MEMOIR : Straight Up –
APRIL 20, 2019 -Also present in the book is Erin Carr’s own crooked journey through addiction and sobriety — another thing she had in common with her father, who chronicled his own trajectory in the memoir “Night of the Gun” — as she also made her way through launching a journalism career of her own with its own ups and downs, some of which were related to the substance abuse narrative and some which were not. There are stretches of sobriety and scary relapses for both Carrs, and Erin’s filmmaker lens never fails to capture the terrified reactions of those closest to her in accounting for her own. Throughout the book she weaves in chat transcripts and emails between her and her father, bringing some of that David Carr voice we’ve been missing in the world back to life in one of its most intimate forms.I spoke to Erin by phone earlier this week about how she made the switch from filmmaking to memoir writing, about how women’s addiction narratives are received differently, and the challenge of writing intimately about a man known by many with the perspective only a daughter can bring.
