Pete Hamill (born June 24, 1935) is a prominent
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
journalistA journalist is a person who practises journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues, and people while striving for viewpoints that are not biased.Reporters are one type of journalist...
,
columnistA columnist is a journalist who writes for publication in a series, creating copy that can sometimes be strongly opinionated. Columns appear in newspapers, magazines and other publications, including blogs on the Internet....
, novelist, and
short storyA short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format or medium tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels or books...
writer. He is one of four men who disarmed
Sirhan SirhanSirhan Bishara Sirhan is the convicted assassin of United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy. He is serving a life sentence at the California State Prison, Corcoran.-Personal information:...
of his gun during the aftermath of the
Robert F. Kennedy AssassinationThe assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, a United States Senator and brother of assassinated President John F. Kennedy, took place shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968 in Los Angeles, California. Robert F. Kennedy was killed during celebrations of his successful campaign in the Californian primary...
.
Hamill was born in the Park Slope section of
BrooklynBrooklyn is one of the five boroughs of New York City, located southwest of Queens on the western tip of Long Island. An independent city until its consolidation with New York in 1898, Brooklyn is New York City's most populous borough, with 2.5 million residents, and second largest in area...
as the oldest of seven children of Catholic immigrants from
BelfastBelfast is the capital of and the largest city in Northern Ireland, a constituent country of the United Kingdom. It is the seat of devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly. It is the largest urban area in the province of Ulster, and the second largest city on the island of...
,
Northern IrelandNorthern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and it is situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
. He attended Catholic schools as a child, primarily Holy Name of Jesus Grammar School followed by a scholarship to the prestigious Regis High School in Manhattan.
Hamill left there at the age of 16 to work in the
Brooklyn Navy YardThe United States Navy Yard, New York -- better known as the Brooklyn Navy Yard or the New York Naval Shipyard -- is an American shipyard located in Brooklyn, northeast of the Battery on the East River in Wallabout Basin, a semicircular bend of the River across from Corlear's Hook in Manhattan...
as a sheet metal worker, and then joined the
United States NavyThe United States Navy is the sea branch of the U.S. Armed Forces. It is one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. As of 31 December 2008, the U.S. Navy had about 331,682 personnel on active duty and 124,000 in the Navy Reserve. It operates 283 ships in active service and more than...
in 1952.
Pete Hamill (born June 24, 1935) is a prominent
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
journalistA journalist is a person who practises journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues, and people while striving for viewpoints that are not biased.Reporters are one type of journalist...
,
columnistA columnist is a journalist who writes for publication in a series, creating copy that can sometimes be strongly opinionated. Columns appear in newspapers, magazines and other publications, including blogs on the Internet....
, novelist, and
short storyA short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format or medium tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels or books...
writer. He is one of four men who disarmed
Sirhan SirhanSirhan Bishara Sirhan is the convicted assassin of United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy. He is serving a life sentence at the California State Prison, Corcoran.-Personal information:...
of his gun during the aftermath of the
Robert F. Kennedy AssassinationThe assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, a United States Senator and brother of assassinated President John F. Kennedy, took place shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968 in Los Angeles, California. Robert F. Kennedy was killed during celebrations of his successful campaign in the Californian primary...
.
Life
Hamill was born in the Park Slope section of
BrooklynBrooklyn is one of the five boroughs of New York City, located southwest of Queens on the western tip of Long Island. An independent city until its consolidation with New York in 1898, Brooklyn is New York City's most populous borough, with 2.5 million residents, and second largest in area...
as the oldest of seven children of Catholic immigrants from
BelfastBelfast is the capital of and the largest city in Northern Ireland, a constituent country of the United Kingdom. It is the seat of devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly. It is the largest urban area in the province of Ulster, and the second largest city on the island of...
,
Northern IrelandNorthern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and it is situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
. He attended Catholic schools as a child, primarily Holy Name of Jesus Grammar School followed by a scholarship to the prestigious Regis High School in Manhattan.
Hamill left there at the age of 16 to work in the
Brooklyn Navy YardThe United States Navy Yard, New York -- better known as the Brooklyn Navy Yard or the New York Naval Shipyard -- is an American shipyard located in Brooklyn, northeast of the Battery on the East River in Wallabout Basin, a semicircular bend of the River across from Corlear's Hook in Manhattan...
as a sheet metal worker, and then joined the
United States NavyThe United States Navy is the sea branch of the U.S. Armed Forces. It is one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. As of 31 December 2008, the U.S. Navy had about 331,682 personnel on active duty and 124,000 in the Navy Reserve. It operates 283 ships in active service and more than...
in 1952. In his 20s, Hamill had an encounter with the poet W.H. Auden that he described this way: "When I was in my 20s, not yet a newspaperman, I lived on Ninth Street and Second Avenue. I would occasionally see Auden going to or coming from St Mark’s Place, where he lived (one block away). I wanted to ask him what he meant, but never had the nerve. I wish I had. I’ve lived a lifetime since those brief encounters, and Auden is still in print. I still wonder what he meant, but far more important, I have the poetry."
His brothers Denis and John Hamill are also writers. Denis Hamill writes for the
New York Daily NewsThe Daily News of New York City is the fifth most-widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 632,595, as of June 13, 2009. The first U.S. daily printed in tabloid form, it was founded in 1919, and as of 2007 is owned and run by Mortimer Zuckerman...
. His other siblings are Joe (deceased), Brian, and Kathleen. Hamill has a daughter named Deirdre.
