Rating: 
Summary: Pete Hamill: Brooklyn Drinking, Loving, Fighting, Living!
Review: Pete Hamill is a New York Treasure. Hamill grew up in blue collar Brooklyn in the 40s and 50s in a working class "dysfunctional" famlly. His father had lost a leg during a soccer match in distant Belfast prior to his immigration to the United States, His hardworking, wise and wonderful mother raised a large family while remaining faithful for a drinking husband who was a heavy drinker by night and a low paid employee at many jobs during the day.
Hamill takes us with us on his boyhood as he dreams of becoming a cartoonist. From the streets of Brooklyn where stickball reigned to incarceration in a Mexican jail the life tale woven by Hamill has many unexpected twists and turns. Despite his many faults Hamill has succeeded as a famed newspaper columnist and novelist. His book is easy reading and better than the much more heralded works by Frank McCourt.
The language used by Hamill is rough, often scatological and may be offensive to genteel readers. However I found it well written and engaging. The book is worth a read by anyone interested in Irish American culture, newspaper life or the journey of a man from poverty to prominence.
Rating:
Summary: Pete Hamill: Brooklyn Drinking, Loving, Fighting, Living!
Review: Pete Hamill is a New York Treasure. Hamill grew up in blue collar Brooklyn in the 40s and 50s in a working class "dysfunctional" famlly. His father had lost a leg during a soccer match in distant Belfast prior to his immigration to the United States, His hardworking, wise and wonderful mother raised a large family while remaining faithful for a drinking husband who was a heavy drinker by night and a low paid employee at many jobs during the day.
Hamill takes us with us on his boyhood as he dreams of becoming a cartoonist. From the streets of Brooklyn where stickball reigned to incarceration in a Mexican jail the life tale woven by Hamill has many unexpected twists and turns. Despite his many faults Hamill has succeeded as a famed newspaper columnist and novelist. His book is easy reading and better than the much more heralded works by Frank McCourt.
The language used by Hamill is rough, often scatological and may be offensive to genteel readers. However I found it well written and engaging. The book is worth a read by anyone interested in Irish American culture, newspaper life or the journey of a man from poverty to prominence.
Rating:
Summary: Pete Hamill: Brooklyn Drinking, Loving, Fighting, Living!
Review: Pete Hamill is a New York Treasure. Hamill grew up in blue collar Brooklyn in the 40s and 50s in a working class "dysfunctional" famlly. His father had lost a leg during a soccer match in distant Belfast prior to his immigration to the United States, His hardworking, wise and wonderful mother raised a large family while remaining faithful for a drinking husband who was a heavy drinker by night and a low paid employee at many jobs during the day.
Hamill takes us with us on his boyhood as he dreams of becoming a cartoonist. From the streets of Brooklyn where stickball reigned to incarceration in a Mexican jail the life tale woven by Hamill has many unexpected twists and turns. Despite his many faults Hamill has succeeded as a famed newspaper columnist and novelist. His book is easy reading and better than the much more heralded works by Frank McCourt.
The language used by Hamill is rough, often scatological and may be offensive to genteel readers. However I found it well written and engaging. The book is worth a read by anyone interested in Irish American culture, newspaper life or the journey of a man from poverty to prominence.
Rating: 
Summary: He's brutally honest, courageous, and a gifted writer.
