Piecework

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As a writer for newspapers and magazines, I’ve been blessed by good editors. I’ve acknowledged elsewhere the inspiring influence of Paul Sann, who in my mind will always be the editor of the New York Post. At that newspaper, I was also guided by Fred McMorrow, Al Davis, Joe Rabinowitz, and Bob Friedman. At the New York Daily News, the late Sid Penner edited my columns with a master’s precision, while Pucci Meyer refined and clarified the longer articles and short stories I wrote for that newspaper’s Sunday magazine. At the Village Voice, Karen Durbin, Tom Morgan, and, later, Don Guttenplan were all fine editors of my pieces. At Esquire, Dave Hirshey has been ingenious at anticipating themes and stories that would remain fresh in spite of that magazine’s long lead time.

Early on, I learned many things about craft from Jack Nessel, Clay Felker, and Milton Glaser, when they worked together at New York magazine. Nessel placed his loupe upon my texts (and those of others) and with humor and patience worked only to make them better. Felker was always bursting with ideas and discoveries and enthusiasms, but Glaser edited Felker; listening to their debates was essential to my education. Under a later regime at New York, I was fortunate to be edited by Peter Herbst and Dick Babcock; they maintained the high standards established by the founding editors.

In a long, varied career, there were many others: Steve Gelman, Ray Robinson, Bill Ewald, Don McKinney, Seymour Krim, Wayne Lawson, Myra Appleton, Barry Golson, Peter Moore, Harvey Shapiro, George Walsh, Richard Kluger, Linda Perney, Jeff Schaire, Peter Biskind, Harriet Fier, and, in a later enlistment at the New York Post, Jerry Nachman, Richard Gooding, Eric Fettman, John Cotter, and Lou Colasuonno. Even brief encounters with their skills have added to my craft. Directly or indirectly, their work is in this book too.

But across the years, one magazine editor has provided a special kind of continuity. Ed Kosner was assistant night city editor at the New York Post on my first night in the city room. He edited my first piece of copy. Later, as editor of New York magazine for twelve years, he assigned many of the articles in this book. A lifetime has passed, and we’re still working together, now at Esquire, where Kosner is the editor. Hundreds of thousands of my words have come under his pencil. With his efficiency, clarity, and intelligence, he has always helped make them better. We communicate in a kind of intellectual shorthand, a few words here, a note there, and then back to the typewriter or computer. In a trade populated by prima donnas, we’ve never exchanged a harsh word. More important, we’re friends. Un abrazo, Eduardo.