All the People Who Died

I've always had an abiding wonder for books and a healthy respect for the authors and poets who create those books. I think that's part of the reason why I find myself working with words and holding advanced degrees in English and literature. But it took me a long time to really appreciate writers and see them not as Famous Authors that inhabit black and white photos or exist only in card games, but as real people facing real issues. And the best among them put their struggle with those issues at the center of their work.

Jim Carroll was one of the best.

I was saddened to hear that Jim had died, much to my surprise. It seems like a lot of famous people have been dying lately, or maybe famous people have always been dying and lately just a number of famous people I know about have died. But none of those deaths made me sad the way Jim's did. And that's a bit surprising when you consider that I read only one of his books (Basketball Diaries, of course) and some of his poems. But I saw him live and in person three times: I felt his magnetism in person and sat rapt as he put life--his life--to what had only been words on a page. And those were rich experiences. The first time I saw him, when I was in college and he was giving a reading at some club in Greenwich Village, I went to the bathroom before the reading began, and at the urinal next to me was this very tall, very thin man who exited the bathroom and took him place on stage. Somehow, that seems a fitting introduction to Jim Carroll.

It's true that his words will live on, but unlike most of the dead authors I've read--and still read--knowing that Jim Carroll is not alive will for me take away a little of the life he left on the page.