He notes that poor junkies like him do not have the same treatment programs or escape options as middle-class or rich junkies have. With Manhattan as his playground and local junkies, thieves and hooligans as his playmates, Carroll spirals from mild delinquent to full blown addict believing (as all addicts first do) that where others fail, he has it all under control. Like one day we were with Sam McGiggle and he couldn’t make it to the fence in time so we told him to freeze perfectly still and the dog wouldn’t bother him.

Carroll's gritty diary was explicit; it took readers inside the real world of drug addiction, male prostitution, and crime in 1960s New York. We wasted no time in making it to the nearest hiding spot, knowing that guy would be up after us any second. Momaday is a big man with a wry sense of humor, his large frame matching his deep and sonorous voice. That contrast could easily make for a compelling undercurrent through the novel, but it proves to be even better because, eventually, the dark and light contrasts eventually blend together into a consistent, muddy, shade of grey. There are flashes of beauty to illustrate the contrast between who Carroll was at the beginning of the novel and who he has become, but the dark, increasingly critical air, anger and need are the consistent angles that the third act both establishes and inhabits.

He got himself hooked on heroin and other drugs, skipped school (where he was lucky enough to be on scholarship), frequently committed robbery, burglary, armed robbery and burglary, trespassing, assault, and ended up arrested a few times and in jail at Rikers. But in this memoir of the mid-1960's, set during his coming-of-age from 12 to 15, he was a rebellious teenager making a place and a name for himself on the unforgiving streets of New York City. She had a very scary habit of going to her sink every night in her bra and panties and offering Mass over it as if it were her altar. Below this, Carroll provides a quote attributed to the quasi-mystical medieval Persian war leader Hassan (-i) Sabbah which is also a key favorite of WSB: "Nothing is true; Everything is permitted.

The book was made into a film of the same name in 1995 starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Jim Carroll and Mark Wahlberg as Mickey. Like this house where I got to sometimes tear out a room and make it another size or shape so the rest make sense… or no sense at all.He frequently includes his older poems in new collections, encompassing them, like the rings of a tree, in fresh material. In fact, as Martin Gilbert notes in his book, A History of the Twentieth Century, Volume Three: 1952-1999: "The need to supply and finance the drug habit, if necessary by theft and violence, undermined the moral outlook of many individuals. This diary gives insight into the self-serving life of a guy with authority issues, and while may have been considered groundbreaking, is an affront to people not given the opportunities Carroll had.