicted."
~ Written on 2010-08-19

"Halfway through Carr's memoir I thought it was one of the best I've ever read, and appreciated his investigation into the notion of memory and how we tell the stories in our lives. He lost me about halfway when the story veered from his getting over addiction to his rising in the world of journalism. It's one thing to interview a friend about a lost night with a gun, and another to interview an editor who hired you--gee, why'd you hire me? Gosh, you had a history of being a mess but you were so talented and charming!--which gets tedious. Writing about covering the Twin Towers is an interesting story, but it's not THIS story. Carr mistakes autobiography for memoir--we don't want to know all the details of his life, just the ones that go with this story. Needed an editor. Once he slips back into addiction, ironically, we're back on track with the story. Courageous, brutally honest."
~ Written on 2010-06-12

"When I first went to the website for this book some time ago, I had expected to read the opposite of what it turned out to be. I was under the impression that Carr would use the actual historical record of his debasement and addiction to shine an accurate light on what truly happened to him.

There is some of that, and yes, he did plenty of interviews - but they are no more a surefire record of the time he describes than his own memory. He uses SOME official documents to shine a light on certain events, but not that much, and often it's only vaguely enlightening anyway.

Basically, he's a great, compelling writer - as evidenced by his long career as a reporter. But this book is what he promised it would NOT be - a navel-gazing apoligia.

Maybe if I was a crackhead junkie, I could read this and get something out of it...maybe that's the audience and I should look at it like a self-help motivational book. I guess.

But, this is just more of what I've seen in plenty of other accounts - "look at me, I'm David Carr and when I was a crackhead I had an awesome time, and hooked up with lots of girls, and went to lots of parties, and knew movie stars...but it's bad! Don't do what I did!" Whatever.

Everybody he describes is saintly and forgiving, and every junkie he ever encountered was a real salt of the earth character who, in between hits, tried to help him out. Except for the mother of his kids, who I guess is still a wreck.

And - I can't get past the fact that if his name was De'wayne Carr, he would be long forgotten in some jail cell somewhere. He got breaks from the cops, from the legal system, from his employers, from basically everybody he took advantage of for years and years (although most of them were junkies, too). He does acknowledge these lucky breaks now and then, but it doesn't seem like he appreciates them very much.

Like I said, maybe I was the wrong audience for this book. I anticipated a very objective, somewhat distant examination of this period of debasement, and I think that would have been a valuable addition to the "junkie memoir." There's no shortage of first person recollections of a bad time in someone's life - this is just a slightly different version of something that's been done and done again.

Finally, and most significantly, he'd only been sober for a couple years before writing this book - when the entire book deals with his constant backsliding. I guess that's part of it - he's 100 percent certain to have a relapse, so why wait until he's been sober for 10 years, since it will never happen.

Very well-written, however. If you're a crackhead junkie and need some motivational support, I guess this book could help."
~ Written on 2010-06-02

"Great read! He takes you into the darkness of his past with the pacing and analytical eye of a talented journalist."
~ Written on 2010-05-29

"Memory is a strange, mysterious, and elusive function. That's the real theme of The Night of the Gun, by David Carr. How is it that one guy can honestly recall that the gun belonged to his friend and that it was his friend who used it? Yet, the alleged-gunman/friend remembers the same scene -- exactly in reverse.

Secondary to Carr's fascinating revelations about the way humans remember the "details" of our lives, this book comprises a bold confession by a man helplessly addicted to any and everything he could get a hold of to alter his consciousness. In a litany of jaw-dropping revelations, this gifted journalist admits to raising his children in drug-infested squalor and exposing them to severe peril, all the while destroying nearly every relationship, job, and opportunity that came along, by pulling off of some of the most fool-hearty, insane, bone-headed stunts ever recounted in print.

It's an inventive concept for an investigative reporter in recovery to attempt to reconstruct his own sordid past by interviewing the very people he hurt, ripped off, and deceived. I salute David Carr for airing his soiled laundry and unveiling his skeletons. There but for the grace of the pen go so many.

Rand Bishop, author of Makin' Stuff Up, The Absolute Essentials of Songwriting Success, and Grand Pop.
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~ Written on 2010-04-04