David Carr's upcoming Night of the Gun will be excerpted this weekend in the New York Times Magazine.
Many here know Carr here at "The Carpetbagger," or "Bagger" for short -- the NY Times Oscar blogger -- but I started reading his media coverage more than a decade ago in an short-lived, much hyped online magazine (the first of its kind, or close to it) called Inside. He's a fantastic writer on all things cultural, but I had no idea until hearing of this book early in the year that he had been so drug-addled and dependent.
Having recently read and been enlightened by Eric Clapton's autobiography, I'm thinking that some more time spent with helpless drug addicts might be a good thing for me. I can be pretty unforgiving about that sort of thing, but I'm beginning to see addiction in a different light. It makes me feel more helpless than angry these days, and I'm not sure what I'd do when/if my kids or spouse (God forbid!) to descend into drug addiction. By reading these stories, I hope to be a little more informed about that sort of thing.
Plus, Carr's a great writer, and that's reason enough to read his book.