Journalism
In the early 1950s, Hamill studied at the
School of Visual ArtsThe School of Visual Arts , is a proprietary art school located in Manhattan, New York City, and is widely considered to be one of the leading art schools in the United States. It was established in 1947 by co-founders Silas H. Rhodes and Burne Hogarth as the Cartoonists and Illustrators School and...
. In 1960, Hamill began working as a reporter for the
New York PostThe New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
. In subsequent years, he became one of the city's best known reporters, as columnist for the Post, the
New York Daily NewsThe Daily News of New York City is the fifth most-widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 632,595, as of June 13, 2009. The first U.S. daily printed in tabloid form, it was founded in 1919, and as of 2007 is owned and run by Mortimer Zuckerman...
, and
NewsdayNewsday is a daily American newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties and the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, although it is sold throughout the New York metropolitan area...
. As a foreign correspondent, he covered wars in
VietnamVietnam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam , is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea to the east...
,
NicaraguaNicaragua officially the Republic of Nicaragua , is a representative democratic republic. It is the largest country in Central America with an area of 130,373 km
2. The country is bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The Pacific Ocean lies to the west of...
,
LebanonLebanon , officially the Republic of Lebanon
[Republic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies...]
and Northern Ireland. In different periods, Hamill was editor-in-chief of both the
New York Post and the
New York Daily News. His work landed him on the
master list of Nixon political opponentsA master list of Nixon political opponents was compiled to supplement the original Nixon's Enemies List of 20 key people considered opponents of President Richard Nixon. The master list of 30,000 some people was compiled by Charles Colson's office and sent in memorandum form to John Dean...
.
Hamill published two collections of journalism, a book about the relationship of tools to art, and a book about New York City, along with
Why Sinatra Matters, an essay on the music of the late singer.
In regards to the book on
Frank SinatraFrancis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became a successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, being the idol of the "bobby soxers." His professional career had stalled by the...
, Hamill has stated:
"I wanted to look at Sinatra for the several things that he accomplished, above all as a musician. Yes, he was an interpreter of other peoples’ songs, just as Pavarotti is, or Billie Holiday Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed Lady Day by her loyal friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday was a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing...
was. I’ve heard much music sung by people who wrote their own music, and not all of it is good. Bob DylanBob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet and painter who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was, at first, an informal chronicler and then an apparently reluctant figurehead of social unrest...
, Van MorrisonVan Morrison is a critically acclaimed singer and songwriter with a reputation for being at once stubborn, idiosyncratic, and sublime...
, John LennonJohn Winston Ono Lennon, MBE was an English rock musician, singer-songwriter, author, and peace activist who gained worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles...
, the Rolling Stones: these are superb artists. But when I listen to hip-hop, I don’t decide to consign Sinatra, Lady Day, Nat Cole and others to the trash bin. Sinatra brought to pop music a distinctly urban voice, from the cities where the children of immigrants were making their presence known. In roughly the same period, Fiorello LaGuardia, Joe DiMaggioJoseph Paul "Joe" DiMaggio , born Giuseppe Paolo DiMaggio, Jr., was an American baseball player for the New York Yankees. He was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1955...
and Sinatra drove the Italian organ grinder and his monkey off the American stage forever...There was something else to the tale: Sinatra’s audience at the beginning was primarily female; it ended up primarily male. He helped humans trained to silence – or emotional numbness -- to express some of their deepest emotions."
His articles have also appeared in the
Village Voice,
Esquire,
Vanity Fair,
PlayboyPlayboy is an American men's magazine, founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with a presence in nearly every medium. Playboy is one of the world's best...
, Rolling Stone and
New YorkNew York is a weekly magazine concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it offers less national news and more gossipy, tabloid-like stories, but has also published noteworthy articles...
. Hamill is currently on the staff of
The New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry published by Condé Nast Publications...
.
Regarding his love of journalism, Hamill wrote of it in this manner:
"Reporting is the heart of the matter. The great Murray KemptonJames Murray Kempton was an influential, Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist.-Biography:Kempton was born in Baltimore on December 16, 1917. His mother was Sally Ambler and his father was James Branson Kempton, a stock broker...
called it “going around”. Journalism is, as the cliché goes, history in a hurry. But it can be more. American reporting, in its great phase, starts (I believe) with Stephen CraneStephen Crane was an American novelist, short story writer, poet and journalist. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism and Impressionism...
. Many of his early pieces are in “The New York Sketches of Stephen Crane” You can see later how he moved past journalism by looking at the newspaper story he wrote that was later turned in “The Open Boat”. Even newspaper columns, at their best, use reporting as the authority for their opinions. The great editors recognize reporting talent and try to sharpen it, improve it. No newspaper editor would ever say to a youngster: “There’s too much reporting in this piece.” When the work is at its best, it also become “literature in a hurry.” I always think of the line of Ezra PoundEzra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet, critic and intellectual who was a major figure of the Modernist movement in the first half of the 20th century. He is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry...
(dreadful, of course, on politics and society but smart about writing). In “The ABC of Reading” he wrote “Literature is news that stays news.”"
Fiction
Hamill has also written fiction, producing eight novels and two collections of short stories. He also published a memoir,
A Drinking Life, which detailed how he overcame his
alcoholismAlcoholism is a term with multiple and sometimes conflicting definitions. In common and historic usage, alcoholism is any condition that results in the continued consumption of alcoholic beverages, despite health problems and negative social consequences...
, as well as detailing his childhood and how it led to drinking.
External links