Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries 1971–1973

Last updated

The Downtown Diaries is a book written by Jim Carroll depicting his life from the years 1971 to 1973. While the book was called The Downtown Diaries, it was not a literal diary, such as The Basketball Diaries . Carroll had stated that most of Forced Entries was written by memory and may or may not have been totally accurate...

Most of the entries in the book are about the times of Carroll's artist career taking off, working with the likes of Andy Warhol in his Factory, hanging out at Max's Kansas City, hanging out with the Velvet Underground. It was stated that he changed the names of many people in the book, not so much for the threat of lawsuits, but due to not wanting his book being purchased and successful by name dropping. For example, “Jenny Ann” was actually Patti Smith, while “D.M.Z.” was the painter/artist Larry Rivers.

The Downtown Diaries also took a look at Carroll's heroin addiction, and his desire to get clean. It details his turning to methadone treatment and leaving New York City for California and his detox and return to New York with a new life.

Reception

In a mixed review, Tom Scanlon of the Peninsula Times Tribune wrote, "Forced Entries, with its short, terse chapters, is good reading, for the most part. Carroll's dialogue is stiff, however, and his insights are indeed at times 'dubious' ... Yet when Jim Carroll hits unselfconscious grooves, his writing has a beautiful rhythm, and a burning honesty. [1] The New York Times critic Christopher Lehmann-Haupt said, "Despite the maturing voice of Forced Entries, the two diaries remain similar in their quest for extreme sensations and their eagerness to shock the reader. One is aware almost throughout that the author is more intelligent than he appears and that he takes a certain pride in dissipating his gifts." [2]

Wood Hochswender of the Los Angeles Times said, "As with any diary, at times the author seems quite full of himself, and, as a consequence, full of something else. ... But somehow Carroll has the slick slang to carry it off. He's a collector of fancy words, and at one point he makes a note to himself to use the words serpentine and abattoir in his poetry. Sure enough, both appear inconspicuously later in the book." [3] In the San Francisco Examiner , Peter Delacorte wrote, "And for the next 30 pages the book is incessantly boring, because Carroll is a fish out of water. In its meandering way, the book has been leading to this: the rite of purification, the great battle against the "small pink simian" that holds Carroll captive. But nothing happens." [4] The Boston Globe 's Joseph Menn stated, "Forced Entries records Carroll's 'obscure rite of passage' as he turned his knowledge of sophisticated, vacuous New York scene-making into personal, life-saving wisdom." [5]

Related Research Articles

<i>Riding the Bullet</i> 2000 novella by Stephen King

Riding the Bullet is a horror novella by American writer Stephen King. It marked King's debut on the Internet. Simon & Schuster, with technology by SoftLock, first published Riding the Bullet in 2000 as the world's first mass-market e-book, available for download at $2.50. That year, the novella was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Long Fiction and the International Horror Guild Award for Best Long Form. In 2002, the novella was included in King's collection Everything's Eventual.

<i>The Boys of Summer</i> (book) 1972 book by Roger Kahn

The Boys of Summer is a 1972 non-fiction baseball book by Roger Kahn. After recounting his childhood in Brooklyn and his life as a young reporter on the New York Herald Tribune, the author relates some history of the Brooklyn Dodgers up to their victory in the 1955 World Series. He then tracks the lives of the players over the subsequent years as they aged. The title of the book is taken from a Dylan Thomas poem that describes "the boys of summer in their ruin".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jim Carroll</span> American author and musician (1949–2009)

James Dennis Carroll was an American author, poet, and punk musician. Carroll was best known for his 1978 autobiographical work The Basketball Diaries, which inspired a 1995 film of the same title that starred Leonardo DiCaprio as Carroll, and his 1980 song "People Who Died" with the Jim Carroll Band.

<i>The Certificate</i> Novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer

The Certificate is a novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer, published in English in 1992. David Bendinger, a poor, young Yiddish writer wishes to emigrate to Palestine from Poland, and because married couples are given preference, he tries to arrange for a marriage certificate to be purchased for him by a wealthy woman whose fiancee lives in Palestine. The narrative deals with the abject poverty of David, as well as his Jewish heritage, and details the rise of both Communism and Zionism.

<i>Possession</i> (Byatt novel) 1990 Booker Prize winner

Possession: A Romance is a 1990 best-selling novel by English writer A. S. Byatt that won the 1990 Booker Prize for Fiction. The novel explores the postmodern concerns of similar novels, which are often categorised as historiographic metafiction, a genre that blends approaches from both historical fiction and metafiction.

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt was an American journalist, editor of the New York Times Book Review, critic, and novelist, based in New York City. He served as senior Daily Book Reviewer from 1969 to 1995.

<i>Electronic Life</i> 1983 nonfiction book by Michael Crichton

Electronic Life is a 1983 nonfiction book by Michael Crichton, an author better known for his novels. It is his third non-fiction book.

<i>Life and Death in Shanghai</i> 1987 autobiography

Life and Death in Shanghai is an autobiographical memoir published in November 1987 by Chinese author Yao Nien-Yuan under the pen name Nien Cheng. Written while in exile in the United States, it tells the story of Cheng's arrest during the early days of the Cultural Revolution, her more than six years' of confinement, persecution, efforts to leave China, and life in exile.

