The Basketball Diaries: The Classic About Growing Up Hip On New York’s Mean Streets

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1978

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Parts 1-4

Parts 5-8

Parts 9-10

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Parts 9-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 9 Summary: “Winter 1966”

A symptom of his war-related anxiety, Jim has a fantasy of bringing a gun to school and “cut[ing] the place to ribbons” (149). Jim clarifies that he does not want to shoot students, but rather the institution of school itself. The Cold War is constantly looming overhead, a “subtle way of life” (150) that makes him feel as if he is living on borrowed time, always hoping to make it to the end before the big bomb hits. Jim begins to see the Cold War more clearly as a tool for instilling fear. He also worries about being drafted into the Vietnam War before accomplishing his goal of becoming a writer.

Jim continues to recount his time playing basketball. One of Jim’s rich friends, Benny, is gay and offers him a position on his basketball team. Benny invites Jim over to try on a uniform and tricks him into getting undressed. When he begins molesting Jim, Jim punches him and runs out. Jim is “so freaked out that [he] even forgot [he] was afraid of elevators” (159). He stays on his own team and earns a bad reputation—along with his group of friends—for being high during games. It comes to a head when police come to his school and do a full locker search; Jim manages to toss his stash before he is caught.

As Jim grows into a man, he becomes more introspective. He talks about his need to write and sees poetry as “a raw block of stone ready to be shaped” (159). Jim appreciates the limitless nature of writing and the opportunity for full and honest expression. He gets his ideas for poems from images that pop into his head. He is well aware of his increasing maturity, writing “I’m just a really wise ass kid getting wiser” (160). Jim also experiments with drag and sadomasochism for an older sexual partner’s sake. He ends this part of the book by describing his addiction symptoms, acquaintances’ deaths, and brawls over drug deals gone wrong. Jim is eventually caught and sent to juvenile prison for heroin possession but gets out early with help from his headmaster. Jim writes very little during this period as nobody visits him.

Part 10 Summary: “Spring and Summer 1966”

Upon being released, Jim relishes in the experiences he once took for granted, like being outside when he chooses and eating food he enjoys. His first stop is the Headquarters for a hit of heroin. A few days later, he has a bad LSD trip and realizes he is alone in the universe. Jim struggles to maintain his habits and realizes he needs to quit; he lasts three days before picking up the habit again (like he tried to do in Part 7). Jim becomes so desperate for heroin as prices rise that he begins holding people up for money. He is constantly in fear of the cops as well, something he calls the “cop jitters” (201). He also admits to being turned on by a sexual encounter with a man in a bathroom, though he frames it as a power trip more than anything. Most of the final entries in Jim’s diary center on acquiring and consuming dope. One humorous incident sees Jim and a friend follow some people into a cellar assuming they are selling heroin, only to find they are selling fireworks. Other encounters are fraught with fear and risk. The book ends with Jim waking from a four-day heroin binge and saying once more, “I just want to be pure” (210).

Parts 9-10 Analysis

A 16-year-old Jim’s heroin addiction spirals out of control. He grows accustomed to living under the shadow of the Cold War and feels indifferent towards the life around him. Jim constantly dreams about finding refuge in nature, but instead becomes more and more addicted to heroin. Jim’s level of risk hits its peak when he turns 16—he begins holding people up and threatening to stab them if they do not give him money. While Jim expresses mild guilt over this, he glibly explains that it is just part of the lifestyle of addiction and a “means of getting up bread to score” (201). He is also caught once and sent to juvenile prison for three months. The experience teaches him little as he returns to the scene upon release. Many of Jim’s friends die from drug dealings gone wrong. While Jim wrote about other experiences such as basketball and school when he was 14, these types of entries become few and far between near the end of the book. He still attends games, but he is always high and performs poorly compared to his younger days. His entries become consumed with events surrounding heroin and the highs it provides him. Jim ends his autobiography with a final plea for purity, because more than anything, he wishes to be free of the pain and politics of his culture. He uses heroin to break free from it all but instead winds up sucked in further than ever before.

But not all is lost as Jim experiences a growing passion for writing—and his desire to do so for a living. Through his diary, he learns a great deal about himself and the world around him. He wants to share the truth about what living as a teenager in New York in the 1960s is really like. Jim Carroll pursued this passion after all, publishing his first poetry collection at age 17 and several more in the following years.