Pete Hamill - Forever

My writer friends Julie Baumgold and Carolina Gonzalez helped with details I could not know. But this novel the process of imagining and writing was almost constantly a process of reimagining and rewriting, of finding fresh connections and unexpected patterns, and making decisions about what could be eliminated and what must be kept. That process was driven by the high standards and respect for craft of my editor, Bill Phillips. His contribution to this work was absolutely essential. He goaded me, pushed me, cajoled me, encouraged me, made me laugh, and gave me the time to do what had to be done, regardless of deadlines. It was a marvelous experience; our e-mails alone would make a small book, and I’ll be grateful to Bill Phillips, well, forever.

I was accompanied on this journey by my wife, to whom this book properly belongs. But I was also in the company of Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Erik Satie, Scott Joplin, Benny More, Miles Davis, J. S. Bach, the unknown masters of Gregorian chant, and Duke Ellington, and by a marvelous creature named Gabo, who was what John Cheever once called “a former dog.” Gabo didn’t live to see me finish, but he’s in these pages too.

Pete Hamill has been editor in chief of both the New York Post and the New York Daily News, for which he currently writes a regular column. In his writing for these publications as well as the New York Times, The New Yorker, and Newsday, he has brought the city to life for millions of readers. He is the author of previous bestselling books, including, most recently, the memoir A Drinking Life and the novel Snow in August . He lives in New York City.

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

News Is a Verb

Tools as Art

Memoir

A Drinking Life

Biography

Diego Rivera

Why Sinatra Matters