David Carr is a renowned reporter for the New York Times, and by now, you’ve no doubt heard, inklings at least, that in 1980s Minneapolis, he did as much or more coke than all the members of M√∂tley Crue put together (as well as anyone they screwed, ever), had a couple of newborn twins he left in a frigid parked car while freebasing said drug (they turned out fine), went to treatment 1,006 times, it finally took, and he lived to write a memoir about it, Night of the Gun, that came out last month. This is the kind of stuff that gets me off my ass and into the bookstore.There’s a term for this. It’s not voyeur. It’s maybe more like, wallower. Some people read in order to transport themselves to a Chaucerian forest that’s full of bawdy jokes and velvet kerchiefs. I like to roll around in the residue of old American dope yarns. Particularly from about 1976 forward.I know. Memoir. Drugs. Yawn. James Frey‚Ķ Anthony Kiedis. It’s not a terribly exclusive club; it’s a genre with plenty of room for self-indulgence, error, and more self-indulgence.Not with Carr. At least not 100 percent. But you probably know that by now, too. He went back to the Twin Cities and reported on his own addiction 20 years after the fact. He tried to bust his memory, prevent it from conjuring doctored fantasies that in retrospect would make him come off as something slightly more dignified than a guy could who left newborn twins in a car while he freebased coke.In pulling off such an exercise, Carr reminds himself, methodically, and you, how sad, ugly, moronic and ultimately unnecessary a lot of it was. And hey, it can all be fact-checked. His low points and his high points—and this has been fuel for some of his critics—are often clinically described. Sans romance. What piles up, via the testimony of his friends years later—is that sure enough, Carr often behaved like a supreme douchebag.Somehow, he slowly sets about putting his life back together in a humble, and sometimes unremarkable way, with the help of a lot of great people (with some detours—sketchy women of the evening comfort him initially when he’s a young, sober dad‚Ķ he doesn’t dwell long on hiccups like that). In the end, Carr’s humility, as well as his willingness to happily buy into rehab jargon—by that point he had virtually nothing else to go on—was probably the only way sustained sobriety worked (though to be fair, he provides proof that his newly sober self was eager to hawk his drug tales to The New Yorker, amongst others). As Carr bounced around the recent political conventions, he gave me answers when he could, via email. I’m still undecided about how I feel about this process. Carr edited shit-disturbing alternative weeklies in Minneapolis and Washington DC, and if one of his reporters came to him and told him he’d landed a great interview that was to be conducted solely through email, there’s a strong possibility that reporter would have gotten an earful. Oh well.Vice: I quickly devoured most of your book, working towards what I thought would be the happily-ever-after conclusion. Then you completely fucked up again. Or, as you say, face-planted. On the heels of your recovery you almost immediately went into researching and writing this book. Was the project meant in any way, to rub your own nose in your severe lows of the ‚Äò80s to make sure that you remembered, and didn't take things for granted?
David Carr: Before the book came out, I would have said you were full of beans on the motivation, but it has since been pointed out to me enough times that I relapsed, sobered up, and then went to work on the book immediately. I think there is something there, in part because I have been walking away from that past ever since I started working on the book.Having three young daughters around you on a daily basis, how did you manage to forget your sobriety?
Everything about us was normal, including my relationship with them. You have to understand that I didn't leave my family and go do dope and start shooting up. Like a lot of parents in the suburbs, I would tuck my kids into bed with a kiss and then pour myself a drink. It's just that I'm not like a lot of parents in the suburbs—I'm a drunk—and so it didn't end well for me.What do you miss about the Midwest the most? Have you ever tried the Juicy Lucy at Matt's?
I miss my friends. Completely and totally. I miss the livability of the place, the willingness of people to say "hello," in a way that is meaningful and I miss that thing when people say, "let's have lunch," they really mean it. And yes, I adore the Juicy Luicy, although I just had a Johnny Burger at My Brother's Place in Denver and I must admit it turned my head a bit. Three cheeses and grilled onions. Damn.Do you think any of your appetite for drugging and drinking stemmed from anything other than an early enjoyment of it? You were part of a big family. Not to make any excuses, but did you feel like a number sometimes?
My oldest brother is in recovery and he was and is the jewel of our family, so I don't think the theory attains. We all looked after each other and were parented with a lovely vengeance.I've been around drugs enough to sour on one thing you touch on in the book: the cocaine conversation. It is one of the more depressing phenomena in existence. In the end, it is just weaseling and politicking and groveling just to get closer to a line. Fake socializing. Is there anything else in life—group brainstorming comes to mind—quite as dishonest or uncomfortable? On a similar note—did you have any rituals—before the wheels completely came off—that you used to "control" your intake, that in retrospect seem amusing in their delusion or dishonesty, etc?
