{"id":576,"date":"2021-08-15T19:00:10","date_gmt":"2021-08-16T02:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/?page_id=576"},"modified":"2025-03-10T23:52:47","modified_gmt":"2025-03-11T06:52:47","slug":"the-basketball-diaries","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/works\/literary-works\/diaries-and-fiction-by-jim-carroll\/the-basketball-diaries\/","title":{"rendered":"The Basketball Diaries: Editions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Carroll wrote his autobiographical tales of “growing up hip” on New York’s mean streets” between the ages of 12 and 16, from 1962 to 1966. Carroll earned a scholarship to a posh private school (see Trinity Yearbook<\/a> page) and spent his time playing basketball, stealing, hustling gay men to support his growing heroin addiction, and, during time-outs, writing diaries and poetry. The Basketball Diaries<\/i> has been reissued in seven English editions and a variety of translations<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The English editions are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Tombouctou first edition<\/a> (1978)<\/strong>, issued only in paperback, features a black and white photograph of Carroll by Rosemary Klemfuss\/Carroll; this edition also features illustrations from clay sculptures by Marc Blane, a four-page introduction by Tom Clark entitled “Rimbaud Rambles On: By Way of a Preface to The Diaries,” and an author’s note by Carroll.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The Bantam edition<\/a> (1981)<\/strong>, issued only in paperback, has a different photograph of Carroll and a quotation from Frank Zappa.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The 1987 Penguin edition<\/a><\/strong>, paperback only, <\/strong>has the same cover photograph as the Tombouctou edition, but it is colorized.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The 1987 Faber & Faber edition<\/a><\/strong> was issued only in the UK; it reprints The Basketball Diaries<\/em> and prose works from The Book of Nods<\/em> in one paperback volume. The cover photo is a cropped closeup of the cover photo on the first editions.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The 1995 Penguin edition<\/a><\/strong> (paperback) is a film tie-in, featuring a photograph of Leonardo DiCaprio. This edition was a New York Times<\/em> best-seller (download PDF<\/a>).<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The 1998 Penguin edition<\/a><\/strong> (paperback) is the current edition as of 2005. The cover features a photograph from the same sitting as the Bantam edition, tinted blue.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The\u00a01994 Audio Literature<\/a>\u00a0edition is an “almost” unabridged audio version of\u00a0The Basketball Diaries\u00a0read by Jim Carroll. By almost<\/em>, I mean that the excluded pieces are available elsewhere.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Translations<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Basketball Diaries<\/em> has also been translated<\/a> into several languages, including Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. Learn more …<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

See also …<\/h2>\n\n\n\n