By Grover Lewis L.A. Weekly June 4–10, 1993 1. SEMPER GUS “The best work of fiction about the Vietnam War,” Newsweek called Gus Hasford’s The Short-Timers when it was first published in 1979. The slim hardcover sold, like most first novels, in the low thousands, but...
By Steve Oney The Atlanta Journal Constitution Magazine May 15, 1977 It was all of two o’clock on a sultry, Thursday afternoon, and Harry Crews was poured into a corner booth at an ersatz nautical bar in Gainesville, Florida, called the Winnjammer. Bits of sailing...
By Alex Belth SB Nation October 25, 2012 The first time I heard Roger Angell speak was on a movie screen. I was working as an intern on Ken Burns’s Baseball documentary, sitting in a dark sound-mixing studio in the Brill Building in midtown Manhattan. During his...
By Alex Belth The Stacks Reader I thought you might appreciate this letter written by Nicolai Malko to Vladimir Nabokov. Here, let Malko’s son, George—a fantastic writer and an equally swell guy—explain: The letter was written when my father was in his fifth year as...
By John Schulian MSNBC December 3, 2001 The train to glory left without James Crumley, who seems to have been too busy examining life’s gnarly side to bother catching it. There are no best-sellers for him, no money-bloated deals with Hollywood—just hard-boiled novels...
By Ambrose Clancy GQ November 1987 He goes to work at nine-thirty Saturday morning of the Memorial Day weekend. He leaves the elevator and walks into the lobby of his apartment house. The young doorman says, “Morning, sir.” “Yeah. How you doin’?” The doorman counters...
By John Marchese Philadelphia November 1991 “So he says—first question—‘Do you believe in sin?’ “Do I believe in sin? I mean, gimme a break.” This is the sound of Pete Dexter dealing with fame. It wasn’t so long ago that Dexter could limp over to 13th and Pine and...
By John Schulian Deadspin March 11, 2013 It was almost endearing how an ink-smudged, deadline-addicted newspaper editor of yore would squint through the smoke from his cigarette and ask a bright young man why the hell he wanted to write sports. An editor like that was...
By Hank Waddles Bronx Banter September 25, 2009 You probably don’t know Arnold Hano. How could you? You live in a world of bullet points and exclamation points, a place where sportswriters aspire either to the pomposity of ESPN’s “Sports Reporters” or to the cacophony...
By Jim Quinn Philadelphia October 1979 1. No ideas but in nouns “I don’t like adjectives, I guess,” says Pete Dexter, his gee-whiz South Dakota twang softened a little, because this isn’t a story about a drunk, a dog, a bar fight or splashing the shoes of the...
By David Owen Esquire March 1982 At the Democratic National Convention in 1980, a small brigade of young reporters dogged the footsteps of a man in a dark green suit. The man picked his way through the crush on the floor of the convention hall, pausing now and then to...
By Steve Oney The Atlanta Journal Constitution Magazine September 16, 1979 It was getting into the heart of the Vermont summer, and the air was still and heavy. Resting in a wicker chair on his front porch, Robert Penn Warren, sweat dripping from his sharp, freckled...
