Carr stands at the respected top of his profession. Twenty-one years ago he was at the bottom, not just of a profession but life as well. At 31 he was fired in brilliant mid-career from a small but vigorous Minneapolis paper. Ten years of wild partying and a hellish downward spiral from pot and alcohol to cocaine and then to crack had caught up with him.
"The Night of the Gun" is Carr's record of downfall and climb-back; both are told unsparingly, the first with grisly detail, the second without complacency. The climb was perilous all the way, and it remains perilous still. In essence, Carr tries to connect the seemingly ruined "That Guy" with the seemingly saved "This Guy."
"Seemingly" is the key, despite the writer's achievements, his nice suburban home, a loyal second wife, and two grown twin daughters. (Brands plucked from the fire, these: He and their mother were both heavily on crack. The babies were 2 1/2 months premature and weighed less than 3 pounds. Saving their lives and caring for them became the point and pivot for Carr's long, bumpy, and always uncertain recovery.)
The wild years are vividly recounted. Cocaine was an enhancement in the short run, providing manic bursts of energy, a sense of omnipotence, and a super-charger effect on his scoop-filled newspaper work.
There was a lurid downside, of course. What was to be a climactic interview with Minnesota's governor over a state-house scandal ended with the latter mopping anxiously at the blood that suddenly gushed from Carr's nose. There was the first wife who couldn't abide the wildness and left, and a longtime lover whom Carr brutally beat when she showed signs of clinging.
Going from inhaling cocaine to smoking crack turned savage disorder into savage near-catatonia. No more enhancement, only an obsessive pursuit of the stuff. Even Carr's partying friends fell away, and some of his dealers, and his work crumbled. So did the woman he lived with: a respectable housewife and big-time coke dealer and the twins' mother, who followed him into his crack habit.
