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

by David Carr
The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life. His Own.
book data
561 ratings, 3.47 average rating, 201 reviews (more data...)
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published
August 5th 2008 by Simon & Schuster

binding
Hardcover, 385 pages

isbn
1416541527    (isbn13: 9781416541523)

description
Do we remember only the stories we can live with? The ones that make us look good in the rear view mirror? In The Night of the Gun, David Carr redefin...more




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christa
09/03/08
christa rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in September, 2008
There are so few ways to deviate from the addiction memoir outline, short of posthumous publication. The plot lines are easy, like a murder mystery or a romance novel. Your hero is a drunk/junkie/bulimic/sex addict. Your hero faces a lifestyle change in which the options are extreme: change vs. death. Your hero dusts himself off [typically more than once], washes his hair, excavates the past for meaning and and writes something intelligible about how at one point he poked drugs into his eyeball ...more
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Patrick O'Neil
01/27/09
Patrick O'Neil rated it: 3 of 5 stars

The first half of the book was hard to read. Not because of the drug use, or the insanity that any human being's downward spiral consists of - dope fiend, or otherwise. No, the problem I had was I hated the narrator from the very first few pages. David Carr, or more specifically, Carr's behaviors and his lack of taking responsibilities, even now, years later. How he slapped his women around and treated others like shit. He even mentions this possibility, how the reader may not like him, and then...more
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Anthony Breznican
08/22/08
Anthony Breznican rated it: 5 of 5 stars

Read in August, 2008
recommends it for: crime-story fans, journalists, troubled souls
"You can't know the whole truth," 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 ...more
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Christina
09/17/08
Christina rated it: 1 of 5 stars

bookshelves: currently-reading
I think this will be my last drug memoir for a while. The author is so evidently and coolly cashing in. I"m sure he'll be a big hit on the literary seminar circuit.
Like this review?   yes   (2 people liked it)
  1 comment

Raven
10/29/08
Raven rated it: 2 of 5 stars

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in August, 2008
The concept of this book is great: as a former drug addict, David Carr has trouble recalling a great portion of his own life. Now an established reporter, Carr uses his reporting tools and techniques to uncover his own past. I believe everyone has a story, and I have no-doubt that Carr's is an interesting one. The research is promising, but the delivery needs serious work.

I cannot get through this book. I have tried & tried. I cannot seem to read more than four pages at a time. I am...more
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Cynthia
09/04/08
Cynthia rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in September, 2008
As I am reading this book currently, I have thus far learned that drugs and alcohol give you selective memory and you can be a real jerk on them.
Okay, I am crawling closer and closer to the end (I don't have as much time to read as I used to.) I hate to say it but I am now enjoying this book and beginning to kind of like David Carr.
But how did his twin daughters survive without health or behavioral issues while their mother smoked crack while pregnant? I guess my ob-gyn was right ma...more
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Ashley
08/21/08
Ashley rated it: 5 of 5 stars

Read in August, 2008
This is perhaps the best memoir I have ever read. The approach Carr takes to this overbaked genre is unique and genre-busting. He reports on his own life--interviewing, researching, synthesizing--and ends up with an endlessly engaging, brutally honest tome about a remarkable life. His voice is gritty, kind of wiseguy-ish, full of easy slang, reminded me of Jim Knipfel (which I consider to be a huge compliment, by the way). I couldn't read this book fast enough, stayed up late in the evening to r...more
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Anne
09/17/08
Anne rated it: 2 of 5 stars

Read in September, 2008
recommends it for: memoir "junkies" like myself
While I wanted to love this book, and it certainly provided some excellent gaper's block moments, overall I cannot say I would reccomend it. The concept is excellent: approaching a memoir from the perspective of a journalist. The result comes off as blowhard-y and bragadocious. Carr pretends to soul-search, but ultimately offers little in terms of wisdom about addiction or recovery. His descriptions of himself tend toward the hyperbolic. He was the WORST addict, the most THUGGISH white boy ...more
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Caroline
12/31/08
Caroline rated it: 3 of 5 stars

Read in January, 2009
This book starts out as a riveting investigative portrait of an addict's life, told by the addict, with the supposed "new twist" being that he uses his own rigorous journalistic techniques to fact-check his recollections. Memories he though were irrefutable turn out to be all-too-refutable by his friends and family as he digs through his messy past to try to discover the "truth" about what really happened in his chaotic life.

Carr actually maintains for quite a ...more
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Bill Hall
03/29/09
Bill Hall rated it: 4 of 5 stars

bookshelves: memoirs
Read in October, 2008
"Harrowing" might be the best single word to describe David Carr's memoir, "The Night of the Gun." Carr survived years of heavy cocaine and alcohol use and a bout with cancer to become an attentive father to his daughters, a faithful husband, and a productive and successful journalist. This is the story of his journey to hell and back (and a trip back to the hell of addiction after 14 years of sobriety).

