Jimmy Breslin

The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutierrez, by Jimmy Breslin. Crown Publishers. 198 pages. $22. Jimmy Breslin's new book, The Short Sweet Life of Eduardo Gutierrez, reminds us that the journey to America is more than a Kodak moment at the Statue of Liberty. It begins in desperation and continues with each generation of new arrivals settling for the grubbiest of jobs, the shabbiest of living conditions, and the most precarious daily existence. This is the extended entrance test America gives to all who would reach for her promise.

The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight Marc Weingarten Crown / 325 pages In The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight, his survey of what used to warrant the name New Journalism, Marc Weingarten demonstrates two things clearly. The first: There is no substitute for reading the classics of this genre firsthand. The second: The writers who are commonly lumped together in this category didn't have that much in common after all. "Was it a movement?" Weingarten asks about the explosion of dramatically personal nonfiction that arose in the 1960s and broke all the old rules.

"I Don't Want To Go To Jail," by Jimmy Breslin. Little, Brown. 306 pages. $24.95. Connoisseurs of a specific kind of nonfiction -- fine reporting or commentary written on deadline -- should find a well-stocked used-book store and dig for "The World of Jimmy Breslin," a paperback with a black-and-white cover photograph of the New York columnist on a telephone in what appears to be a bar. It's a collection of the early, good Breslin, perhaps the best Breslin,...

The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutierrez, by Jimmy Breslin. Crown Publishers. 198 pages. $22. Jimmy Breslin's new book, The Short Sweet Life of Eduardo Gutierrez, reminds us that the journey to America is more than a Kodak moment at the Statue of Liberty. It begins in desperation and continues with each generation of new arrivals settling for the grubbiest of jobs, the shabbiest of living conditions, and the most precarious daily existence. This is the extended entrance test America gives to all who would reach for her promise.

"I Want to Thank My Brain for Remembering Me," by Jimmy Breslin. Little, Brown. 219 pages. $22.95.Reporters, even those with ink for blood, are mortal. When a good one, a splendid one like the New York columnist Jimmy Breslin, confronts his own death from a brain aneurysm, he recognizes a hell of a good peg on which to hang a memoir.This one is a short memoir, as memoirs go. It's only 219 pages and hardly comprises the sum of Breslin's parts. But as the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and author ("The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight")

WASHINGTON -- By 3: 35 p.m., only one person was left standing by the Hate and Hypocrisy sign outside the Capitol. The woman from the National Mad as Hell campaign was sitting alone on the cold grass, no mob of fellow protesters in sight. Even the baby Jesus and portable Wise Men, symbols of hope in the divisive season of politics, were packed up and hauled off the marble steps of Congress.History was supposed to be boldly in evidence this day.History, it seems, went home early.Instead of the solemnity of the moment, what Washington delivered during yesterday's impeachment debate was lots of catty commentary by outraged lawmakers, some general amazement by small groups of spectators and the occasionally grave political statement.

Overheard at the barnsJimmy Breslin uses imaginary conversations in his new book about Damon Runyon and justifies it by saying he "must have heard a thousand conversations about the man and his times from all parts of town because I spent so much of my life, too much of it, in bars and police stations, in race track receiving barns, fight gyms and political clubhouses."Responded Stan Hochman of the Philadelphia Daily News: "Jimmy Breslin wouldn't know a race track receiving barn if one fell on him, which is not such a terrible idea."

DAMON RUNYON. Jimmy Breslin. Ticknor & Fields. 410 pages. $24.95. When you look at the gray tapioca that American newspapers have become, it's hard to believe they ever spawned Damon Runyon, who covered his first hanging at 11 and grew up to create Broadway by populating it with Nicely-Nicely and Harry the Horse, Madame La Gimp, Nathan Detroit and Little Miss Marker.But Runyon (1884-1946) lived in an age when a reporter could drink with a ballplayer named Bugs one day and go to the track with Pancho Villa the next.

TO Patrick Buchanan, ColumnistDear Pat:Pardon the informality, but as your faithful reader, I feel we are old pals. Anyhow, I saw where you might run against Bush for the Republican nomination because you're vexed about him letting down the conservatives. This made me take a good hard look at myself, and I was startled to see what an old stick-in-the-mud I've become.Believe it or not, Pat, I have been vexed about every president since Eisenhower, who was the first president I had to think about day and night the way we columnists must.

DAMON RUNYON: A LIFE. By Jimmy Breslin. Ticknor & Fields. 410 pages. $24.95. EARLY IN 1983, Jimmy Breslin sat in Costello's, an old New York City pub, drank a pot of espresso, smoked a cigar and denied he had ever read any of Damon Runyon's columns when he was a kid."No, and he was terrible, too, by the way," Breslin said. "He got away with murder."Since then, Breslin has read a lot of Runyon's columns and short stories. He also has changed his mind. He now considers Runyon "a major writer," a columnist who performed the nearly impossible task of putting "a smile into a newspaper," and a man whose "characters became known as Runyonesque, a word that is one of the dozen most descriptive words today."

