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The Basketball Diaries
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The Basketball Diaries is a 1978 book written by American author Jim Carroll. It is an edited collection of the diaries he kept between the ages of twelve and sixteen. Set in New York City, they detail his daily life, sexual experiences, high school basketball career, Cold War paranoia, the counter-culture movement, and, especially, his addiction to heroin, which began when he was 13.
He begins using heroin "once in a moon," but, in the last entry, he talks about staying high for four days straight on a "ratty mattress," with his "two sets of gimmicks right along side me in the slightly bloody water in the plastic cup on the crusty linoleum, probably used by every case of hepatitis in upper Manhattan by now." However, the diaries are not only about heroin. They are also about the coming of age of an independent, strong-willed youth on the dirty New York streets and its characters.
The book is considered a classic piece of adolescent literature. Carroll later followed up his original memoirs with a "sequel" of sorts called The Downtown Diaries which follows his relocation to California and his continued addiction to heroin.
The book was later made into a film in 1995 starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
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