Planet Earth

Culture MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2009 The last flight of the Phoenix Jim Carroll, author of ‘The Basketball Diaries,’ lived the quintessential New York life BY ALEX WILLIAMS old girlfriend Patti Smith. He was soon jamming At these gatherings, Carroll was not the NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, NEW YORK with Keith Richards, and formed the Jim Carroll scathing street punk described in recent Band, whose first release, Catholic Boy, has been obituaries, but rather a raconteur and yarn- t’s not easy to come up with a second act described as the last great punk album. spinner in the grand Irish tradition. His stories when your first act was being Jim Carroll. “Jim was really in love with the concept of — about Greek philosophy, old movies, his He was the author of The Basketball his own phoenix-like rise, which had happened youthful adventures on the streets — invariably Diaries, a cult-classic memoir of his repeatedly in his life — bottoming out, then spun off in epic digressions. drug-fueled misadventures as a teenager transcending his negative circumstances with “It would often take three or four breakfasts in the 1960s; he then became a celebrated an undeniably brilliant work of art,” Rosemary to get the end of a story,” recalled Heinz, 48, his Idowntown poet; and then, the star of his own Carroll said. friend and breakfast club regular. hit rock band. A “brilliant work of art” is what Carroll’s There, Carroll sometimes discussed his Carroll had lived a panoramic New York youth ardent, loyal fans were hoping for in his ambivalence about his time in the spotlight. And that his fans had turned into legend. novel, and what the writer himself must in private, Carroll’s thoughts on fame and his life But by the time he died of a heart attack have passionately wished for. A successful could be searing: this Sept. 11 at the age of 60, Carroll, who had novel might have meant that he would not be “My self sabotaging tendencies in all aspects once hung out with the Rolling Stones and Allen marginalized as an aging “punk poet,” as he of my life, along with the validation needs you Ginsberg, no longer bore much resemblance was in some recent obituaries. Given his health, referenced, go without saying,” Carroll wrote in to the downtown cover-boy with the chiseled it might have constituted his most unlikely a 2005 message to Heinz. “There are deep seeded cheekbones and flowing red hair, friends said. comeback yet. reasons for both, but the latter is also an outcome His once-powerful athlete’s body had been But Carroll, who had specialized in street- of the way you are spoiled and coddled by weakened by pneumonia and hepatitis C, said rap diary entries, poems and song lyrics, found managers, women and media et al when you are Rosemary Carroll, his former wife, who had adapting his literary voice to long-form prose on top, and the quickness with which everyone remained a close friend. At times, circulation challenging. “He definitely wrote a lot and tossed scatters when you recede a moment.” problems in his legs prevented him from leaving a lot,” said Betsy Lerner, his agent. Last month, Carroll canceled multiple his apartment. His trademark hair was flecked And “he worked irregularly,” she added. appointments to see Lerner, his agent, citing with gray, and often tucked under a wool beanie. “Sometimes it was a struggle to pick up the thread doctors’ appointments. The last time she had His cheekbones were hidden behind a white again, but once he did, it would be amazing. He’d seen him, a year before, she had listened to hours beard that plunged to the collar of his T-shirts. have these tremendous flights. He was still very of rambling, if hilarious, digression. She finally Carroll had moved back to Inwood, in upper much in the old Romantic school, I guess.” persuaded him to sit at his computer and discuss Manhattan, to the same building where he had “I always used to tell him, ‘It’s the much the novel’s third and final section. The other two grown up. “Jim would often sit home with these anticipated’” Jim Carroll novel. Lerner added. were largely finished. The book was close. Near heavy curtains drawn shut,” recalled Martin “Then it was the ‘long-awaited.’ Then it was ‘10 the end, however, Carroll receded again. He Heinz, a friend, one of the few to maintain years in the making.’” stopped returning Lerner’s e-mail messages. He contact with him in latter months. By the time he died, the book was in its seemed to be “grappling with the last questions But Carroll did have a purpose. He was final edits, close enough to completion to about life through this character.” trying to finish his first novel, tentatively publish posthumously, perhaps by the fall Carroll was alone the day he died. A neighbor titled The Petting Zoo, an ambitious book of 2010, said Paul Slovak, his editor and the peering into his window apparently saw him about an art-world prodigy of the 1980s, Billy publisher of Viking. slump to the floor and called 911, Tom Carroll Wolfram, who is driven by early fame into In his last years, Jim Carroll did venture said. (“Classic Inwood,” joked Tara Newman, a seclusion, where he suffers psychological and out, if infrequently, to Narcotics Anonymous friend who also grew up there). spiritual crises. It didn’t take much to see the meetings (he had been sober since the 1970s), In the final passage of The Petting Zoo, autobiographical thread. In his teens, Jim, a and joining friends for a “breakfast club” at a Billy Wolfram, accompanied by a mythic raven, scholarship student at the elite Trinity School Chelsea coffee shop. succumbs. He is also alone, and too young to die. and fledgling heroin addict, was a high-school But his death is not without ecstasy: basketball star who shot jumpers on the same “Finally, a last sigh of consciousness rocked courts as Lew Alcindor. The journal he kept him gently on the deck of an old schooner ship. between the ages of 14 and 16 — dark comic Billy’s body, dark blue like the storm clouds accounts of ducking class to cop drugs, steal preceding the storm, shuttered and his eyes closed cars and hustle in Times Square — earned the dull and loosely. Sensing young Wolfram had praise of Jack Kerouac and later became The given up the ghost, the raven glided back down Basketball Diaries. aside the dead artist, whispering a last demand. He became involved in the downtown poetry ‘It’s time your eyes remain shut, Billy Wolfram. scene, receiving praise as a new Rimbaud. In Now is the time, so get on with it. Take that his late 20s, he tried rock ’n’ roll, nudged by his single step and fly.’” Above: The cover of The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll. The memoir of ��Carroll’s drug��-��fueled misadventures as a teenager in the 1960��s was made into a 1995 ��movie starring L��eonardo D��iCaprio. Top right: Jim Carroll at Balducci’s in New York earlier this year. Bottom right: The Catholic Boy record cover by the Jim Carroll Band. The album has been described as the last great punk album. PHOTOS: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE TOP FIVE MANDARIN ALBUMS P L A N E T POP SEPT. 18 TO SEPT. 24 ctress Bijou Phillips says she knew The former star of TV sitcom One Quaid and his wife after authorities George Stevens settled on the area for her half-sister Mackenzie Phillips Day at a Time said she and her father received a complaint early this month his epic Texas oil tale Giant, which had consensual sex with their used drugs that night. John Phillips that the couple had not paid a bill of starred Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor Afather, Mamas and the Papas leader died in 2001. more than US$10,000 due to a local hotel. and James Dean. John Phillips. “My father was not a man with The Quaids were arrested on More recently, There Will be Blood In a statement read by Oprah boundaries,” Phillips writes. “He was Thursday afternoon after a deputy and No Country for Old Men were Winfrey on her talk show on Friday, full of love, and he was sick with drugs. spotted the couple driving in Marfa, filmed in the town of 2,100, founded as Bijou Phillips says she was 13 years I woke up that night to find myself where they had been staying at a hotel, a railroad stop in 1883. old when Mackenzie Phillips told her having sex with my own father.” Dominguez said. In other news, Spain’s Alicia de about the sexual relationship. The town of Marfa, Texas, is back Evi Quad “resisted a little bit, it wasn’t Larrocha, a child prodigy who went on Bijou Phillips is now 29 and says the in the spotlight again, after actor Randy too much,” the sheriff said. “She calmed to become one of the greatest classical Super Junior-M and Super Girl news was confusing and scary. She says Quaid and his wife were released from down quickly.” pianists of her generation, has died at Bijou Phillips told Oprah she knew about her 1 with 16.88 % of sales it was “heartbreaking” to think her family a jail there late Thursday after being Quaid won a Golden Globe Award the age of 86. sister’s incestuous relationship Mamas and the would leave her alone with her father.

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