"I Don't Want To Go To Jail," by Jimmy Breslin. Little, Brown. 306 pages. $24.95. Connoisseurs of a specific kind of nonfiction -- fine reporting or commentary written on deadline -- should find a well-stocked used-book store and dig for "The World of Jimmy Breslin," a paperback with a black-and-white cover photograph of the New York columnist on a telephone in what appears to be a bar. It's a collection of the early, good Breslin, perhaps the best Breslin,...

Journalism is a weird trade. It plays a role at the center of democracy, but resides in a chaos of perceptions, at once reviled and revered, misrepresented and romanticized. Janet Malcolm took journalists to task in the New Yorker, calling them seducers of their sources who massage and corrupt the raw material of life for the sake of The Story. No doubt many readers of that august magazine believed every word Malcolm wrote. Fiction writing ought to be able to help here. Novelists, after all, like to think of themselves as hotly pursuing greater truths.

WASHINGTON -- By 3: 35 p.m., only one person was left standing by the Hate and Hypocrisy sign outside the Capitol. The woman from the National Mad as Hell campaign was sitting alone on the cold grass, no mob of fellow protesters in sight. Even the baby Jesus and portable Wise Men, symbols of hope in the divisive season of politics, were packed up and hauled off the marble steps of Congress.History was supposed to be boldly in evidence this day.History, it seems, went home early.Instead of the solemnity of the moment, what Washington delivered during yesterday's impeachment debate was lots of catty commentary by outraged lawmakers, some general amazement by small groups of spectators and the occasionally grave political statement.

THE NATION'S FIRST great urban newspaper columnist was born in Chicago, the city that now mourns the death of one of the last nationally acclaimed exemplars of the breed, Mike Royko.At the beginning of this century, the columns of Finley Peter Dunne first gave voice to the sardonic, pointed opinions of the burgeoning ranks of city-dwellers, embodied by Dunne's wily, Irish-born barkeep, Mr. Dooley. For the past 34 years, Mr. Royko had been a sort of latter-day Dooley, incisively dissecting and pungently assessing the politics and people of Chicago -- and the rest of the country, too.His death is a loss not only to his native city but to the entire nation.

"I Want to Thank My Brain for Remembering Me," by Jimmy Breslin. Little, Brown. 219 pages. $22.95.Reporters, even those with ink for blood, are mortal. When a good one, a splendid one like the New York columnist Jimmy Breslin, confronts his own death from a brain aneurysm, he recognizes a hell of a good peg on which to hang a memoir.This one is a short memoir, as memoirs go. It's only 219 pages and hardly comprises the sum of Breslin's parts. But as the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and author ("The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight")

TO Patrick Buchanan, ColumnistDear Pat:Pardon the informality, but as your faithful reader, I feel we are old pals. Anyhow, I saw where you might run against Bush for the Republican nomination because you're vexed about him letting down the conservatives. This made me take a good hard look at myself, and I was startled to see what an old stick-in-the-mud I've become.Believe it or not, Pat, I have been vexed about every president since Eisenhower, who was the first president I had to think about day and night the way we columnists must.

THE NATION'S FIRST great urban newspaper columnist was born in Chicago, the city that now mourns the death of one of the last nationally acclaimed exemplars of the breed, Mike Royko.At the beginning of this century, the columns of Finley Peter Dunne first gave voice to the sardonic, pointed opinions of the burgeoning ranks of city-dwellers, embodied by Dunne's wily, Irish-born barkeep, Mr. Dooley. For the past 34 years, Mr. Royko had been a sort of latter-day Dooley, incisively dissecting and pungently assessing the politics and people of Chicago -- and the rest of the country, too.His death is a loss not only to his native city but to the entire nation.

The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight Marc Weingarten Crown / 325 pages In The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight, his survey of what used to warrant the name New Journalism, Marc Weingarten demonstrates two things clearly. The first: There is no substitute for reading the classics of this genre firsthand. The second: The writers who are commonly lumped together in this category didn't have that much in common after all. "Was it a movement?" Weingarten asks about the explosion of dramatically personal nonfiction that arose in the 1960s and broke all the old rules.

Overheard at the barnsJimmy Breslin uses imaginary conversations in his new book about Damon Runyon and justifies it by saying he "must have heard a thousand conversations about the man and his times from all parts of town because I spent so much of my life, too much of it, in bars and police stations, in race track receiving barns, fight gyms and political clubhouses."Responded Stan Hochman of the Philadelphia Daily News: "Jimmy Breslin wouldn't know a race track receiving barn if one fell on him, which is not such a terrible idea."

DAMON RUNYON: A LIFE. By Jimmy Breslin. Ticknor & Fields. 410 pages. $24.95. EARLY IN 1983, Jimmy Breslin sat in Costello's, an old New York City pub, drank a pot of espresso, smoked a cigar and denied he had ever read any of Damon Runyon's columns when he was a kid."No, and he was terrible, too, by the way," Breslin said. "He got away with murder."Since then, Breslin has read a lot of Runyon's columns and short stories. He also has changed his mind. He now considers Runyon "a major writer," a columnist who performed the nearly impossible task of putting "a smile into a newspaper," and a man whose "characters became known as Runyonesque, a word that is one of the dozen most descriptive words today."