Review of The Basketball Diaries by Mary-Anne St-Onge – Jim Carroll Book Review – CatholicBoy.com

The Basketball Diaries

The Basketball Diaries is a true story about a young boy growing up on the
streets of New York City. He’s bright, he’s hip, he’s talented and he has a chance to
become a basketball star. As the story unfolds we begin to realize that Jim is losing
sight, losing control and losing focus on his goals in life. The drugs that he played and
experimented with have begun to take control and lead him down a dark path of self
destruction. Fortunately Jim has a second talent: the ability and desire to write. He
holds on to that talent with a firm grip as he begins to drown in a swirling and unending
nightmare.

But Jim is no angel; he never was, and he does not claim to be. He started this path
with a curiosity and desire to be cool, to escape, to be accepted. He hangs out with the
punks, makes friends with skid row bums and rebels against most of society. He begins to
lie, steal, cheat and deal. So why does the reader care? Why does the reader relate so
well to what Jim is doing and saying when he robs helpless old ladies, when he laughs at
the danger of sniffing glue, shooting dope, and scoffs at anything that might be
considered decent?

There’s one good reason. Although the book is about his life it could just as well have
been about anything and still been just as intriguing. Jim has the rare ability to take
his readers by the hand and pull them in. From the very start you are not on the outside
looking in. You are there, walking down the streets of New York, smelling the stench,
tasting the garbage and feeling the pain. He invites us in, as a friend, and talks to us
as though we already understand. He does not use words like, “I did this and then I
did that.” Instead he chooses a closer relationship with his audience; “have I
ever told you about the first time I did heroin?” Jim asks. And we want to know, we
need to know. We feel for him. We cry when he cries, we hurt when he is hurting and when
he gains some hope, we hope for him. He knows he is more than this hell he has put himself
in, and we are more than this hell we have made. He is drowning in a cespool and yet, he
still sees past the filth, he still has a shred of decency that tells him that he is
beyond this. He is more, he wants more, he is searching for more; “I just want to be
pure.” By the end we too are getting exhausted, we too want to give up, we too begin
to wonder where he is heading, and we also want him to escape.

This book is an amazingly well written story of one person’s life and struggle. Carroll
reveals so much of himself and life itself that it is no wonder that his fans want to hold
his hand and comfort him. The book has so many levels to research and study, yet as a fan
I feel that I am doing him wrong by analyzing every chapter. I feel as though I have
betrayed a friend. I believe that Jim took a chance on publishing something so real and
revealing about himself and I believe he took a chance on me as a reader–the chance that
I would learn and relate in some way to what he is saying. And I do. Because he took me
gently by the hand and said, “come, my friend, and I will show you what happened and
how it felt to be there, how it feels to be human.” He does not preach and he does
not blame his many downfalls for his pain. He just tells it like it is. Because of this
book I became a fan, because of this book I know this man, because of this book . . . I
understand.