The Basketball Diaries: The Classic About Growing Up Hip on New York's Mean Streets

Today Jim Carroll is a renowned poet and rock performer. But in the mid-1960s, during his coming-of-age from twelve to fifteen, he was a rebellious teenager making a place and a name for himself on the unforgiving streets of New York City, During these years, he chronicled his experiences, and the result is a diary of unparalleled candor that conveys his alternately hilarious and terrifying teenage existence. Here is Carroll prowling New York City - playing basketball, hustling, stealing, getting high, getting hooked, and searching for something pure. The Basketball Diaries was the basis for the film of the same name starring Leonardo Di Caprio.