Jim Carroll wrote his way into the white hole

 

Diarist, poet and musician Jim Carroll died of a heart attack at his Manhattan home on September 11th, 2009.  Carroll is best known for his memoir of life as a basketball star and teen junkie, The Basketball Diaries, which appeared in 1978 and was made into a film by the same name starring Leonardo DiCaprio seventeen years later, though he published several volumes of poetry and prose after its release. A further series of diaries, Forced Entries,  covers the time Carroll spent working at

 

Andy Warhol's Factory, and hanging around the St. Mark's Poetry Project in New York, where he met poet Allen Ginsberg, who served as a sort of caretaker for young writers like himself, Billy Burroughs and Patti Smith through the sixties and seventies.

Also in 1978, encouraged by punk poetess Patti Smith, Carroll formed The Jim Carroll Band, whose first single, "People Who Died," was a multiple eulogy to several friends. The band was lyrically distinct from other bands of the time like the Patti Smith Group, the Ramones and Television, but shared the same insurrectionary flavor.

Furher details of Jim Carroll's life and work can be found at Cassie Carter's website, www.CatholicBoy.com He was 59 years old at the time of his death, which reportedly occurred while he was working at his desk, perhaps on his unfinished novel, tentatively titled Petting Zoo.