The Stacks Chat: Pete Dexter

By Alex Belth Bronx Banter April 7, 2010 I met Pete Dexter last fall when he was in New York promoting his seventh novel, Spooner. Dexter was a wonderful newspaper columnist and is now one of our greatest novelists. First thing I noticed about him was that he was...

The Good, The Bad and The Marvelous

By Pete Dexter Esquire May 1985 All right, let’s start with the head. Say check-out time is 1:00 and everybody who reads this magazine is stuck in a room at a Holiday Inn somewhere in Louisiana because nobody can figure out how to unlock the security chain, and...

Spooner Plays Ball

By Pete Dexter From Spooner 2009 Later that year Spooner began his career in organized baseball. The coach of the baseball team was Evelyn Tinker, who in addition to being held almost blameless in the Lemonkatz boy’s injury was now rumored to be collecting sixty bucks...

Don Shula, In Perspective

By Pete Dexter Esquire September 1983 The old man was hurt at Pearl Harbor and moved to Florida to mend after they processed him out of the service. He’s been there, and in his wheelchair, ever since. Forty-two years. He lives in Miramar now, just across the line in...

A Clean, Well-lighted Gym

By Pete Dexter Esquire March 1984 The first day the fighter came into the gym he went two rounds with a weight lifter from New Jersey who was just learning to keep his hands up—and he tried to hurt him. I didn’t know if it was something between them or if the fighter...

LeeRoy, He Ain’t Here No More

By Pete Dexter Inside Sports May 31, 1980 The child in the child is somehow faded. She is eight years old but there is nothing in her manner to say she isn’t nineteen, with a house full of screaming babies and a high school sweetheart who doesn’t always come home at...