A review by coleycole
The Night of the Gun by David Carr

4.0

Carr, a well-respected journalist and recovering addict, wrote this memoir by applying reporting techniques to his life, going back and interviewing people who knew him when he was a junkie. He's most revelatory when he steps back and talks objectively about memory, truth and addiction. He questions his own impulse to add "one more addiction story" to the bunch, with or without the prop of reporting and researching his own past, but I thought that this made all the difference. By doing the book in this way, he discovers that, because of his addictions to crack, cocaine and alcohol, he did things that he never thought he was capable of -- despite the fact that he already knew a lot of despicable facts about himself (having gone through the 4th of the 12 steps more than a few times). I'd recommend it, but I think I need to take a break from books (fiction or non) with protagonists who destroy themselves via substances.