We have not read David Carr's drug memoir in its entirety, partly because we were off gallivanting around Europe for the past two weeks, but mostly because there is only so much we can read about Carr abusing women and endangering children, especially when we're reading not out of leisure, but out of obligation for this website. How nice, then, for the countless reviews, pull quotes, and other documentation about the Times reporter's insta-meme book to bring us up to speed. For instance, there is today's New York book review/Carr profile from Jennifer Senior. And she didn't just save us a lot of time, energy, and paper cuts by devoting 4,200 words to Carr. Right there, in the middle of her copy, is the most eloquent explanation of Carr, and his motivation behind The Night of the Gun, for you to see.

But here’s the truth of the matter: David loves this shit. He loves getting notes from Scott Rudin, loves getting those 450 e-mails, loves having defendable real estate in the Monday paper. One of the striking things about David’s description of crack in The Night of the Gun is the sense of omnipotence he associates with it—how it makes you “feel like the lord of all you survey.” When he left New York Magazine for the Times, he told me that one of the main reasons was that he wanted more juice, wanted people to quarrel with him and fear him and read him widely and return his calls in five minutes flat.

Perhaps simplifying Carr's reason for publishing the book — as one about money — was naive.