In his teens, Jim Carroll roamed the streets of New York-shooting baskets with some of New York's best "playground" stars and shooting heroin with some of the city's most memorable street characters. The Basketball Diaries is Carroll's chronicle of those years. Written while in his teens, it is a literary tour-de-force and a stunning portrait of contemporary urban street life. Throughout, the characters and incidents are moving and funny and sad-but always very real.
