Scott @ B&N

So, I’ve been meaning to start shamelessly plugging books on a weekly basis for a while now, and now will procrastinate on other, more important (read: school) work to do so.  I’ll write about a new(ish) book that I’ve read and is currently available in Barnes and Noble stores on a weekly basis.  So, without further ado, let me introduce:

The Night of the Gun, by David Carr

Imagine losing 20+ years of your life to drugs, only to finally turn things around and discover that most of what you remember of that time is not just fuzzy but downright wrong. That’s the reality Carr faced not too long ago. Upon discovering his inaccurate memory of the titular event (more on that in a moment), he decided that he would need to go back into his life, interviewing the people he knew during this time, some of whom initially refused to see him. He wound up interviewing some 60 people about his past, and the resulting narrative became the basis for this book.

I say basis because the book winds up being part autobiography, part cautionary tale about addiction and drug use, and part rumination on the nature of memory and coping mechanisms. These examinations of memory etc. come about after he learns of a night where, as Carr remembers it, a friend pulled a gun on him. It was Carr’s learning that, in fact, he was the one threatening with the firearm that started him on this project and became the incident after which the book is named. Carr’s memory of the events is so far from what happened that he didn’t even recall owning a gun, much less having more than one and pulling the gun on someone. It is precisely his journalistic approach to his own past, and his examinations of the self-protecting alterations he made to his own memories, that sets this book apart from any other drug-addled author’s work currently on the shelves.

Highly recommended, though not necessarily for the faint of heart.