On Thursday, Sept. 11, 2008, police officers dressed in kilts and blowing on bagpipes in Watchung Plaza were commemorating the seventh anniversary of that dark day, September 11, 2001. Just across from Watchung Plaza is the independent book store, Watchung Booksellers, where Montclair resident, journalist and author, David Carr, was talking about the darkest days of his life, expressed in his new book, "The Night of the Gun."
The book is about Carr’s attempt to get as close to the truth as possible about his days as a drug addict and alcoholic. During the talk, he said that to reconstruct his past, he could not rely simply on his own memory because there were too many gaps to accurately portray his life as an addict. "The memory of an ordinary person is fallible. The memory of an addict is even more fallible," said Carr. He noted that of the many memoirs he’s read of former addicts, he’s amazed by the authors’ abundant recollection. He suspects that that they are not accurate portrayals.
To reconstruct his 20 years as an addict, he conducted 60 video recordings of the diverse group of people in and out of his life then and retrieved police reports that described numerous arrests, and medical records. The book is not only a narrative of Carr’s troublesome 20 years, but, more importantly, a discovery of, as Carr said, "That guy who abused drugs, beat up girlfriends and fought with anyone in the bar who looked at me the wrong way."
Carr sat in front of the room with about 25 copies of his new book on display. His youngest daughter, wife and mother-in-law were in attendance in the first row. As people walked in and sat in the rows, Carr was flipping through the pages and jokingly said to the audience, "Do you think readings are boring?" Unsure which of the 62 chapters to read from, he asked his mother-in-law which chapter she would like to hear. But she left it to him and at that moment, the store’s proprietor, Margot Sage-EL, announced Carr to the audience.
Carr remarked that he was honored that people had come out to hear him talk on the anniversary of September 11. He noted that there is one chapter in his book about September 11, 2001. At that time, he was a reporter for the Atlantic Monthly. His editors called him soon after the second airplane hit the North Tower to get into the city. He raced to the Lincoln Tunnel and informed a Port Authority officer that he spoke to someone at the organization and was given permission to drive through the tunnel, whereby the officer responded, "I am the Port Authority."
Carr said that "stories are better and more informed when you talk to people." When he did make it into the city via a rescue boat traveling between Jersey City and Lower Manhattan, he spoke to a gentleman who said that he saw someone jump from one of the towers, and a bodega owner who said that a jet engine landed near his store, but the FBI swooshed in and hauled it away.
Interestingly, while Carr stressed the importance of speaking with people for informing stories, he said that he did not like any of the stories he wrote about Sept. 11, 2001 for the Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times. When asked by someone why not, he said his stories were just too ordinary. "I didn’t know what to write about on the events of 9/11. The wreckage, the ash and dust was seen by everyone on television."
After reading the chapter about 9/11, Carr took questions from the audience. One audience member asked how he managed to hold down a reporting job for a Minneapolis newspaper, another asked Carr how was he able to locate many of the people he interviewed, while another asked how long did it take to write the book.
He casually answered the third question that it took only three months for him to write. "I am a first-time book author, but I loved writing the book because it was as if I was writing about someone else," said Carr.
In the same vein, however, he also said that among family and friends he was the least person prepared for the book’s publication. "When I told my family that I was writing the book detailing my life as an addict, my older brother strongly urged me not to write it because it would reveal too many dark truths."
But there seemed to be no stopping David Carr from exposing a 20-year period of his life. As Carr said in his talk, and writes in his book, he has an innate obsessive and compulsive drive that may have served him well as an investigative reporter, but got him into a heap of trouble when he was abusing drugs.
Carr ended his talk by telling the audience that he was proud to be among a community of writers and readers. Reading the book, the reader cannot help but ask how someone who had abused drugs, was unemployed and homeless for some time, could recover with a good job, loving family and colonial home.
"I got a million chances. If I was a non-white, maybe my luck would have run out," Carr said. Another possibility is that the same obsessive and compulsive drive that contributed to his endless quest for a high also was instrumental in his recovery.
