The Basketball Diaries
Jim Carroll Book Review

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Plot Summary of The Basketball Diaries
"It is 1964 in New York City's Lower East Side of Manhattan. Jim Carroll, the teenage diarist, records his games as a basketball star in his diaries. Something happens to him, and he mistakes the fact (as he explains to his mother) that it's actually heroin you can get addicted to, not marijuana. So he causally begins to skin-pop heroin, then inject it directly into his veins with a needle. He is laughing at that old junkie phrase about the monkey being on his back. But it is no laugh to him when he runs out, and gets the skin creeps, and the fever, and the chills. His addiction increases, and Jim, while he stills attends high school, and high school games, increasingly turns to the underground life. He supports his habit by selling his body to gay men, calling it "perversion for profit". Eventually, he lands in Rikers, a prison, for a month. But this does not reform him, and in the end, he's on the nod, "looking for something pure". Crested sapwood supportable noradrenaline runout. " Joan Clare, Resident Scholar
"In the midst of the Cold War, war in Vietnam, race riots in New York City, and a turning point in American culture between "Leave It to Beaver" and Woodstock, Jim Carroll began writing his "basketball diaries" at the age of 12. He's an all-city basketball star at an ivy league prep school leading a double life, experimenting with drugs, getting hooked, hustling gay men to support what will become an epic heroin addiction, and . . . becoming a poet. This is an incredibly funny book as well as a remarkable document of a key period in American culture -- but read it for the language! Even better, read it and then listen to the audio book read by Carroll." Cassie Carter, Resident Scholar

Review Analysis of The Basketball Diaries

Our unique search engine provides a wealth of detail about books by breaking them down into many different literary elements, all of which are searchable (click here).

Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot
Tone of book? - upbeat
Time/era of story - 1960's-1970's
Kids growing up/acting up? Yes
Internal struggle/realization? Yes
Is this an adult or child's book? - Adult or Young Adult Book
Age group of kid(s) in story: - high school
Something wrong upstairs/downstairs? - searching for identity/meaning
Wild kid(s)? - druggie culture (& crime)
Druggie/Wino problems? - drugs
Love problems? - gay guy urges

Main Character
Gender - Male
Profession/status: - student - sports figure
Age: - a teen
Ethnicity/Nationality - White (American) - Irish/McCourt
How sensitive is this character? - middling sensitive to others' feelings - hard edged
Sense of humor - Strong but gentle sense of humor - Cynical sense of humor
Intelligence - Very much smarter than other characters
Physique - very athletic

Main Adversary
Identity: - society
How much of work is main antagonist actually present in: - throughout most of the book.

Setting
How much descriptions of surroundings? - 10 (a tremendous amount)
City? Yes
City: - New York
Misc setting - sewers/subways

Style
Person - mostly 1st
Accounts of torture and death? - moderately detailed references to deaths - explicit references to torture
Sex in book? Yes
What kind of sex: - vague references - touching of anatomy - licking - lesbians! - actual description of hetero sex - descript. of female anat. (the big B's) - descript. of female anat. (the big V) - descript. of nude males (the big P) - male homosexuals doing their thing - rape/molest (yeech!)
Lot of foul language? Yes
Unusual Style: - a lot of stream of consciousness - written like a journal/diary/letters
Amount of dialog - significantly more descript than dialog

Most similar books to The Basketball Diaries
Boulevard by Jim Grimsley
The Diary of a Teenage Girl by Phoebe Gloeckner
The Great Teen Fruit War, A 1960's Novel by Jay Dubya
That Was Then This Is Now by S.E. Hinton
Choices Made: The Street Years by Christine McMahon

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Jim Carroll Book Review