SOURCE: “‘A Sickness That Takes Years to Perfect’: Jim Carroll's Alchemical Vision” in Dionysos: Literature and Addiction Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 1, Winter 1996, pp. 6-19.

In the following essay, Carter offers an assessment of Carroll's diaries, poems, and rock lyrics. Carter discusses the role of Carroll's drug use and addiction in the “ongoing struggle to transform the raw materials of his life into a pure reality” that defines him as an artist.

pollution is a result of the inability of man to transform waste. the transformation of waste is perhaps the oldest preoccupation of man. gold, being the chosen alloy, must be resurrected—via shit, at all cost. inherent within us is the dream and task of the alchemist. to create from clay a man. and to recapture from the excretions of man pure and soft then solid gold.

—Patti Smith, “The Salvation of Rock,” Babel (140)

Jim Carroll was 12 years...