Review: Pete Hamill tells a tale so personal, with its obvious human frailties, that I was mesmerized. It reminded me of my own Brooklyn Irish family: the acceptance of drinking for the Irish as perhaps eating macaroni is for the Italians. Celebratory drinking at weddings,communions, anniversaries, can soon turn into the violent, lethargic sod, wrecking his relationships, along with himself. Hamill comes out of it like the Phoenix that he is, and gives you something to think about long after you finish the last page. KEVIN FARRELL
Rating:
Summary: Pete Hamill - Good Guy & Bad Guy
Review: Pete Hamill was born in Brooklyn in 1935. His father was poor, a cripple (lost one leg in a soccer accident), an alcoholic, and little interested in Pete - his first born (5 more to come), while his mother - though overworked and frequently pregnant - was loving and caring and always inspiring him to behave properly and to amount to something in life. Like most kids of the `40's Pete found great joy in comic strips, comic books, big-little books, in the many varieties of penny candy, and in movies that offered triple features - plus a serial, a newsreel, a cartoon and previews - for only 12 cents. As he grew up he learned to love the Dodgers, boxing, the gym and weight lifting, and street games like stickball, kick the can, `off the point', etc. His childhood heroes included boxers, baseball players, and cartoonists, especially, (like Milt Caniff, originator of `Terry and the Pirates' and `Steve Canyon'), since cartoonists could entertain the world while at the same time enriching themselves. His mother steered him toward the church and alter boy duties, but his interest in the church gradually waned when he observed that aside from the attractions of its glitter and imagery (candles, statuary, baroque paintings, music,
palm branches, pine needles, etc.) it offered little to those who were struggling to deal with life's social evils - like unemployment, poverty, exploitation, alcoholism, bigotry, etc. Pete works hard in school and eventually wins a full scholarship to St. Regis, the top Jesuit high school on Manhattan. After 2 years Pete caves in to the social and academic pressures at Regis and returns to a high school in Brooklyn for his junior year. He drops out of school in his senior year - because he finds it disappointing. School, he notes, fails to deal with the real issues in life - like alcoholism, bigotry, poverty, the internment of Japanese-Americans, conservative publishers, right-wing broadcasters, anti-Semitism, war profiteers, etc. Pete gets a job, and like his worker peers he starts to devote more and more time to bar-hopping, drinking, and girls. Drinking, he discovers, is what real grown men do when they want to have real fun, and sing, and tell jokes. Bars, he learns, is where real men can make instant connections, like the rich do in their fancy clubs, where one goes to celebrate victories, or births, or to mourn losses, or a death, or just to dream, or to reminisce, or to generate some courage. Drinking, however, has a downside; booze reduces inhibitions, which causes some to behave erratically, or belligerently, and some will then resort to instant justice or the satisfaction they derive from punching out some other obstreperous, disagreeable drunk. Now a worker, Pete begins to deal more seriously with his present dilemma - how someday to find another job that offers both security and satisfaction. He still dreams of being a cartoonist, so he continues to practice drawing, he takes art classes, and he takes other jobs that involve drawing. He also serves an uneventful tour of duty in the navy. When he returns to Brooklyn a friend persuades him to go to Mexico (Mexico City College) where Pete can get a degree in art. In Mexico City Pete has a traumatic experience: he gets into a brawl with the police. They hold him for some days in different jails until friends can find him and get him released on bail. While trying to personally relive and comprehend this personal disaster
Pete discovers that the art medium is deficient, that the only way he can relive and deal with this experience is by writing about it. Out of this painful experience Pete resolves to drop art and become a writer. He flees Mexico (to avoid a trial and probable jail time) and returns to Brooklyn. He writes to the editor of the New York Post and explains how the Post needs a writer like himself, who can attract readers like himself - the offspring of an immigrant, poor, uneducated, worker class, etc. The Post gives Pete a tryout, he's hired, and his writing career is launched. Pete eventually lives in and reports from
exotic locations like Barcelona, Dublin, Rome, Mexico City (the charges against him there long lost!), Laguna Beach, and Washington, D.C.. In writing Pete discovered his `bliss': he found a career that paid him well and that enabled him to entertain, uplift, and educate his fellow mortals. He has a hard-hitting writing style that befits a former hard drinking, brawling, big city dwelling, ex- navy yard worker: he minces no words, wastes no words, and flaunts no words. During his life he admits to being at times a `bad guy' (from his father's side), and, at times, a `good guy' (from his mother). His book
tells us about both `guys'. At a New Year's eve party in 1972 Pete realized while staring into his drink that booze had become an unacceptable liability in his life. So, he stopped drinking, `cold turkey', immediately. That means, I guess, that I can never share a drink with Pete - which I would enjoy. On the other hand, perhaps I already have - perhaps at that dusty little cantina across the road from MCC at 16 Kms on the Mexico City-Toluca highway - since I, too, was a beer-swilling G.I. Bill student at MCC that same year when Pete was studying in Mexico. In any case, Saludos to you, Pete, and keep on writing. RWA, B.A. Int. Rel., Mexico City College, 1958.
