Tabloid City: A new fiction classic by Pete Hamill
"CBS Early Show" anchor Jeff Glor speaks with author Peter Hamill about his new book, "Tabloid City."
Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?
Pete Hamill: The sense that time was running out for many of my friends in the newspaper trade. Circulation is down, along with profits. Staffs are smaller, and still shrinking. I wanted to capture that reality, along with its deepening melancholy. At the same time, I wanted to make real the people who are the subjects of great tabloid journalism. Not celebrities. Ordinary human beings, moving through the big, bad city, their regrets, fears, furies, beliefs, nostalgias. Along with their deep loneliness in the most populated city in America. If the newspapers die, who will tell their stories?
JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?
PH: How little has changed since I was a young reporter, a half century ago. Among the enduring truths: deep personal loneliness can lead to murder. Sometimes the loneliness is made worse when experienced in the most densely populated city in America.
JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer
PH: A painter. Perhaps a sculptor. When I was growing up in a Brooklyn tenement, I wanted to be a comic strip artist. Like Milton Caniff or Roy Crane. After serving in the Navy, the GI Bill allowed me to go to school in Mexico City. There I failed out of painting into writing. But the impulse has never died. I still sometimes lift a sable brush and start making marks on canvas...
JG: What else are you reading right now?
PH: I've just finished a wonderfully acerbic (and frequently obscene) novel call "Sicilian Tragedee" (sp. is correct) by a Sicilian writer named Ottavio Cappellani. Shakespeare meets the Mafia...Last night I started Umberto Eco's "Confessions of a Young Novelist". As always with Eco, it's full of intelligence and wit.
JG: What's next for you?
PH: I have at least three ideas fighting for space in my thick Celtic skull. Ask me again in a month!
For more on "Tabloid City," visit the Hachette Book Group website.