'Final Draft' Compiles The Best Of Late Journalist David Carr
The journalist David Carr was a master of his craft and a mentor to many aspiring journalists, including Ta-Nehisi Coates, who Carr hired as an intern when he was the editor of the Washington City Paper.
A new book, “Final Draft: The Collected Work of David Carr,” includes more than 50 of his stories, from his early days as a freelancer in Minneapolis to his writing about the media at The New York Times.
Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson talks to Jill Rooney Carr, David Carr’s widow, who edited the book.
Book Excerpt From ‘Final Draft: The Collected Work Of David Carr’
By David Carr
Still Life with Alien
How the Monster from Inner Space Took Over My Life
Appeared in Twin Cities Reader
August 24–30, 1994
From the time I was little, I loved watching movies about aliens.
Years after I saw The Day the Earth Stood Still, my dreams were filled with steel-noggined guys who spoke in detached, tinny voices as they ordered the world to submit. Their invasion was relentless but seductively ordered and controlled. Those aliens of my childhood seemed very far away — just so many dots on my parents’ crappy black-and-white TV.
They didn’t scare me, and if they did come, well, I’d know what to do.
The aliens became more menacing with the passage of nights. They arrived in the longest part of sleep, when consciousness steps back and reveals a darkness within. In that nightmarish reverie the invaders seemed more explicitly interested in me than in world domination.
They didn’t wear helmets or live on TV. In these dreams they appeared as a part of me I couldn’t quite recognize, with an intimacy that made them infinitely more confounding.
When the alien of my dreams made its presence known in my waking life on December 10, 1992, I stepped aside immediately, regarding myself and the alien with inexplicable detachment. I couldn’t bear sharing space — even for a second — with something that was after me . . . in me.
During the time of occupation, I answered my phone with excessive cheerfulness, wrote reassuring notes to old girlfriends, and smiled knowingly whenever someone in a white coat revealed something sharp in their hands. I put my fingers in my ears and hummed tunelessly until someone told me it was gone. I acted as if I had been merely interrupted.
I can remember