Anna [the mother of his twins, as well as a major dealer], who I was with for quite a while and had access to a lot of coke, would take her stuff down to the Greyhound depot and put it in a locker so it was out of the house and we could all get some sleep. It rarely worked—we'd be calling back people we had just sold to to obtain more—but it sort of speaks to the idiocy and desperation of addiction.What outlook do you have about the state of print media in the US? In 35 words or less. Just kidding. Many blogs are happily celebrating print's demise, or at the very least their difficulty navigating the tricky, thin-ice in sustaining revenue as the whole vehicle for delivery of their content completely changes… but in the process it seems that what we're getting in exchange, at least partially, are annoying micromedia celebrities who have little curiosity about the outside world and reporting on it. This may be a leading question. And it may also be a generalization. My big question is how long is all of this going to take to shake out?
I am at the Republican convention as an annoying micromedia celebrity, blogging, making video, doing news stories. I not only resemble that remark, I endorse it. I worry that the general interest, the one that we all hold in common, will be lost as we all develop individual verticals of expertise. The good thing is that not only is the MSM is adopting some of the tools of the insurgency, but that bloggers and website are staring to see and understand the salience of reporting and have gone beyond just being fleas on the MSM dog. A true convergence, the one that has been talked about for years, seems to be upon us. Given the tools it provides, seems like a great time to be a journalist, but a worrisome time to try and make a living at it given that solid business models that support reporting over the long haul have yet to emerge.JEFF JOHNSON
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David Carr: Before the book came out, I would have said you were full of beans on the motivation, but it has since been pointed out to me enough times that I relapsed, sobered up, and then went to work on the book immediately. I think there is something there, in part because I have been walking away from that past ever since I started working on the book.Having three young daughters around you on a daily basis, how did you manage to forget your sobriety?
Everything about us was normal, including my relationship with them. You have to understand that I didn't leave my family and go do dope and start shooting up. Like a lot of parents in the suburbs, I would tuck my kids into bed with a kiss and then pour myself a drink. It's just that I'm not like a lot of parents in the suburbs—I'm a drunk—and so it didn't end well for me.What do you miss about the Midwest the most? Have you ever tried the Juicy Lucy at Matt's?
I miss my friends. Completely and totally. I miss the livability of the place, the willingness of people to say "hello," in a way that is meaningful and I miss that thing when people say, "let's have lunch," they really mean it. And yes, I adore the Juicy Luicy, although I just had a Johnny Burger at My Brother's Place in Denver and I must admit it turned my head a bit. Three cheeses and grilled onions. Damn.Do you think any of your appetite for drugging and drinking stemmed from anything other than an early enjoyment of it? You were part of a big family. Not to make any excuses, but did you feel like a number sometimes?
My oldest brother is in recovery and he was and is the jewel of our family, so I don't think the theory attains. We all looked after each other and were parented with a lovely vengeance.I've been around drugs enough to sour on one thing you touch on in the book: the cocaine conversation. It is one of the more depressing phenomena in existence. In the end, it is just weaseling and politicking and groveling just to get closer to a line. Fake socializing. Is there anything else in life—group brainstorming comes to mind—quite as dishonest or uncomfortable? On a similar note—did you have any rituals—before the wheels completely came off—that you used to "control" your intake, that in retrospect seem amusing in their delusion or dishonesty, etc?
Anna [the mother of his twins, as well as a major dealer], who I was with for quite a while and had access to a lot of coke, would take her stuff down to the Greyhound depot and put it in a locker so it was out of the house and we could all get some sleep. It rarely worked—we'd be calling back people we had just sold to to obtain more—but it sort of speaks to the idiocy and desperation of addiction.What outlook do you have about the state of print media in the US? In 35 words or less. Just kidding. Many blogs are happily celebrating print's demise, or at the very least their difficulty navigating the tricky, thin-ice in sustaining revenue as the whole vehicle for delivery of their content completely changes… but in the process it seems that what we're getting in exchange, at least partially, are annoying micromedia celebrities who have little curiosity about the outside world and reporting on it. This may be a leading question. And it may also be a generalization. My big question is how long is all of this going to take to shake out?
I am at the Republican convention as an annoying micromedia celebrity, blogging, making video, doing news stories. I not only resemble that remark, I endorse it. I worry that the general interest, the one that we all hold in common, will be lost as we all develop individual verticals of expertise. The good thing is that not only is the MSM is adopting some of the tools of the insurgency, but that bloggers and website are staring to see and understand the salience of reporting and have gone beyond just being fleas on the MSM dog. A true convergence, the one that has been talked about for years, seems to be upon us. Given the tools it provides, seems like a great time to be a journalist, but a worrisome time to try and make a living at it given that solid business models that support reporting over the long haul have yet to emerge.JEFF JOHNSON