It is a piece of investigative journalism that has set the New York literary world alight. It is a story of exhaustive research, scores of interviews and poring over detailed documents dragged out of dusty archives.
But the subject of New York Times reporter David Carr's forthcoming book
is not a national security secret or revelations about a big business scam. It is an expose of his own life as a terribly addicted crack fiend.
Carr's book, The Night of the Gun, is a searing study of his struggles with drug addiction and the impact it had on himself, his girlfriends, his children and the rest of his family and friends.
In a publishing genre rocked by recent scandals - "misery memoirs" by former alcoholic James Frey, former gangster Margaret B Jones and former prostitute JT LeRoy had all been revealed as partly or wholly fakes - Carr took the unusual step of writing his book as a documented investigation.
He interviewed more than 60 members of his family, old friends, doctors and police, thus piecing together his own life. He also tracked down and read hundreds of medical, police and personal documents and letters.
Early reviews of the book have hailed it as a masterpiece of both journalism and memoir. "Carr gets the unalterable fact that he himself is not a reliable source in his own memoir," wrote the New Republic's Sacha Zimmerman. "Too many addicts will never fully appreciate the toll their disease has taken on others."
Carr outlines the arrests, the fights and the medical problems associated with the lifestyle of a hardcore junkie and dealer who beats up the mother of his children. At one stage he describes leaving his two infant children outside in a freezing car while he goes into a crack den to shoot up.
He is brutally honest about the surreal experience of investigating his own addicted life before he cleaned up and became a successful journalist. "It would prove to be an enlightening and sickening experience, a new frontier in the annals of self-involvement. I would show up at the doorsteps of people I had not seen in two decades and ask them to explain myself to me."
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