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

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I don't really remember a thing about this book except that I really did like it at the time that I read it, around age fourteen. Roger Ebert noted in his 1995 review of the adaptation that Carroll's original memoir "struck a personal note, of a kid who despite his suffering tried to turn his experience into poetry". Most importantly, Carroll established a consistent tone and voice full of sardonic wit and he never flinched at revealing his life at the time. On one occasion, Carroll breaks up with his older lover when she tries to initiate sex with him while he is strung out from a heroin withdrawal and waiting for a friend to bring him his fix. His addiction takes a severe toll on his health, leading him into several rounds of detox, each proving to be a futile attempt to break free.

This serves to underscore the tragic trajectory of an individual caught up in the vicious cycle of drug addiction.Before Momaday began to publish, there was little widespread consciousness of a Native American literature.

Jim’s drug use is recreational, an escape from the pain and confusion of growing up in a deeply war-entrenched culture. At seventeen, Momaday attended ­military school in Virginia for a year, and he then enrolled at the ­University of New Mexico, where he met his first wife, Gaye Mangold, the mother of three of his four daughters.He reveals a sort of underbelly, showing the reader that drug usage wasn’t just for the college-aged Hippie set, but could reach into jacket and tie wearing, teenage Catholic boys.