Thoughts on SABC review of The Night of the Gun:

One thing that the reviewers seem to miss (although I think the moderator gets it about halfway in) is that this book isn’t intended to offer emotional insight to “why I used drugs” or anything of the sort.  In the same way that it eschews catharsis it must then avoid the lure of nostalgia and emotionalizing the situation.  Although perceived at times as its weakness, the coldness and detached nature of his writing may not offer the insight that you’re looking for, but it at least makes an effort at being more of an “objective” account than most of the crap recovery novels out there.  The point at which I am frustrated by the review is when they discuss someone else’s recovery novel in which the author kills himself before the end of the book (and it’s a true story).  The desire and tendency to romanticize the work of those that are gone becomes tiresome.  No, that author can’t engage in the “smugness” that Carr does about his current life, and I too am somewhat suspicious of the complete turnaround Carr had considering the brevity of the process, but that doesn’t make one book better than the other, it just captures two people at their most disparate states: alive, and still struggling versus dead and “at peace.”

Fundamentally however, I like a lot of the points raised, most notably that the book, by design lulled me in and out of caring about it.  On one hand the construct was interesting and on the other the nature of the book had a kind of alienation effect in which I would remember I was reading a book and was not longer lost in the story.  This was frustrating.

His story is at once inspirational and sticky, covering everything from addiction to various related illegalities (no doubt the capillaries of such serious problems) to raising children and the foibles of relationships in a life when you can’t even handle personal responsibility.

On the plus side he is no apologist, he is very clear about who is at fault and that he was making serious mistakes–for which he has atoned to whatever extent one can in a perhaps short stint of sobriety.

His approach as journalist rather than nostalgist is a placement that should prove more appropriate than other stories about substance abuse that create a carefully arranged menagerie of facts, but qualms are still to be found.  For one, undoubtedly you are going to make some other people look very, very bad, including possibly your own family, if you engage in something like this.  Although the idea could be to clean one’s own slate, the fact is a story like this can smack of a certain self-indulgence–the duality of dragging oneself down to try and come out cleaner on the other side.  I’m not going to indict Carr for selfishness, hopefully that behavior was at least mostly left by the wayside along with his affection for drink, but the possibility is there and the risk is high when relations have already been strained.

Ultimately, I would say check it out, see for yourself.  David Carr is a great writer, and perhaps it behooves us to give him a chance, recognizing the lack of makeup, even if his cross-bearing is live and in HD.