Editorial Review: The Night of the Gun.

Carr, David. The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life—His Own (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008).

Reviewed by Faith Brynie

I usually keep three or four books on my nightstand—mostly of the mystery, science fiction, and horror genres, which are my favorites. Often times, too, I dip into mainstream and literary works, and how can I resist the occasional Oprah book?

But after a while, an urge creeps into my consciousness that can’t be ignored. Something in my head screams, “Enough with the fiction!” and I have to seek out the real and the true. That’s when I yearn for a memoir, and I recently found one that earned a place on my top-five list of best books ever. David Carr provides reality and truth in megadoses in The Night of the Gun. The book is a stunning reexamination of a life sadly led.

You see, David Carr was a crack addict. While working as a (seemingly) successful reporter in Minneapolis, he lived a double life, “wheeling through bars, selling, cadging, or giving away coke, drinking like a sailor and swearing like a pirate.” Under the influence of every substance that can possibly be abused, Carr forgot most of his life during the late 1980s—so he set out two decades later to reconstruct his personal history from interviews with people he knew then: estranged lovers, drug dealers, police officers, coworkers, and friends who observed (and sometimes shared) his decline into addiction and its psychotic sequelae. To write this book, Carr spent three years digging through police reports, medical records, legal briefs, and arrest rosters, piecing together the tragic story of a life he could not recall.

If there is a bottom for an addict to hit, Carr hit his the night he and his girlfriend were smoking crack, and her water broke. She gave birth to Carr’s twin girls. The care of the girls fell to Carr who, still addicted, locked his twin babies in his car on a freezing Minnesota night while he visited a dealer to score yet another hit of coke. His journey to recovery began when his editor gave him a choice—get into rehab or get out. Carr got out, feeling liberated. “I had mumbled the slogans, eaten the Jell-O, and worn the paper slippers, twice.” He wasn’t about to try again, but eventually he did—twice more.

Over time, with the love of a good woman, the support of the Minnesota state rehabilitation system, and a burning commitment to his daughters, Carr seized a sober reality and found he could face life outside a chemical cloud. He became a columnist for the New York Times and survived cancer—only to find himself slipping into alcoholism.

Carr’s The Night of the Gun is more than another “look how bad I was as an addict” catalog of miseries. It’s a dissection of the human spirit, with all its circulating flaws and soft-tissue resilience. For the casual reader, the book is a vicarious trip into darkness where the light at the end of the tunnel is always flickering and dim. For the writer, it’s a tour de force of technique. Carr’s prose is lean, unabashed, powerful. His research is deep and wide, and he relates facts and feelings in a style that is both compact and compelling—never self-pitying or apologetic.

I suspect David Carr is a better person because he wrote The Night of the Gun. I know I am a better person because I read it.

Faith Brynie

FAITH HICKMAN BRYNIE specializes in science and health, especially for children and young adults. She has a Ph.D. in science curriculum and instruction, and she is an experienced editor of science activity books, trade books for middle school and high school, and textbooks K-12. She has worked for major publishers as writer, substantive editor, developmental editor, copyeditor, and fact checker. She excels at communicating complex ideas clearly and simply.

She loves fiction, and has written three novels, all published by Geneses under a pseudonym. She has won several contests and awards for her short fiction, which has been published in such magazines as Thema, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Midnight Zoo, Aberrations, Over My Dead Body!, Haunts, and others. She critiques mainstream, science fiction, horror, and mystery manuscripts, helping authors develop their characters, plot, dialogue, voice, and style. She also does developmental editing and copyediting of fiction manuscripts.

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