The summer of death has claimed another one. Jim Carroll can add himself to the list of 'People Who Died', because the groundbreaking poet and musician has passed away at 60. His former wife, Rosemary Carroll, confirmed that he had a heart attack Friday and passed.
Carroll is best known for his journals chronicling his days as a hustler and heroin addict in The Basketball Diaries, which was adapted in a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio. He was one of the founding fathers of the New York City seventies alternative literary scene. Along with sometime-lover Patti Smith, Carroll challenged conventional poetry and created some of the best work in the past forty years. His humor in the face of a bleak and hostile pre-Disney New York granted his admirers an inside peak into a world normally difficult to properly articulate. Only Carroll could turn a story about catching crabs into the hilarious anecdote A Day At The Races.
In 1980, he experienced some cross-over commercial success with his musical album Catholic Boy, featuring the popular single People Who Died, a profound achievement in itself because it managed to turn the endless list of tragic and untimely deaths he'd experienced into a blurring, endless mass where after a while, it just becomes one-liners and brief memories. That was his strength as a writer: to express the nihilistic attitude about the horrors one encounters in life, and how the nihilism is actually a survival mechanism.
It's unclear when his latest novel, The Petting Zoo, will be released. He was a great talent and will be missed.
I'll live for your sins if you'll die for mine.
--Fear of Dreaming
Comments
No, you don't add his name to the list of People who Died, this witless obvious twee comment made 10,000 times in the last few days by hack web writers... People Who Died is about people who died young, very YOUNG... Carroll lived well more than twice as long as anyone in that song.
Silly Examiner nonsense.
PS
The damned quote is "I'll live for your sins if you'll die for mine." You got it all wrong, but you did get the ad clicks. A few million more and you can buy a copy of Catholic Boy and maybe get it right.
I was actually a huge Carroll fan and had the pleasure of seeing him perform and speak with me in New York City several years ago, and I'm deeply saddened by the loss of such an excellent poet, but I'm glad 'typo' could turn my memorial page into a desperate bid for snide hipster counter-culture scene credibility.
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