Starts Like a Kiss and Ends Like a Curse: The Enigma of Jim Carroll

Harlow Crandall researched the Library's Jim Carroll papers as a recipient of an NYPL Short-Term Research Fellowship.  For more information on the fellowship opportunities offered by the Library, visit nypl.org/fellowships.

Three signed baseballs, a trophy plaque, and two adult teeth. The archivist wasn't kidding when he said, "You might need gloves for this box." Clearly, Jim Carroll did not exaggerate his athletic prowess in The Basketball Diaries, or his dental issues, for that matter. Under the yellow glow of the reading lamp, my mind spun through a series of variables. Is this the tooth that pierced his lip as described in Forced Entries, a sequel to his earlier diaries that depicted his further descent into the New York underground of the 1970s? 

"No. These are encroaching on molar territory," I thought, rolling the plastic pouch in my palm. Inside, the white label reads, "Jim Carroll - TEETH, n.d." With only a few stray documents in the collection housed in the Manuscripts and Archives Division that predate Jim Carroll's 1978 flight from New York, this theory didn't make much sense either. It seems he did, in fact, leave New York in a rush, leaving everything behind as he escaped the dark undercurrent of temptation for the Sunshine State and the security of methadone maintenance.

With every answer that unfolded, at least two new questions arose on this journey through the archives. Even my own life became entwined in the contents as I stumbled across a letter with the name Richard Kaza, a former club owner and friend of mine from Rochester tasked with transporting Carroll from the airport. 

Despite a gold record (albeit for an appearance on …And Out Come the Wolves) and Leonardo DiCaprio's depiction of the author in 1995's The Basketball Diaries, much of Carroll's legacy has been criminally ignored. Even Jack Kerouac's early endorsement, "Jim Carroll writes better prose than 89% of the novelists working today," and Patti Smith's praise, "One of America's greatest poets, and certainly the best of my generation," have failed to sustain his cultural currency. There's no biography and only sparse scholarship. Since I had only two weeks to explore these archives, these realities necessitated the following approach: photograph everything—analyze it later. Even at these earliest stages of combing through the material, important dynamics of his life and work are becoming clear. 

Given that Jim Carroll titled his punk debut Catholic Boy, it shouldn't be a surprise that his faith served as a framework for his experiences and art. However, the esoteric nature of his research reveals a fervent dedication or possible obsession. The materials housed by the Library illustrate some tentative but fascinating possibilities. 

Out of the 54 boxes of materials, only two items were owned by his parents. One is his mother's Bible which contains extensive annotations, notably in the same style Carroll would utilize in his research. The other is his father's World War II diary. The entries are sparse and matter-of-fact, with a clinical detachment: "Marvin got killed by 29." It isn't hard to imagine Jim as a young writer searching these entries for clues to his father's experiences and being left with more questions than answers. This leather-bound notebook was possibly stuck in his psyche when he began drafting The Basketball Diaries.

In contrast to his father's journal, Carroll would document his own life in detail, capturing the ecstatic heights of a young writer's imagination and the violence of teenage prostitution. Yet it wasn't until I saw these materials together that I fully understood how the diaries worked within his lens of Catholicism. Only then did I understand the fundamental nature of the form—the confessional. 

When Jim Carroll passed away in 2009, his longtime editor Betsy Lerner commented to the New York Times that his final years were marked by irregular writing habits punctuated by romantic flights of productivity. The Petting Zoo would be posthumously published just over a year following his death. The novel met a tepid reception, an anticlimactic ending for an artist who envisioned himself rising like a phoenix from the ashes. Yet, despite the novel's most tired and labored points, there are moments where Carroll's prose rises to life and burns with white light like magnesium.

What has become clear to me now, after my time with the archives, is this final work experienced a 20-year gestation. Jim Carroll's personal library served as more than a private collection of his favorite literature. These books were part of his artistic process. He often wrote his own poems next to Baudelaire's. He extensively researched bizarre and forgotten Catholic narratives, drawing inspiration from and even naming the protagonist Billy Wolfram after Wolfram Von Eschenbach.

Given his dedication to the project, the question remains: why wasn't The Petting Zoo his magnum opus? Following what seems to be a surprisingly amicable divorce from his wife, Rosemary, Carroll's life appears to have been thrust into chaos by the mid-1990s. With the band and his most culturally resonant publications behind him, it seems Jim Carroll was faced with $100,000 owed in back taxes. These financially-crippling circumstances were coupled with his deteriorating health and ongoing issues stemming from a diagnosis of Hepatitis C. 

A letter dated April 27, 1999 from Danny Sugerman, sent with a leather jacket, appears to have sparked Carroll's work on new lyrics at the start of the century. Additionally, he had begun formalizing plans for a new work tentatively titled Rock and Roll Diaries that drew on notes from his touring years in the early 1980s. Unfortunately, it seems plans for a quick financial fix faded, and the author was left with few choices but to sign a contract and finish The Petting Zoo. 

Some details are unknown, but it appears that Jim Carroll required frequent hospitalizations near the end of his life. These occurrences had a destabilizing effect, resulting in at least one eviction and the loss of computer documents. Fearing his demise, Carroll left a note in his documents. In it, he recounts the loss of files in a "computer blunder" and that "I would have been done if these idiot slumlords did not throw me out of my work zone in such a callous way." Increasingly it looks as though Jim Carroll saw his own destiny entwined with the untimely demise of Billy Wolfram. 

Departing New York, the plane pulled above LaGuardia. The in-flight film flickered as I realized I had left the city with more questions than answers. But what about those teeth? Maybe these account for Jim Carroll's vision of Arthur Rimbaud abandoned to dream in a haze of nitrous-oxide gas by his dentist: "Of women with black skin whose lips were like drums. Of rodents sealed in kegs of blue water. Of lightning shaped like freight trains passing vertically through the branches of a tree. Whose leaves were knives falling to the earth and standing upright. There was a speed in these visions, each dissolved into the next with thin wheels in flame dropping from the sky. And there were words painted in many colors across the foreheads of women whose arms linked like a chain."