The Basketball Diaries: The Classic about Growing Up Hip on New York's Mean Streets

The urban classic coming-of-age story about sex, drugs, and basketball

Jim Carroll grew up to become a renowned poet and punk rocker. But in this memoir of the mid-1960s, 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. During these years, he chronicled his experiences, and the result is a diary of unparalleled candor that conveys his alternately hilarious and terrifying teenage existence. Here is Carroll prowling New York City--playing basketball, hustling, stealing, getting high, getting hooked, and searching for something pure. The Basketball Diaries was the basis for the film of the same name starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

I met him in 1970, and already he was pretty much universally recognized as the best poet of his generation. . . . The work was sophisticated and elegant. He had beauty. -- Patti Smith

Author: Jim Carroll
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 07/07/1987
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.35lbs
Size: 7.81h x 5.09w x 0.46d
ISBN13: 9780140100181
ISBN10: 0140100180
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Literary Figures
- Biography & Autobiography | Personal Memoirs
- Social Science | Sociology | Urban

About the Author
Jim Carroll's bestselling memoir The Basketball Diaries was first released in 1978 and adapted as a film in 1995. Carroll's work includes several collections of poetry as well as a asecond memoir, Forces Entries: The Downtown Diaries 1971-1973. As the leader of The Jim Carroll Band he released three albums as well as several spoken word recordings. He died in New York City on September 11, 2009.