The Basketball Diaries: The Classic about Growing Up Hip on New York's Mean Streets

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Most importantly, Carroll established a consistent tone and voice full of sardonic wit and he never flinched at revealing his life at the time. Regardless, Carrol’s memories of this time evoke a sense of innocence that is about to be corrupted in a manner that can never be uncorrupted.

But in this memoir of the mid-1960's, set during his coming-of-age from 12 to 15, he was a rebellious teenager making a place and a name for himself on the unforgiving streets of New York City. Hippies wore their hair long, dressed in deliberately shabby clothes, and believed in nonviolent forms of antiwar protest such as sit-ins and peace marches. Carroll notes that street users like him find it hard to escape a heroin addiction; they do not have the support networks or financial means of rich users, who can "take off to the Riviera" if they feel their addictions are getting too strong.

It is available on DVD from Ryko Distribution and contains many special features, including interviews with several cast members and an antidrug trailer. The book, which is generally referred to by its main title alone, had started appearing in excerpt form throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s in various literary publications.

I liked it because Jim was a regular guy and not a celebrity sharing his life story as so many of these book are. His stealing and hustling not only speak of his desperation to acquire more drugs but also exemplify the extent to which addiction can drive a person to compromise their moral compass. Carroll's mother receives a notice from his principal about Carroll's bad grades and behavior problem.

Bound in publisher's wraps with black and white author photo on the front cover taken by Rosemary Klemfuss. That contrast could easily make for a compelling undercurrent through the novel, but it proves to be even better because, eventually, the dark and light contrasts eventually blend together into a consistent, muddy, shade of grey. So you had to time your jump in between the lines just like those jitterbugs down in Acapulco got to time their jumps so they hit the water just as the wave is beginning its break. Carroll, like many other members of the counterculture—a group of people who rebelled against the U.

However, collectively, these entries describe Carroll's coming-of-age transformation—from a healthy, relatively naïve juvenile delinquent into a strung-out, culturally aware, heroin-addicted criminal. Carroll describes an affair he has with an older woman, a rich divorcée who makes Carroll engage in bizarre sex acts in exchange for paying for his drug habit. It's amazing to know Jim Carroll wrote this book when he was age 13-16, not only due to subject matter but for the undeniable talent that seeps through every page. He was born post-World War II in 1949 and spent his youth in the midst of the Cold War and Vietnam War in the 1960s; all three wars impacted his psyche and worldview.

Almost like a new author, Carroll cruises the streets a free man, seeing some of the characters from his past redeemed (Diane – the young pro-in-training back in ’64, is now presented as clean, neat and well put-together) and others absent (the acid-eaters club from the park is gone when Carroll goes somewhere familiar to drop, and ends up having a terrible – perhaps as some kind of ironic punishment) because they just didn’t make it out alive. Carroll's work continues to resonate with readers, exploring themes of youth, rebellion, and self-discovery. He grew up with a supportive family, albeit not wealthy, and he was given opportunities other kids could only dream of. I’m so glad Carroll didn’t use his teenage writings as a source to look back into his past, but presented them as “then and there”. Says Carroll: "My legs began to get the feeling someone slit a nice little hole at the top of my thighs and poured in a few gallons of liquid lead.

visitors who got fished into paying five beans to sail around the island, watching us go down into the stinking water.I think of poetry and how I see as just a raw block of stone ready to be shaped, that way words are never a horrible limit to me, just tools to shape.