 2009-01-08 - Others have said it better.
Sadly, I can't expand on what has already been shared.
I thought this book would be riveting, but was only mildly interested. While the idea grabbed my attention, the execution left much to be desired. Carr spends a lot of time giving too many details that only seem to confuse the reader and make for extra long chapters with little story movement.
One moment he seems to be coming to a point, the next he is going too far off track to regain my interest. Finally, after devoting my required 50 pages, I put the book down, unable to see its merits.
2009-01-06 - Better than average memoir
When writing "The Night of the Gun," his memoir of substance abuse, New York Times reporter David Carr interviewed people in his life who witnessed his descent. Good idea. Even before James Frey's very public dressing down for fabricating the events in his memoir, "A Million Little Pieces," I think most perceptive readers questioned the truthfulness of the genre. Far too many people have written "memoirs" in which they triumphantly survive the most horrific circumstances to be believed. Frankly, I'm stumped by their appeal. Unless a memoir is the work of someone who has accomplished something that already brought them into the public eye, my interest in their troubles is minimal.
My interest in Carr's troubles is minimal too, although I have heard of him, read him too, in the online edition of the New York Times. His writing skills go a long way in making "Night of the Gun" interesting, and thanks to the documentation he provides, its more believable than most of the titles in this genre. It's certainly riveting, but it could also have benefitted from more editing. It's too long and too repetitive for my tastes, but for those interested in the catharsis (or whatever) they seek from these memoirs, it has more merit than most.
Brian W. Fairbanks
 2009-01-06 - Night of the Gun
The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of his Life--His OwnAn eye-openning account of an addict's thought processes and behaviors by a funny, knowledgable, and interesting journalist. The book Night of the Gun is easy to read and the story is difficult to hear. I laughed and suffered as I read about Carr's life as an addict. I have recommended this book to my therapist friends to increase their understanding of and effectiveness with their clients, their friends, and their family members.
 2009-01-04 - Finding the Way from Memory to Truth
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 of his life (the night of the gun in the title) and discovers memory is a tricky thing. While talking over this horrible event with his best friend, he learns that his recollection of the events is not exactly what occurred. In fact, the truth is even more bleak than he had recalled. So, too, is much of the rest of the story.
It's not a pretty tale, and while the brutal honesty of his examination is admirable, Carr is not an easy man to like. His self-centered view, his utter disregard for others, his brutality and violent behavior all make for some hard-going in this story. Even when Carr appears to have weathered the worst of life (conquering his addiction to cocaine, gaining control of parental responsibility for his daughters, becoming a successful journalist), there is still more horror to reveal.
The way Carr reaches the truth about all of this is to interview the people who populated his life, from famous comedians to streetwise addicts. Over a period of time, he reconstructed his past via videotaped interviews, medical records, police files, and a variety of other documentation. It's all compelling, but perhaps in the way you would rubberneck at an accident along the side of the road. It takes a strong stomach for the journey, but there are rewards along the way.
The book will surely be most interesting to recovered and recovering addicts or those who have a loved one who has gone down the same road as Carr. For the rest of us, the book still contains some interesting ideas and lessons about life, but it's a dark slog through the underside to get there, a journey not everyone will want to take. Perhaps most profound in this story is that what turned out to be the impetus for overcoming the overwhelming odds of addiction was a family and a willingness to work hard...and a desire for the truth about it all.
 2009-01-02 - Huge disappointment
I saw David Carr on the Charlie Rose show, and based on his intriguing story there rushed to my local library to reserve his book, Night of the Gun. Weeks later and many dollars paid in overdue fines, I am only on page 68. This book is f****** boring. I did cheat and read later pages concerning his two daughters all grown up, and his assessments of them were boring as well. There is no depth to this book, and his escapades so far as I've read sound tame compared with some of my friends', whose early life stories keep my interest no matter how many times told. I find this a self-indulgent book, a grabbing at straws to gain the reader's attention book. So what? Who cares? The various escapades presented so far are sparsely described and no different from those of thousands of others. I normally love reading true stories of addiction and chaos, but the writing here is uninspiring and dull. Plus, I find the author's badgering of former friends and acquaintances to recall dim recollections of common youthful pitfalls annoying. The time frames seem off as well. How could he be talking to a psychiatrist at age twenty or twenty-one about his terrible addiction and the mistake of his marriage when he didn't get married until age 23? And since this all occurred at a very early time in his life, why is he writing about it now? Along with others, I don't see the point. For those fascinated with stories of addiction written in a way one can relate to or ooh and ahh about, I would point them toward Drinking, A Love Story, by Caroline Knapp; The Tender Bar, by someone or other (also a New York Times reporter), and another story whose title I can't remember, by a former New York Times fashion writer, Maryann somebody. These three I was riveted to and read more than once, both because of their intriguing stories and because of their excellent storytelling. The names didn't matter; the stories did.
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