A Look Back at Jim Carroll: How the Poet and Basketball Diaries Author Finally Finished His First Novel

Like so many denizens of the New York that pro­duced Warhol and The Vel­vet Under­ground, then grit­ty punk rock, hip-hop, and no wave, poet Jim Car­roll didn’t fare so well into Bloomberg-era NYC, a developer’s par­adise and des­ti­na­tion for urban pro­fes­sion­als and tourists, but not so much a haven for strug­gling artists. As the city changed, its cre­ative char­ac­ters either rose above its shift­ing demo­graph­ics, moved away, or—as Car­roll did—retreated. Car­roll, who died in 2009 at 60, spent his last years in the upper Man­hat­tan neigh­bor­hood of Inwood—once a bustling Irish-Catholic enclave—living in the same build­ing where he’d grown up and writ­ing against time to fin­ish his first and only nov­el, The Pet­ting Zoo. His last years were by no means trag­ic, how­ev­er. Giv­en the tumult of his ear­ly years as an addict, and the long list of friends from the down­town New York scene that Car­roll lost along the way—to over­dos­es, AIDS, can­cer, suicide—I’d say he was a lit­er­ary sur­vivor, who died (at his writ­ing desk, it’s said) doing what he loved most.

Car­roll came to main­stream con­scious­ness with the release of a 1995 film star­ring Leonar­do DiCaprio, based on the book Carroll’s most known for: the 1978 mem­oir The Bas­ket­ball Diaries, a col­lec­tion of teenage jour­nal entries from his dou­ble life as a high school bas­ket­ball star and junkie hus­tler. But even with that movie’s nods to Carroll’s mature years as a poet and musi­cian, it’s doubt­ful that few peo­ple came away with much more than a vague sense of what the street-wise Catholic school­boy DiCaprio char­ac­ter had gone on to do. Which is a shame, because Car­roll real­ly was a ter­rif­ic writer, from his debut poet­ry pub­li­ca­tions in the 60s and on through­out the next three decades. Even in the obscu­ri­ty and semi-seclu­sion of his lat­er years, he wrote wise, inci­sive essays and crit­i­cism (such as this 2002 review of Kurt Cobain’s pub­lished Jour­nals for the Los Ange­les Times). And despite the mem­oir and film’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, Car­roll con­sid­ered him­self pri­mar­i­ly a poet, in the sym­bol­ist tra­di­tion of his lit­er­ary heroes Rilke, Rim­baud, and Ash­bery. (See Car­roll at top, in his harsh New York accent, read from his 1986 col­lec­tion of poems, The Book of Nods.)

In a man­ner of speak­ing, Car­roll suf­fered the curse of one-hit-won­derism, except in his case, he was lucky enough to have two hits—the mem­oir (and lat­er film) and the song, “Peo­ple Who Died,” from Catholic Boy, his debut album with the Jim Car­roll Band (video above), which even made it onto the E.T. sound­track (giv­ing Car­roll roy­al­ties for life). The band came about with the encour­age­ment of Carroll’s fel­low poet and for­mer room­mate Pat­ti Smith, after Car­roll kicked hero­in and moved to Cal­i­for­nia. Car­roll wrote songs for Blue Oys­ter Cult and Boz Scaggs and col­lab­o­rat­ed with Ran­cid, Son­ic Youth’s Lee Ranal­do, Pat­ti Smith gui­tarist Lenny Kaye, and gui­tarist Anton Sanko (on his 1998 return to music, Pools of Mer­cury). His years in rock and roll trans­mut­ed through most of the nineties into dra­mat­ic read­ings, spo­ken word per­for­mances, and live­ly mono­logues, such as those col­lect­ed on the 1991 release Pray­ing Man­tis. In the track below, “The Loss of Amer­i­can Inno­cence,” Car­roll deliv­ers some sham­bling, and pret­ty fun­ny, sto­ries about the char­ac­ters in his nov­el-in-progress.

Car­roll had been telling these sto­ries about Bil­ly the down­town painter and a cer­tain chat­ty raven since the late 80s. As the mono­logues crys­tal­lized into short prose pieces, he slow­ly, painstak­ing­ly assem­bled them into The Pet­ting Zoo, which saw pub­li­ca­tion in 2010. It took him twen­ty years, and he didn’t live to see it pub­lished, but he left a final lega­cy behind, and it’s a flawed but seri­ous work worth read­ing. In 2010, Carroll’s long­time friends Pat­ti Smith and Lenny Kaye cel­e­brat­ed the novel’s pub­li­ca­tion with read­ings and per­for­mances at the Barnes and Noble in Union Square. Below, see Smith read an excerpt from The Pet­ting Zoo. The sound’s a bit tin­ny and the cam­era shakes, but it’s worth it to see liv­ing leg­end Smith read from Carroll’s leg­endary final song.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith Reads Her Final Words to Robert Map­plethor­pe

The Life and Con­tro­ver­sial Work of Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Robert Map­plethor­pe Pro­filed in 1988 Doc­u­men­tary

Rock and Roll Heart, 1998 Doc­u­men­tary Retraces the Remark­able Career of Lou Reed

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness