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

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. With Manhattan as his playground and local junkies, thieves and hooligans as his playmates, Carroll spirals from mild delinquent to full blown addict believing (as all addicts first do) that where others fail, he has it all under control.

Those expecting this to be like the movie beware. Hollywood takes a bunch of his stories, glossies them up and presents them to you nicely gift wrapped. Carroll himself does no such thing. He lays them out, fearless and real, strips them raw and leaves you to pick up the pieces.

18 year old son became interested in NYC in the 70's and 80's. Jim Carroll was New York, for the good and the bad, and this book is an overlooked master-class in true. the kid got it, loved it and lived up to his promise -- he read it before watching the movie. great generational share and worth the time to read and gift.

This was a gift and he said it was o.k.

The Basketball Diaries compiles three years in the life of Jim Carroll from the ages of fourteen to seventeen, over the fall of 1963 to the summer of 1966. During this time Carroll was often drugged out on the streets of New York. Carroll, like myself, kept a diary during this time of his life yet unlike him I was not an aspiring basketball star (nor a drug addict). The level of writing coming from a druggie as young as fourteen seemed unbelievably coherent. I could not help but wonder how much editorial help he must have received prior to publication. No clean and sober fourteen-year-old, or seventeen-year-old for that matter, can write as well as Carroll. How can a boy strung out on heroin or zonked on grass, who skipped school so often write so well? We are either dealing with a Pepys prodigy or another Go Ask Alice con job. There is however some credibility to Carroll's teenage writing prowess in that, in spite of his nodded-out altered state, he managed to win a scholarship to a school for gifted students. Still I can't help but wonder about the promise he might have shown if he hadn't wasted his youth on scoring dope.

Carroll's eye for description was succinct and from what I can remember, accurately reflected what adolescent boys pay attention to. I could read whole chunks of diary entries without pause, even the pages without paragraph divisions. He wrote exactly what he was thinking, and to stop midway in order to reread (a habit of mine) would destroy the experience of being inside his drugged mind. The Basketball Diaries was pure stream-of-consciousness writing, and even Jack Kerouac raved about it.

Carroll let his bravado run confidently after a basketball win:

"Anyway, with the other starters out, I get to score all the points and wind up with 42, which felt good because I haven't really been scoring that many lately. I can also see little Most Valuable Player trophies in my head if this keeps up. We won by an awful lot. After the game they gave us free sodas and s*** and all the local people stood in the lobby as we left and patted us on the back and said, 'Nice game, son,' and all, the whole scene strictly out of 'Leave it to Beaver,' all the old men Fred MacMurray types in tweed suits and the women, a pack of poodle walkers, standing around with a lot of make-up and sort of thinking how cute we were. They had these teased up bleached hair-dos that reminded me exactly of the higher priced 14th St. whores. I wanted to ask one if she wanted to s*** it off but we just hopped into the car for that b**** trip downtown. It's a Friday night and we all wanted to go to the East River Park and get drunk, do reefer and sniff glue. And that's exactly what we did."

There are many hilarious episodes like this in the Diaries, those which are linked to drug culture and Carroll's junkie lifestyle being the funniest. I was laughing out loud as he and some teammates were presented with the serious dilemma of selecting which one of two pills to take before a game. The matter was indeed crucial to the team's performance, because one of the pills was an upper and the other a downer, and no one could remember which was which. They ended up picking a pill at random and the story wouldn't have been funny if they had chosen the upper. You will read how the players s-l-o-w-e-d down as the game went on and missed even the simplest passes and setups.

Another diary entry had me tittering during my lunch hour when Carroll called the cops on a birthday party for his neighbour's four-year-old daughter. An act of revenge for the neighbour calling the police on a noise complaint at Carroll's, he had the last laugh when cops strode up to the door, scaring the daylights out of the tots and ruining their happy scene.

Carroll captured some episodes from 1960's history, such as the latest Dylan releases and the great Northeast blackout of 9 November 1965. I was surprised that there was not one mention of the Beatles, since Carroll was in New York at the time of the Beatles' American arrival in February 1964.

It is the perceptive eye with a humorous twist that Carroll has for detail that struck me the most. Again, I wonder how one so strung out on dope could be alert enough to recall what he had seen--because there isn't a chance that he could have written these diaries while high as a kite. So I have my doubts about the diaries' authenticity. The next passage was hilarious, and while void of drug references, increases its veracity:

"My Marxist pal, Bunty, from my new school, finally talked me into going to one of his Communist Party meetings today. It was in this sleazy place on 11th St called Webster Hall. All the girls looked like reformed Mary Magdalenes. Everyone moans a lot and plays folk songs, one of the requirements seems to be that you have to be ugly. I was wearing my seediest clothes and I still came off looking like Arnold Palmer or something. I dig these m***********s, but the speeches bored the s*** out of me. I went home and told my old man how the government suppresses the proletariat from his due. 'I am the proletariat, you dumb bas***d,' he said, 'and I think those m***********s are off their rockers. Now get the hell inside and do your homework.'"

I liked the imagery at the end of the next passage. I will never think of wedding cake in the same way again:

"Who did I run into today but old Ju-Ju Johnson, fattest junkie I know, could hide a complete set of works, a cooker and innumerable bags of dope in the layers of fat that flop one by one down towards his belt like a drenched wedding cake."

By the time he was seventeen, Carroll was a junkie, selling himself, thieving and committing armed robbery to get money to buy drugs. He described himself as a starving walking skeleton who had no function in life other than to score. That is how his diaries end, abruptly, with the cry of an addict who is so sick of the game:

"I got to go in and puke. I just want to be pure..."

"The Basketball Diaries" is a captivating and raw journey through the life of Jim Carroll. This memoir will leave you on the edge of your seat as you follow the ups and downs of a once promising basketball player who falls into the dark world of drug addiction.

Although the book tackles heavy and dark subject matter, it's written in a way that is easy to understand and follow. It gives you an intimate look at the life of someone struggling with addiction and the consequences that come with it.

One of the most impressive parts of this book is the way that it was written. Each diary entry is like a punch in the gut, hitting you with the raw and unedited emotions of the author. It's like you're right there with him, feeling every high and every low.

One of my favorite quotes from the book is, "Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period." This quote perfectly sums up the gritty and determined spirit of Jim Carroll and his journey.

Overall, "The Basketball Diaries" is a must-read for anyone who is looking for an intense and thought-provoking read. Despite its dark nature, this book is an incredible look into the human experience and one that will stay with you long after you've finished reading it.

When I was in college and 20 years old, I dated a fellow student, a young woman, for a VERY short time. One day, she took me on a trip to upper Manhattan to see the Cloisters. We rode the subway north, and once there, the Cloisters and its setting took my breath away. A gem was hidden at the tip of Manhattan. She took me there for one reason: she had read The Basketball Diaries and wanted to see the place where most of the novel occurs.

Now, decades later, I have read it. I can see her attraction to the novel: she was a troubled person, moving sideways without anyone helping her. It is apparent how this story of marginalization and addiction would appeal to her: something was guiding her life that she could not control, like the author of this book. The trajectory of doom would have mirrored how she felt at that time.

Wonderful book..... I couldn't put it down once I started it. Highly recommend this.

Great insight into someone's life experiences, especially reading about things youth dealt with at the time. Bought this for a extra credit assignment but would own it regardless