Rating:
Summary: Pete Hamill - Good Guy & Bad Guy
Review: Pete Hamill was born in Brooklyn in 1935. His father was poor, a cripple (lost one leg in a soccer accident), an alcoholic, and little interested in Pete - his first born (5 more to come), while his mother - though overworked and frequently pregnant - was loving and caring and always inspiring him to behave properly and to amount to something in life. Like most kids of the '40's Pete found great joy in comic strips, comic books, big-little books, in the many varieties of penny candy, and in movies that offered triple features - plus a serial, a newsreel, a cartoon and previews - for only 12 cents. As he grew up he learned to love the Dodgers, boxing, the gym and weight lifting, and street games like stickball, kick the can, 'off the point', etc. His childhood heroes included boxers, baseball players, and cartoonists, especially, (like Milt Caniff, originator of 'Terry and the Pirates' and 'Steve Canyon'), since cartoonists could entertain the world while at the same time enriching themselves. His mother steered him toward the church and alter boy duties, but his interest in the church gradually waned when he observed that aside from the attractions of its glitter and imagery (candles, statuary, baroque paintings, music,
palm branches, pine needles, etc.) it offered little to those who were struggling to deal with life's social evils - like unemployment, poverty, exploitation, alcoholism, bigotry, etc. Pete works hard in school and eventually wins a full scholarship to St. Regis, the top Jesuit high school on Manhattan. After 2 years Pete caves in to the social and academic pressures at Regis and returns to a high school in Brooklyn for his junior year. He drops out of school in his senior year - because he finds it disappointing. School, he notes, fails to deal with the real issues in life - like alcoholism, bigotry, poverty, the internment of Japanese-Americans, conservative publishers, right-wing broadcasters, anti-Semitism, war profiteers, etc. Pete gets a job, and like his worker peers he starts to devote more and more time to bar-hopping, drinking, and girls. Drinking, he discovers, is what real grown men do when they want to have real fun, and sing, and tell jokes. Bars, he learns, is where real men can make instant connections, like the rich do in their fancy clubs, where one goes to celebrate victories, or births, or to mourn losses, or a death, or just to dream, or to reminisce, or to generate some courage. Drinking, however, has a downside; booze reduces inhibitions, which causes some to behave erratically, or belligerently, and some will then resort to instant justice or the satisfaction they derive from punching out some other obstreperous, disagreeable drunk. Now a worker, Pete begins to deal more seriously with his present dilemma - how someday to find another job that offers both security and satisfaction. He still dreams of being a cartoonist, so he continues to practice drawing, he takes art classes, and he takes other jobs that involve drawing. He also serves an uneventful tour of duty in the navy. When he returns to Brooklyn a friend persuades him to go to Mexico (Mexico City College) where Pete can get a degree in art. In Mexico City Pete has a traumatic experience: he gets into a brawl with the police. They hold him for some days in different jails until friends can find him and get him released on bail. While trying to personally relive and comprehend this personal disaster
Pete discovers that the art medium is deficient, that the only way he can relive and deal with this experience is by writing about it. Out of this painful experience Pete resolves to drop art and become a writer. He flees Mexico (to avoid a trial and probable jail time) and returns to Brooklyn. He writes to the editor of the New York Post and explains how the Post needs a writer like himself, who can attract readers like himself - the offspring of an immigrant, poor, uneducated, worker class, etc. The Post gives Pete a tryout, he's hired, and his writing career is launched. Pete eventually lives in and reports from
exotic locations like Barcelona, Dublin, Rome, Mexico City (the charges against him there long lost!), Laguna Beach, and Washington, D.C.. In writing Pete discovered his 'bliss': he found a career that paid him well and that enabled him to entertain, uplift, and educate his fellow mortals. He has a hard-hitting writing style that befits a former hard drinking, brawling, big city dwelling, ex- navy yard worker: he minces no words, wastes no words, and flaunts no words. During his life he admits to being at times a 'bad guy' (from his father's side), and, at times, a 'good guy' (from his mother). His book
tells us about both 'guys'. At a New Year's eve party in 1972 Pete realized while staring into his drink that booze had become an unacceptable liability in his life. So, he stopped drinking, 'cold turkey', immediately. That means, I guess, that I can never share a drink with Pete - which I would enjoy. On the other hand, perhaps I already have - perhaps at that dusty little cantina across the road from MCC at 16 Kms on the Mexico City-Toluca highway - since I, too, was a beer-swilling G.I. Bill student at MCC that same year when Pete was studying in Mexico. In any case, Saludos to you, Pete, and keep on writing. RWA, B.A. Int. Rel., Mexico City College, 1958.
