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To rock audiences, Jim Carroll's crowning achievement was the near-hit "People Who Died," a brutally emotional punk record saluting the victims of the New York drug culture. In truth, however, Carroll's artistic legacy was considerably more complex and far-ranging -- an acclaimed diarist, poet, actor, and spoken word performer, his formative years even served as the subject of the film The Basketball Diaries. The product of a working-class background, Carroll was born and raised in New York City. He was a highly touted basketball prospect, and Jack Kerouac's On the Road inspired him to begin keeping a journal at the age of 12; later published in 1978 as The Basketball Diaries, his early writings vividly chronicled his teenage addiction to heroin, which led him into a life of crime and hustling. By the time he was 16, Carroll was a published poet; 1973's Living at the Movies further established his reputation as a prodigy and funded a move to Northern California, where he was finally a...