Beach Reading

I was at the Sunken Meadow State Park beach this past weekend, again. This is one of the cheaper way to enjoy the summer. The gas is now $4.40 a gallon and the park admission is $8 per car. We bring our own food. Cheap entertainment is fun too.

Between yelling at the kids and playing in the water (also eyeballing bikini clad chicks too, but by and large, the beach is really a family beach with mostly overweight adults like myself, not many killer bods to look at, so I am mostly minding my own business ... ), I was actually able to read something, half naked under the sun.

I didn't know what David Carr looks like until I got this week's New York Times Magazine. I was appalled at how skinny he looks now and how overweight he was ... so I guess something major must have happened in between these years. I knew I wanted to read the article so I brought the Magazine to the beach. The article was adapted from Carr's soon to be released memoir "The Night of the Gun."

This is addiction literature, arguably popularized by James Frey, except Frey's memoir "A Million Little Pieces" turned out to be a fraud. Carr, in his own words, seems more careful in tracing his days of addiction some twenty years ago, with interviews from family members, rehab staff, friends and with family pictures and mug shots on the cover to back his story. His tumultuous relationship with women, drug abuse came to an end, albeit slow and gradual when his twin daughters were born more than two months premature. Carr doesn't fall into the trappings of victimhood or in any way romanticizes his abuse, at least I don't read it that way. Things were presented as a matter of fact. The chronicle of his addiction is a mix of gravitas, humility and humor, which makes it a great read on the beach or I imagine at home too. Carr might think "we all walk this earth feeling we are frauds," but his reportage on his darker years is anything but frauds.

Me and My Girls by David Carr, published July 20, 2008.