Ronald Sukenick was an American writer and literary theorist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthony Summers</span> Irish author (born 1942)

Anthony Bruce Summers is an Irish author. He is a Pulitzer Prize Finalist and has written ten non-fiction books. He worked for the BBC in current affairs coverage as a producer and then as an assistant editor of the long-running investigative documentary series Panorama. His first book was published in 1976.

<i>Sailor Song</i>

Sailor Song is a 1992 novel written by Ken Kesey. The only work of long fiction solely written by Kesey after Sometimes a Great Notion (1964), Sailor Song depicts the lives of the residents of Kuinak, a small town in Alaska, thirty years in the future – the 2020s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Hidden Game of Football</span>

The Hidden Game of Football: A Revolutionary Approach to the Game and Its Statistics is a book on American football statistics published in 1988 and written by Bob Carroll, John Thorn, and Pete Palmer. It was the first systematic statistical approach to analyzing American football in a book.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph P. Lash</span> American political activist

Joseph Paul Lash was an American radical political activist, journalist, and writer. A close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, Lash won both the Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the National Book Award in Biography for Eleanor and Franklin (1971), the first of two volumes he wrote about the former First Lady.

<i>Go East, Young Man</i>

Go East, Young Man: The Early Years is a memoir written by United States Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. It describes his childhood and early adult life, ending with his appointment to the Court in 1939 at age 40. The title, a play on the famous American expression "Go West, young man", alludes to Douglas's upbringing in the Western United States – being uprooted often, eventually landing in Yakima, Washington – followed by his legal education and professional success in the Eastern United States. It was published by Random House in April 1974 and is 493 pages long.

Good Times, Bad Times is a book, published in 1983, that details Harold Evans' editorship of The Sunday Times and his short-lived editorship of The Times. Written shortly after his departure from The Times, it is particularly critical of the newspaper's owner, Rupert Murdoch. The allegations contained within the book resulted in questions being asked in Parliament. Critics regarded the book as well-written but partisan and were divided as to how convincing they found the arguments it contained. The book was re-issued in 2011 with an updated preface in the wake of the News International phone hacking scandal.

Stalin, a 1997 biography by Edvard Radzinsky of Joseph Stalin, reflects the author's research in Russia's secret archives and consultation with living sources. Radzinsky was allowed to access some documents from the secret Soviet archives after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

<i>Ancient History</i> (novel) 1971 novel by Joseph McElroy

Ancient History: A Paraphase is Joseph McElroy's third novel, published in 1971. It presents itself as a hastily written essay/memoir/confession. The character Dom is sometimes described as a fictionalized Norman Mailer.

<i>Tough Guys Dont Dance</i> (novel) 1984 novel by Norman Mailer

Tough Guys Don't Dance (1984) is a noir thriller and murder mystery novel by American writer Norman Mailer reminiscent of the works of Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Spillane, and Raymond Chandler. The novel was written in only two months in order to fulfill a contractual obligation. The book was adapted into a film, directed by Mailer, in 1987.

<i>Waltzing with a Dictator</i> 1987 American book about US involvement in the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos

Waltzing with a Dictator: The Marcoses and the Making of American Policy is a 1987 book about the policies of the United States toward the two-decade Philippine presidency of Ferdinand Marcos, written by American investigative reporter Raymond Bonner. The book received mixed reviews from critics, who praised its thoroughly detailed history while criticizing its lack of satisfactory analysis.

Hellmut Otto Emil Lehmann-Haupt was a German-American author, academic, bibliography expert, and rare books expert. After World War II, he worked with the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program, commonly known as the Monuments Men.

References

  1. ↑ Scanlon, Tom (1987-09-20). "Strong stomach required: Debauchery is revisited by Jim Carroll" (pages 1 and 2). Peninsula Times Tribune . Archived from the original (pages 1 and 2) on 2023-07-23. Retrieved 2023-07-23 – via Newspapers.com.
  2. ↑ Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (1987-07-09). "Books of the Times; By Christopher Lehmann-Haupt". The New York Times . Archived from the original on 2023-07-23. Retrieved 2023-07-23.
  3. ↑ Hochswender, Woody (1987-10-18). "The Way They Were in Greenwich Village: Down and in Life in the Underground by Ronald Sukenick (Beech Tree Books/William Morrow: $17.95; 288 pp.): Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries 1971–1973 by Jim Carroll (Penguin Books: $6.95; 184 pp". Los Angeles Times . Archived from the original on 2023-07-23. Retrieved 2023-07-23.
  4. ↑ Delacorte, Peter (1987-07-12). "A Follow-Through Beyond The Hoop" (pages 1 and 2). San Francisco Examiner . Archived from the original (pages 1 and 2) on 2023-07-23. Retrieved 2023-07-23 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. ↑ Menn, Joseph (1987-07-09). "Jim Carroll, escape article. A writer comes back from the edge" (pages 1 and 2). The Boston Globe . Archived from the original (pages 1 and 2) on 2023-07-23. Retrieved 2023-07-23 – via Newspapers.com.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.