Addiction memoirs are quite popular these days, but the genre...more
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Kate Gaidos
02/24/09
Kate Gaidos rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in February, 2009
Reporter David Carr's answer to James Frey: For Carr's "junkie memoir," instead of just recalling (or fabricating) the past, he actually visits and interviews the people he did drugs with, bought drugs from, or hurt when he was on drugs int he 1980s. He interviews his lawyers, his ex girlfriends, his counselors, and the twin daughters whose birth helped bring on his recovery. He hopes this tactic will help him test his own memories and learn who he really was under the influence of coc...more
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Pris robichaud
01/03/09
Pris robichaud rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in January, 2008
The Epiphanies Are Fascinating, and The Scabs Gnarly, August 9, 2008
"Carr takes as a given that our memories are suspect, compromised by the understandable desire to make a coherent story from shapeless experience, to cast ourselves in the role of hero (or dashing villain), and to inject a bit of drama when the plot begins to sag." Jennifer Reese

David Carr, media critic for the New York Times has written an extraordinary book of his life of addiction. He tells the t...more
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Dwhren
12/09/08
Dwhren rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in December, 2008
Written by New York Times reporter David Carr, this book is written based on memories, interviews, and documentation about Carr's earlier life as a cocaine addict. After discussing the titled night of the gun with a friend and reading his twin daughters college admission essays, Carr realizes that perhaps the memories he has of his life as a drug addict and his experiences overcoming the addiction may not be what actually happened. He conducts interviews with people involved in his life during...more
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Mike
12/02/08
Mike rated it: 4 of 5 stars

When I first read about this book I thought: Do we really need another book about an individual's battle with drugs and alcohol? It seems that every month there is a new addict memoir. What intrigued me about Carr's book was his technique, a clear reaction to the scandal surrounding James Frey's memoir exposed as addiction fiction. Carr decides to use his journalism skills to investigate his life as an addict. He does research reading police reports, news articles, letters, diaries, etc. and con...more
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W
11/29/08
W rated it: 2 of 5 stars

What the book really needs is a review by a reliable addict. Doesn’t exist, I know, but it should. At first, I thought THE NIGHT OF THE GUN a daring approach to the memoir quagmire—what’s real, what’s not. Carr promises to take ruthless honesty in researching the facts of one’s past to the fifth power.

Who actually had the gun that night? This is a common experience in most people. Well, not guns, but it is always startling to suddenly realize a dearly held memory is unrelat...more
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S. Michael
06/10/09
S. Michael rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Autobiographical tales featuring survivors of drug addiction and substance abuse have always been popular. There is something intriguing about listening as someone describes hitting rock bottom, and then somehow managing to miraculously turn themselves around.

Of course, such books are so popular that one must sometimes wonder whether the facts have been embellished for the sole purpose of entertainment. The debacle surrounding A Million Little Pieces alerted the literary community to...more
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Bookmarks Magazine
02/05/09
Bookmarks Magazine added it

Addiction memoirs are about the last thing most book critics want to read; even the good ones usuallyand necessarilyfollow a narrative pattern determined by the drugs themselves. All reviewers agreed that David Carr manages to break the mold by injecting his contemporary reporter persona into the tale, adding new insight into the situation of the addict. This alone distinguishes the book from others in the genre. Yet a few reviewers seemed a little weary of the overall addiction narrative and

...more
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J.C.
12/12/08
J.C. rated it: 3 of 5 stars

Read in December, 2008
Good in Theory, Poor in Practice

For the most part, I thoroughly enjoy stories and memoirs about addiction and climbing out of the deepest holes. The author, David Carr, made a journalistic memoir about his past in drugs and alcohol, which became this book. There are some interesting stories but there was little emotion in this book. I understand that this was more a unbiased look at addiction through the retelling of stories forgotten or misremembered; but, the entire time I was read...more
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Christine
05/21/09
Christine rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in April, 2009
To avoid comparisons with James Frey (the addict who fictionalized parts of his life story in “A Million Little Pieces”), author David Carr takes a different approach to truth-telling in his own story of addiction in “The Night of the Gun.“ Carr gets to the facts the way any good journalist (like Carr himself) would ferret out the truth--by returning to the scene of the crime and interviewing the witnesses.

Carr begins this journey with what he imagines to be the worse night ...more
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Connie  Kuntz
03/03/09
Connie Kuntz rated it: 5 of 5 stars

Read in March, 2009
recommended to Connie by: My Mom
recommends it for: people who are trying to be less judgmental
Because of his drug addiction and convenient memory lapses, David Carr forgot several years of his life. Determined to learn and face the truth, he purchased some digital recording devices and interviewed the people (from ALL circles) in his life who remembered (or manufactured their own memories of) David Carr. David Carr, to be blunt, behaved despicably. That is not my judgement, that is an ugly fact about someone who snorted coke, hit women and treated his family like crap. But all that a...more
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