Final Draft: The Collected Work of David Carr

by David Carr, Ta-Nehisi Coates (Foreword by), Jill Rooney Carr (Editor)

Overview

“A revelatory collection reminding us of what journalism used to be—and what it ought to be.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Throughout his twenty-five-year career, David Carr was noted for his sharp and fearless observations, his uncanny sense of fairness and justice, and his remarkable compassion and wit. His writing was informed both by his own hardships as an addict and his intense love of the journalist’s craft. His range—from media politics to national politics, from rock ‘n’ roll celebrities to the unknown civil servants who make our daily lives function—was broad and often timeless. Edited by his widow, Jill Rooney Carr, and with an introduction by one of the many journalists David Carr mentored, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Final Draft is a career-spanning selection of the legendary reporter’s writing for the New York Times, Washington City Paper, New York Magazine, the Atlantic, and more.

“Wit, style, empathy, tough questions—it’s all here, in this collection by the one-man journalism school that was David Carr . . . Final Draft allows us to read decades of David’s best reportage about corruption, racism, celebrity, addiction, disease, and his love for his family, his skills only outdone by his humanity.” —Jake Tapper, CNN Chief Washington Correspondent

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780358171928
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	12/15/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	402
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

DAVID CARR was one of the most prolific and celebrated journalists of our time. Carr edited and wrote for a wide variety of publications, including the Twin City Reader in Minneapolis, the Washington City Paper, Inside.com, New York Magazine, the Atlantic, and the New York Times, where he created The Carpetbagger and the Media Equation columns. His memoir, The Night of the Gun, in which he chronicled his battles with substance addictions and his ultimate recovery, was a national bestseller. In 2015, Carr died at the age of 58.
 
JILL ROONEY CARR works in hospitality in the New York City area. She and David Carr married in 1994.

