In Memorium: Jim Carroll
September 25th, 2009
Were I to finally succumb to the quasi-cosmic entropy that envelops soft California skulls, I’d blame the melodramatically named “Summer of Death” on a psychic shift between old and new blood, some paroxysm of pestilence, some inauspicious wormhole of time. But I don’t buy it. This is nothing more than a litany of “So It Goes,” or in Jim Carroll’s case, “these are the people who died.” Far from anonymous, the author/rocker/one-time All-City baller, never attained the level of modern fame that envelops Facebook Feed R.I.P.’s. Such is life, when you lack a Point Break on the resume. Instead, Carroll left behind a modest anthology of his 60 years–a half-dozen slim volumes of poetry, two short memoirs, and a fistful of albums of poetic post-punk, nothing particularly notable since the first Bush administration.
Predictably, the brunt of Internet bandwidth this season was consumed eulogizing less notable figures (or the necrophiliac plundering of Mike Jack’s sepulcher), with Carroll’s death largely unnoticed in the online world, save for the pro forma NY Times obit, a few graph-long laments, and this outstanding Slate article from his long-time editor. By the time he died, the long-time Manhattan native was a walking anachronism, a vestige to an era when the Apple was rotten, a festering, yet absurdly creative metropolis that once produced seemingly sui generis figures like Carroll every generation. You know this already, besides I wasn’t there, and I’m willing to bet you weren’t either. But even if we weren’t, I’ll take Jim Carroll over the Dash Snow set any day.
