It's highly addictive to get core insights on personally relevant topics without repetition or triviality. The same was true in 1995, when the book was reprinted to coincide with the film adaptation of the book.

It proved to me that candor did not have to be a sign of weakness; it was actually far more effective at weakening the knees of those who were exposed to it than strong, calculated sloganeering because, while still featuring some artifice to make it memorable, it was very poignant and affecting. Carroll and a friend skip class to shoot up heroin in a basement, and they nearly get caught by the police. If I read this as a teenager I think it would mean more to me, but reading it now as an adult, it doesn't have the pull or interest to grab me. I'm really fascinated by my own adolescent fascination with substance abuse and general nihilistic fucked-uppedness, which is something I've finally realized not everyone has, and which I have only fairly recently -- and okay, not completely -- grown out of.

Upon arrival, Jim was pushed to confess to a priest; he is not a religious person but seems to believe in spiritual connectedness. Both Apple and Google state that they ensure that only users who have actually downloaded the app can submit a review. Once I fell off a bus like that on a sharp turn and almost got my balls crushed under the back wheel but this ride was smooth enough and we got off and deposited our nickels in the turnstiles and were off. Mancole gives Carroll his first heroin shot when Carroll gets out of Riker's and helps Carroll mug people in the park.

Carroll has a conversation with a friend and notes that a junkie on a high often curls up like a fetus. She had a very scary habit of going to her sink every night in her bra and panties and offering Mass over it as if it were her altar. Browning notes that junkies curl up into fetal positions because they are trying to get back to the womb. S. cities, where the physical distance between rich and poor is often greater, it would be harder for him to do this. I’m so glad Carroll didn’t use his teenage writings as a source to look back into his past, but presented them as “then and there”.The book was made into a film of the same name in 1995 starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Jim Carroll and Mark Wahlberg as Mickey. Basis for the Hollywood version [1995 New Line Cinema] which starred Leonardo DiCaprio in the central role. If you’d like to file an allegation of infringement, you’ll need to follow the process described in our Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy. Even though this sounds dismissive, I don't want to give ol' Jim too much of a hard time because there are moments of beauty too and it is understandable Carroll became a poet and sought the beautiful in the murk for the rest of his troubled life.

Rather than continue to edit it or, indeed spellcheck the fat-thumbed title, he decided to get ahead of anyone who might release the song by doing it himself on SoundCloud. When Carroll is strung out and needing a heroin fix, Browning goes to get it for him while Jim waits with his older lover.Jim’s drug use is recreational, an escape from the pain and confusion of growing up in a deeply war-entrenched culture.

This was another true story of someone who suffered a terrible addiction and was able to overcome it.

Patti Smith, one of Carroll's former girlfriends, encouraged him to make the transition from poet to rock musician, as she had done. The feeling isn’t movement anyway, but rather being suspended in front of the sheer cliff, mid-air, with the waters rising up sharp and fast at you. I will add as a post-script that "People Who Died" is one of my all-time favorite running songs, and arguably one of the best of ALL songs. In my intensity to read anything regarding the streets of New York City, I picked up this book at Alias East in Atwater Village. The album's lyrics were rough and dark, like his diaries, and several music critics commented on the book in the course of reviewing the album.