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A student of lifeDecember 2011
Published: November 7, 2011 In the late 1980s, I was living in Mexico City and had just started my first job in publishing: copy editor of the Mexico Journal, an English-language newsweekly. In those days, the continent’s biggest city was a great place for young U.S. and Canadian journalists to hone their craft before returning home with clips and experience. Publications like the Journal covered everything from politics to the arts for the large foreign community in Mexico, and reporters had easy access to local and national players in government, business and culture.
Sooner or later, many expat journalists there ended up at The News, an English-language daily that’s seen a number of incarnations since its founding in 1952. On the job, I quickly heard about the legendary News editor from New York who had walked off the job rather than kowtow to publisher demands to take a pro-government stance in his coverage of leftist student protests. More than a dozen News staffers resigned with him in a show of solidarity. The editor? Pete Hamill.
In his long, award-winning career, Hamill has done it all: short stories, novels, memoirs, screenplays and nonfiction, plus storied stints as reporter, columnist, editor, political speechwriter and magazine writer. He has written about everything from art and photography to war and boxing and, most of all, his beloved New York City.
In “A man for all literary seasons” (page 22), Tom Callahan talks to Hamill about his career as a writing generalist, a rare breed in a field rife with specialists. A high-school dropout at 16, Hamill says he’s “been playing catch-up ball ever since. I wanted to know about everything.” He adds, “I’ve known for decades that no single person can know everything. Obviously. But you could certainly learn about more than you knew at 16. About the world, its treasures, its follies, and your own damned self.”
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