- The Basketball Diaries
"The Basketball Diaries" is a 1978 book written by American author and musician
Jim Carroll . It is an edited collection of the diaries he kept between the ages of twelve and sixteen. Set inNew York City , they detail his daily life, sexual experiences, high school basketball career,Cold War paranoia, the counter-culture movement, and, especially, his addiction toheroin , which began when he was 13.Caroll 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 alongside [him] 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."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.Film adaptation
The book was made into a film in 1995 starring
Leonardo DiCaprio . This film can be watched on .
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