Mention Books In Favor Of The Basketball Diaries
| Original Title: | The Basketball Diaries 1963-1966 |
| Edition Language: | English |
Jim Carroll
Paperback | Pages: 224 pages Rating: 3.95 | 29292 Users | 501 Reviews
Details Out Of Books The Basketball Diaries
| Title | : | The Basketball Diaries |
| Author | : | Jim Carroll |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 224 pages |
| Published | : | 1995 by Penguin Books/Penguin Group (USA) Inc. (first published June 1st 1978) |
| Categories | : | Nonfiction. Autobiography. Memoir. Biography. Thriller |
Chronicle Conducive To Books The Basketball Diaries
The urban classic coming-of-age story about sex, drugs, and basketball. Jim Carroll grew up to become a renowned poet and punk rocker. 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. During these years, he chronicled his experiences, and the result is a diary of unparalleled candor that conveys his alternately hilarious and terrifying teenage existence. Here is Carroll prowling New York City--playing basketball, hustling, stealing, getting high, getting hooked, and searching for something pure. "I met him in 1970, and already he was pretty much universally recognized as the best poet of his generation. . . . The work was sophisticated and elegant. He had beauty." -- Patti SmithRating Out Of Books The Basketball Diaries
Ratings: 3.95 From 29292 Users | 501 ReviewsCritique Out Of Books The Basketball Diaries
I don't really remember a thing about this book except that I really did like it at the time that I read it, around age fourteen. When the movie came out I cut school and drank some cough syrup or something and went to go see the matinee by myself. This was in Leonardo DiCaprio's fleeting, long-past early-nineties moment of hotness, and in the movie -- which was bad -- he looked gorgeous and lanky leaping around on the basketball court in his Catholic schoolboy uniform -- dammmmmmn. Whew! Leo,A good read for anyone who insists that crime-afflicted, tribal, racist, sexist, gay-bashing old New York was somehow superior to contemporary New York. This is the work of a third-rate Burroughs with the kind of jock-bragging that will appeal to fratboy stoners who've graduated from Hunter S. Thompson and are looking for something a bit more edgy. Diary of a Cromag covers the same turf a decade later with a more sympathetic protagonist.
This book was insightful, in that it showed us the life of a very troubled kid in 1960's NYC. But what value is that, in that it was mostly his daily activities without any insight into why he did it? There was no growth, no reflection. No beginning, no end. This was a snapshot, not a reflection.
Some bold lines. Visceral and vivid, striking. Perhaps I should have read this when I was a bit younger, but I still enjoyed it now. Strong writing.
Carrolls diary chronicles his teenage years of drug addiction in New York City during the mid-1960s. He tells the reader candidly about his addictions to glue, codeine and heroin, what he did to get it and all the sex he had along the way. Most importantly, Carroll established a consistent tone and voice full of sardonic wit and he never flinched at revealing his life at the time. For better or worse most assuredly worse Carroll has the guts to expose his ugly self to the reader and holds no
Jim Carroll's diary about growing up "urban" on "mean streets" is a crock of shit. He grew up with a supportive family, albeit not wealthy, and he was given opportunities other kids could only dream of. He got himself hooked on heroin and other drugs, skipped school (where he was lucky enough to be on scholarship), frequently committed robbery, burglary, armed robbery and burglary, trespassing, assault, and ended up arrested a few times and in jail at Rikers. This work isn't an achievement, it's
Wild and at times too incredible to believe... A sad reflection of the everywhere-implied Western adage that great suffering makes great art. Three stars for this books necessary privileging of content over style (it is a journal, after all).
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