Pete Hamill, legendary Post columnist and author, dead at 85

NY Post ^ | 5 August 2020 | Lia Eustachewich and Larry Celona

[oh8eleven]

Hamill fell at his Brooklyn home Saturday after returning from dialysis, his brother, writer Denis Hamill, told The Post.

He was in intensive care at Methodist Hospital — the same place he was born — when “his kidneys and heart failed him,” the brother said.

In 1960, the high school dropout began working as a reporter for the Post where he “began to learn his craft,” according to his online biography. He penned columns for the Post for 12 years and worked as a columnist for Newsday, Village Voice and the New York Daily News. He also wrote for Esquire, Rolling Stone and New York Magazine.

[oh8eleven]

Excellent, excellent writer. If you want to know him I highly recommend his 1994 memoir “A Drinking Life.” If you want to know about NYC history I recommend his "Downtown: My Manhattan." He also wrote dozens of novels.

[LottieDah]

May he rest in peace.

[dp0622]

I’m glad I didn’t bash in haste.

I could swear I read a hamilton in the 90s that was hard left.

But I could swear about a lot of things from that generation that I got wrong :)

[Zhang Fei]

[Excellent, excellent writer. If you want to know him I highly recommend his 1994 memoir “A Drinking Life.”]

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He was the classic wino who moonlighted as a reporter. Great journo that no one thought would live to this age. RIP.

[Alberta's Child]

I don’t remember any particular memorable columns he wrote, but he was a New York institution. I was once working at a project site in NYC and he just happened to walk past us on the sidewalk.

[SE Mom]

Oh wow- a classic New Yorker. Godspeed, Mr. Hamil.

[Buckeye McFrog]

There was an English teacher in my high-school named Pete Hamill. I remember he used to get exasperated telling certain people over and over that he did not write these columns.

RIP.

[oh8eleven]

Great journo that no one thought would live to this age.
As Mickey Mantle (another NY icon) once said, "If I knew I was going to live this long I'd have taken better care of myself."

[IrishBrigade]

‘As Mickey Mantle (another NY icon) once said, “If I knew I was going to live this long I’d have taken better care of myself.”

Mantle died at 63...

[depressed in 06]

...“his kidneys and heart failed him,”...

Sounds like COVID-19 to me,

[oh8eleven]

Mantle died at 63...

His father died of Hodgkin's disease at age 40 in 1952, and his grandfather also died young of the same disease. Mick thought he was doomed.
Also, one son died at 36 of heart problems, and another died of liver cancer at 47.

[Dr. Ursus]

I got to talk to him about that book. Quite interesting! He was a great writer.

[oh8eleven]

I read "A Drinking Life" years ago but thought it was worth a second read.
So I went on-line to my local library to put a hold on it but someone already beat me to it.

[fieldmarshaldj]

RIP.