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.
Carroll’s crowning achievement was The Basketball Diaries, the shocking and spectacular best-seller based on his days as a heroin junkie/hoops hero a decade prior. Cataloguing the physical devolution, addiction, and artistic expansion that occurred to him between the ages of 12-16, Diaries was the first book that ever made me want to be a writer. Whereas most young adult lit offered a bowdlerized and alien version of adolescence, the Diaries seemed like the realest thing I’d ever read–unvarnished, raw, funny and full of concrete wisdom, transmitted through a smart-ass, street-smart hustler. Jack Kerouac famously declared the teenaged Carroll better than 89 percent of the novelists writing today. His prose rollicked with a loose-limbed levitation, full of sacred athletic grace, and the elaborate eye for detail of a natural poet. At an age when forging a definable identity hovered over everything, Carroll was all things desirable: a jock, a musician, and a literary lion in training. No longer did I feel like I needed to choose.
I met him once. Me, a callow, timid, 8th grader forcing my mom to drive me to the since-shuttered Virgin Megastore on Sunset. He was autographing posters with Leonardo Dicaprio’s face on them, advertising the execrable adaption of his masterpiece, a flick that foolishly fantasized Leo dunking, Mark Wahlberg as a brutish power forward and Bruno Kirby as a boorish perverted basketball coach. You can imagine how it was, a point and click moment, a quick scribble, a shake of the hand, a whispered compliment, and on to the next one. But I’ll never forget the moment, Carroll, spectral with eggshell-colored skin and lank red hair. His face was somehow both ancient and hanging in suspended animation, full of lines and boyish exuberance, as though the internecine struggle between adolescence and childhood had never fully reconciled itself.
Jim Carroll’s story was a cautionary tale that refused to condescend. There were no cornball “stay away from drugs” sermons, nor any sallow sentimentalizing towards what could have been. Instead, he offered lean Rimbaud-inflected prose that strove to suture the natural aversion towards adulthood with the siren songs of drugs, liquor, and licentiousness. It was both glamorous and sobering–the literary equivalent of a gangsta rap record that showcased heaven and hell in a binary worthy of the Wu. His music and poetry never struck me with the force of The Basketball Diaries or its excellent sequel, Forced Entries, but that wasn’t the point. What matters is that Carroll left behind 400 of the most desolate and dynamic pages ever written. As we grow ever conditioned to knee-jerk nostalgia and pop culture trivia, Carroll was that rare writer who could alter the trajectory of someone’s life. I salute you, brother.
MP3: Jim Carroll Band-“It’s Too Late”
MP3: Jim Carroll Band-“People Who Died”