Rating: 
Summary: From Street Tough to Beat Reporter
Review: Pete Hamill's name should be familiar to everyone in the New York area: in addition to rubbing shoulders and bending elbows with New York City's elite, his celebrated articles in the NY Post eventually landed him the highly coveted job of editor. In A Drinking Life, Hamill recounts the story of his life, with a particular emphasis on his childhood in Brooklyn. The son of a heavy-drinking, one-legged, Irish immigrant, Hamill lost his innocence early and found refuge drawing his own comic books and playing the street tough. This dichotomy seems to follow him throughout his life: on the one hand his roots have made him a brawler, a drinker, and a swaggering toughguy; on the other, him mother's influence helped to shape a sensitive young man who couldn't stand the site of blood on the face of his street fight victims and who longed for the life of a bohemian artist in Greenwich Village. In time, Hamill leaves his drawing and illustrating behind and begins to write.Throughout all of this, there is much drinking; however, to call this a book about alcoholism would be inaccurate. This is a memoir of a life... one to which drinking is inextricably tethered, but not one that revolves around the art of drinking. Hamill began drinking early, and then as a reporter spent most of his time in bars, and his storytelling ability leaves no doubt that he was probably the center of attention in these bars more often than not. In the end he kicks the habit, for fear that he has been peforming his life rather than living it. He still visits his old drinking haunts, but now sits there quietly with a Coke in hand. This memoir is well told, and Hamill sees himself with a very clear eye. His voice is unarguably that of a reporter: there is very little fanfare or elaborate language, and the story of his life is always moving. Fortunately for the reader, it is an eventful life, filled with street fights in Brooklyn, mischief at camp, passionate sex with mysterious women, gunshots and jail in Mexico, and much more. The memoir genre is growing tired lately, but this is one of the books that set the craze off, and it is easy to see why.
Rating: 
Summary: not the best
Review: Quite honestly, I expected much more from this book, but was quickly disappointed. Despite the advice found in these reviews, you can find much better books to transport you into the old days of the New York streets. If you want a real memoir to read, one that tells the true tragic story of an Irish boys life with an alcoholic father, stick to Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes." It's written better, has much more feeling, and content. Hamill whines, and complains about his life, and it's apparent that he is telling the story in a pity party circle. After reading the book, it's clear that he should just get over it, because his life isn't, and wasn't bad at all. Even his drinking problem pales in comparison to any NYC bar fly. Stick to Hamill's fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Great Read
Review: This book is really well written. The author lays out the realities of success and failure in smooth form. The book reads like a novel . I recommend this book to anyone who wants an honest look at one man's life.
Rating:
Summary: Another Winner From New Yorker Extroidinaire, Pete Hamill
Review: You don't have to be Irish or a New Yorker to love this book, but it surely helps. Once again, Hamill chronicles the New York experience, drapping his captivating stories around the drinking life. A born storyteller with New York in his "gut," he knows the city as well as Guinness knows beer. What I think stands out about Hamill is his ability to "feel" a story, to relate to his environment, and describe to the reader what it was like. This is the Brooklyn of the Bums -- of Jackie, Gil, and The Newk -- The Daily News on the newstands at eight at night; the Nathan's dog with sauerkraut; and the belief that Jersey was in another world. If your looking to recover from alcoholism go to A.A., if your looking for a fantastic read, this book is for you.
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