Table of Contents

Introduction Jill Rooney Carr ix

Foreword Ta-Nehisi Coates xi

1 Early Freelance in Minnesota

New Home Isn't Pretty, but I Came from Hell Anyway 3

Fishing Trip to Boundary Waters 10

Drinking and Flying 16

Faegre's "Women Who Run with the Wolves" 34

Brian Coyle's Secret 38

Even in Facing AIDS, Coyle Served Truth and His City 51

2 Family Times

Because I Said So … 57

3 Twin Cities Reader

Prodigal Clown 79

Paranoid or Positive? 89

IR Queer 100

Still Life with Alien 110

Indictment City 121

Jackpot City 125

Public Dis'course 128

4 Washington City Paper

Andrew Sullivan Out at New Republic 133

Good News Traveling Too Fast 135

Gored 141

Sidney Blumenthal 145

Sally Quinn on Vernon Jordan 148

Kids Say the Darnedest Things 151

Road Trip 156

Crash Course 161

Death March 165

People (Not) Like Us 168

Who Asked You? 172

One Last Hitch 177

Goodbye to All That 181

Oral Exam 198

Oh Say, Why Can't We See? 203

5 Magazines

Slower Than a Speeding Bullet 209

Details Reborn 218

Me, Me, Me™ 224

Who Needs Writers and Actors When the Whole World Is Your Backlot? 225

The Futility of "Homeland Defense" 229

A New Mask 236

18 Truths About the New New York 238

Gathering to Remember 244

That's All, Folks! 246

6 New York Times

Neil Young Comes Clean 251

Both Hero and Villain, and Irresistible 263

At Flagging Tribune, Tales of a Bankrupt Culture 269

Ezra Klein Is Joining Vox Media as Web Journalism Asserts Itself 281

When Fox News Is the Story 285

Deadly Intent 292

Been Up, Been Down. Now? Super 296

Before They Went Bad 303

Calling Out Bill Cosby's Media Enablers, Including Myself 309

All Hall the Helix 314

View, Interrupted 317

Breaking Away, but by the Rules 320

7 All the Rest

The Wrestler 327

Press Play 330

All That You Leave Behind 342

Cats 355

Untitled Essay 362

The So-Called Artist's Lifestyle 365

Acknowledgments 376

Credits 377

Editorial Reviews

★ 01/27/2020

David Carr (The Night of the Gun), who died in 2015, was a consummate journalist with a gift for memorable expression, as demonstrated in this rewarding volume edited by his widow. Its 56 columns and features span his 25-year career and beats that ranged from Minnesota to Manhattan, where, from the New York Times’s culture desk, he wrote “The Carpetbagger” film industry column. The pieces include celebrity profiles (such as of Neil Young and Philip Seymour Hoffman), a look at the fall of the Tribune Company’s newspaper empire, and dissection of local Washington, D.C., politics. The most powerful selections, about Carr’s early struggles with cocaine and alcohol addiction, frequently serve up observations stunning in their candor and self-awareness: “Crack users are universally paranoid consumptive eunuchs who show little interest in things unrelated to their addiction.” Throughout, Carr’s work is a model of concision, demonstrating a skill at crystallizing an idea in a single resonant sentence as, when writing about 9/11’s impact on New York City’s psyche, he observes, “This is the place where the world seemed to end in a single morning.” Readers will appreciate having this wide-ranging sample of Carr’s inimitable perspective on American life. Agent: Flip Brophy, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Reading David Carr again is a reminder of how much we miss him. He is never predictable, a disease infecting most columnists. As this book attests, his interests ranged wide. Pick your subject: Bill Clinton? Press blowhards? Washington insiders? Fox News? Silicon Valley? Julian Assange? He is always provocative, though never gratuitous. He is funny, but not mean. His prose sings. And for those who knew him, his prose is only part of what made Carr special. Read this delicious book and you will glimpse the other part: what a good, generous man David Carr was.”—Ken Auletta, author of Frenemies "A revelatory collection reminding us of what journalism used to be—and what it ought to be."—Kirkus, STARRED review "Readers will appreciate having this wide-ranging sample of Carr’s inimitable perspective on American life."—Publishers Weekly, STARRED review “I was so lucky 20 years ago to get a note from a Washington journalist I didn't know whose work I'd never read who was interested in working at my new online publication in New York that didn't yet exist. I read David Carr's clips and immediately fell in love, met him and fell in love some more, then instantly hired him to come along on that adventure. And for the rest of his life I was so proud every time he said — classic Carrism —  I'd picked him up after he he'd fallen off a turnip truck.”—Kurt Andersen, Studio 360 “Wit, style, empathy, tough questions — it’s all here, in this collection by the one-man journalism school that was David Carr. Lovingly curated by his wife, Final Draft allows us to read decades of David’s best reportage about corruption, racism, celebrity, addiction, disease, and his love for his family, his skills only outdone by his humanity. God, I miss him.”—Jake Tapper, CNN —

From the Publisher

04/01/2020

Journalist Carr (1956–2015) began his impressive career in his home state of Minnesota, then moved to Washington, DC, and finally to New York and the New York Times. The mostly chronological layout of this collection allows readers to see Carr develop his style and hone his skills. He wrote about politics both local and national, media and business news, his home life, show business, and more. His takedowns of media and show business figures are lacerating and precise. He even takes himself to task for being one of the many reporters (including Ta-Nehisi Coates, who contributes a foreword) that "looked away" from the burgeoning sexual assault charges against performer Bill Cosby. He's especially tender with reformed and not-so-reformed addicts, having walked that path himself. While some pieces may seem dated, many address issues and people still on the scene today—Hillary Clinton, Fox News, Robert Downey Jr., the dismantling of newsrooms, government and corporate chicanery. Standouts include a visit with the interview-averse Neil Young, a slow Acela train ride, and articles about Details magazine, the DC social scene, and cats on the internet. VERDICT This collection will make readers wish Carr was still here to share his observations. A must for aspiring journalists and fans of Carr who want to read more of his award-winning reporting.—Liz French, Library Journal

Library Journal

★ 2019-12-29
A collection of key pieces of the renowned journalist, who died unexpectedly at 58 in 2015.

Arranged more or less chronologically, these pieces commence in the 1980s, when Carr (The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life, His Own, 2008), a Minnesota native, was a freelancer in his home state. Gradually, we move through his other gigs: Family Times (a monthly local in the Twin Cities), Twin Cities Reader, Washington City Paper, Atlantic Monthly, New York Magazine, and the New York Times, where he died in the newsroom. The earlier pieces include some very personal ones about his substance abuse and struggles with cancer, but there are also investigative pieces about other assorted topics, including hungover airline pilots and a gay political candidate. Throughout are a number of celebrity profiles: Tom Arnold, Sally Quinn, Neil Young, Bill Cosby, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robert Downey Jr. (In the Cosby piece, Carr chides himself for not pursuing the rape allegations about the now-incarcerated comedian.) The author also provides coverage of Bill Clinton's impeachment, 9/11, and the journalism profession (plagiarism, Fox News, the toxic effects of Ann Coulter). Related to all of this is an 11-page copy of a journalism syllabus for a course he taught at Boston University. Sometimes the pieces are thematically arranged. Near the end are two separated by 12 years; both deal with the view as drivers approach New York City (the author was commuting from New Jersey at the time). Throughout the book, Carr displays profound care about his craft, flashes of humor, and, when necessary, genuine fangs: See his 2015 piece about a neighbor's cat, and witness the gleam of his verbal scalpel that vivisects Coulter. Carr's wife, Jill, served as the editor for the book, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, who worked for Carr at Washington City Paper, provides the foreword.

A revelatory collection reminding us of what journalism used to be—and what it ought to be.

Kirkus Reviews