By the time The Basketball Diaries was published in a limited-edition book in 1978, and again in wider distribution in 1980, it was already a hit with underground readers. Literary critics soon followed suit. Many of them, such as Jamie James in his 1980 review of the book for American Book Review, discuss the gritty nature of the book. As James notes, it is "a blow-by-blow account of a season in Hell." James, like many other critics, was impressed by the literary skill of the young Carroll. Says James of the book, it "is a literary miracle; a description of the formation of an artistic sensibility written by the artist, not in retrospect, but in the process." Several other critics also note Carroll's talent. Says Barbara Graustark of Carroll in her 1980 review of the book for Newsweek: "His terse wit, with its archly contrived naivete, transformed a tale of...