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    A Study Guide for Jim Carroll's "The Basketball Diaries"
    A Study Guide for Jim Carroll's "The Basketball Diaries"
    A Study Guide for Jim Carroll's "The Basketball Diaries"
    Ebook36 pages27 minutes

    A Study Guide for Jim Carroll's "The Basketball Diaries"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Jim Carroll's "The Basketball Diaries," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Nonfiction Classics for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Nonfiction Classics for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateSep 20, 2016
    ISBN9781535835268
    A Study Guide for Jim Carroll's "The Basketball Diaries"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Jim Carroll's "The Basketball Diaries" - Gale

      1

      The Basketball Diaries

      Jim Carroll

      1978

      Introduction

      The publication of Jim Carroll's diary, entitled The Basketball Diaries: Age Twelve to Fifteen (1978), had been eagerly awaited. The book, which is generally referred to by its main title alone, had started appearing in excerpt form throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s in various literary publications. Carroll claimed that the diaries were written at the time in which the events related took place. However, some critics wondered how much the diaries were edited before publication, especially since the book includes many outrageous incidents. Regardless of its authenticity, the book made a statement when it was published. Some people at that time were glorifying the image of life in the 1960s urban counterculture. Carroll's gritty diary was explicit; it took readers inside the real world of drug addiction, male prostitution, and crime in 1960s New York.

      The book also discussed what life was like for war babies—people who grew up under the constant fear of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War—and the difficulty in remaining neutral in the 1960s antiwar debate. The Basketball Diaries has become Carroll's best-known work, especially after the release of a 1995 film adaptation starring Leonardo DiCaprio. In 1987, Carroll published a sequel, Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries, 1971-73.

      Author Biography

      Jim Carroll was born in New York City on August 1, 1951. When he was growing up on the tough streets of Manhattan, Carroll pursued careers as a basketball player and writer. While Carroll's massive drug use as a teenager extinguished any hope of his becoming a basketball star, his poetry about these drug experiences put him on the road to literary stardom. After the publication of his first two poetry collections, Organic Trains (1967) and Four Ups and One Down (1970), Carroll's poetry was relatively unknown outside underground circles. That changed with the publication of his third poetry collection, Living at the Movies (1973). By this time, Carroll was also making a name for himself with his autobiographical prose writing, which had begun appearing in various literary magazines in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

      In 1978, these disjointed prose writings were collected in one limited-edition volume, entitled

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