The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life. His Own. Book

This is perhaps the best memoir I have ever read. The approach Carr takes to this overbaked genre is unique and genre-busting. He reports on his own life--interviewing, researching, synthesizing--and ends up with an endlessly engaging, brutally honest tome about a remarkable life. His voice is gritty, kind of wiseguy-ish, full of easy slang, reminded me of Jim Knipfel (which I consider to be a huge compliment, by the way). I couldn't read this book fast enough, stayed up late in the evening to read it by flashlight in bed next to my husband. I also live in the city where much of the book takes place, and it was quite interesting for me to get a taste of a side of Minneapolis I didn't even know existed (not to mention the fact that Carr was arrested not three blocks from house, in Hopkins).

I've read some reviews that have whined about wanting more about why Carr drank, why he drugged, that whole tearing-the-skin-off-your-heart bullshit that is forced down our throats on a regular basis whenever we pick up an addiction memoir. I've steered clear of addiction memoirs for this very reason. I'm less interested in the why's (the why's for such things end up being remarkably similar) and more interested in Carr's take on the way memory functions, the way we, as Joan Didion once wrote, "tell ourselves stories in order to live," especially stories about ourselves. It is this aspect of NIGHT OF THE GUN that is so important--it holds every memoir writer to a higher standard of "accuracy" in the genre. If we expect others to read the stories of our lives, we must ruthlessly and as objectively as possible examine our life and consider, on a daily basis as we write, that our version might not be the correct version after all.

I teach memoir writing. This will be assigned reading in my classes from now on.