and now they're deadJim Carroll, Author - Jim carroll - GawkerJim Carroll, Author
Jim Carroll, the former drug addict turned prolific poet and writer of The Basketball Diaries, died of a heart attack on Friday at his residence in Manhattan. He was 60.
Carroll's writing career started when he was attending Catholic prep school in the 1960s; he chronicled his rapid decent into heroin addiction—and the lengths he went to get it, like prostituting himself for money to buy it—in his diaries. These diaries were turned into The Basketball Diaries, which, after gaining popularity in the 70s, surged to popularity again in the 80s when they were repackaged and republished, and again in the 90s, when they were adapted into a film with Leonardo DiCaprio playing Carroll.
Carroll rose to fame as downtown fixture on New York's punk scene after the publication of The Basketball Diaries; he gained the accolades of and influence over Patti Smith, Harmony Korine, Keith Richards, Lou Reed, Pearl Jam, Rancid, and others over the years.
Carroll and his mentor, Ted Berrigan, once took a trip to see Carroll's idol, Jack Kerouac. When they got there, Kerouac supposedly said: "At thirteen years of age, Jim Carroll writes better prose than 89 percent of the novelists working today."
Writers, magazines, actors, rock stars continued to want to be a part of Carroll's ongoing narrative; if the CBGB of yore had a poet laureate, it would've been unanimously voted as him. At one point, he actually hit the stage of CBGB as a musician sometime after Patti Smith infamously made him get on stage with her to read. He shortly secured a three-record deal after with Atlantic Records, which was assisted by Keith Richards.
Carroll's personal life remained spotty. He moved to New York to escape drugs and was married, once to Rosemary Klemfuss, in 1978. They later divorced, but Carroll remained off drugs, and continued to write, perform spoken word, and record music, prolifically so.
Caroll loved writers, and loved the act of writing as much as the art of it. Carroll's survived by his brother Tom. He will be missed. Here he is, talking about Frank O'Hara:
