Piecework

Piecework by Pete Hamill

This book is for

EDWARD KOSNER

Acclaim for Pete Hamill’s PIECEWORK

“Full of the passions, action, opinions, and excesses one would expect from a man moving through all the journalistic hot spots of the last quarter century… The best of the book is flamboyant, fierce, and funny.”

— Philadelphia Inquirer

“Rock-solid… Hamill has a great eye and ear for detail and nuance, and the talent to evoke a real sense of places that no longer exist, especially the New York City of his childhood.”

— Chicago Tribune

“Acute. Candid. Courageous. Eloquent. Humane… Hamill’s best may be the best of the genre.”

— San Antonio Express

“A tour through the most frightening and fascinating decades of our lifetime, by a guide who has been in the front of the bus all the way… Nearly all of Hamill’s ruminations on the dark edges of society are as fresh as tomorrow’s headlines.”

— Virginian-Pilot

“Hamill takes the mundane and the great, spins them through his psyche, and delivers absolute poetry of the streets… Without so much as an adjective or adverb, Hamill puts you where he is, right at the table (or under it), club-crawling with Frank Sinatra, arguing with Mike Tyson, or (verbally) dissecting Madonna.”

— Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Hamill has been writing for more than thirty years. Yet he retains a passion, a curiosity, a disgust for injustice that keeps his writing fresh and his spirit young. He delivers pieces of the world in thousand-word chunks that sound like truth, well-told; that inform and nourish. That, nothing else, is the standard measure of Piecework.”

— Buffalo News

BOOKS BY PETE HAMILL

NOVELS

A Killing for Christ

The Gift

Dirty Laundry

Flesh and Blood

The Deadly Piece

The Guns of Heaven

Loving Women

Snow in August

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

The Invisible City

Tokyo Sketches

JOURNALISM

Irrational Ravings

Piecework

MEMOIR

A Drinking Life

CONTENTS

Acclaim for Pete Hamill’s Piecework

Books by Pete Hamill

Copyright

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART I: THE CITIES OF NEW YORK

The Lost City

The Secret City

On the Street/I

God Is in the Details

On the Street / 2

Bridge of Dreams

Spaldeen Summers

City of the Damned

PART II: THE LAWLESS DECADES

Notes from Underground

White Line Fever

The Last Mob Guy

On the Run

Crack and the Box

Facing Up to Drugs

PART III: MEXICO

City of Palaces

City of Calamity

Under Lowry’s Volcano

In Zapata Country

El Nobel

In Puerto Vallarta

The Tortilla Curtain

PART IV: OUT THERE

Vietnam, Vietnam

Ireland

Lebanon

Nicaragua

Prague

PART V: TALENT IN THE ROO

JFK

Sinatra

Gleason

Franz

Keith

Cus

Tyson

Madonna

Fosse

PART VI: POSITIO PAPERS

Black and White at Brown

The New Race Hustle

A Confederacy of Complainers

Letter to a Black Friend

The New Victorians

Endgame

PART VII ROLLING THE DICE

52

Reprieve

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As a writer for newspapers and magazines, I’ve been blessed by good editors. I’ve acknowledged elsewhere the inspiring influence of Paul Sann, who in my mind will always be the editor of the New York Post. At that newspaper, I was also guided by Fred McMorrow, Al Davis, Joe Rabinowitz, and Bob Friedman. At the New York Daily News, the late Sid Penner edited my columns with a master’s precision, while Pucci Meyer refined and clarified the longer articles and short stories I wrote for that newspaper’s Sunday magazine. At the Village Voice, Karen Durbin, Tom Morgan, and, later, Don Guttenplan were all fine editors of my pieces. At Esquire, Dave Hirshey has been ingenious at anticipating themes and stories that would remain fresh in spite of that magazine’s long lead time.