Sitting Down with Pete Hamill

Coming through the door, you would have sworn that the picture on the front of his book had come alive and entered our NYU classroom. Pete Hamill, writer of “Downtown”, wore the same brown blazer and black sweater as on the cover. And save the sweater’s grey collar and a few more grey hairs, he matched the novel in every way, including its nostalgic tone.
Throughout “Downtown,” Hamill journeys the area of Manhattan below 14th Street. What starts off as Hamill’s own wistful wanderings evolves into an account of the city which goes between the historical to the personal and back again.
Hamill explained his personal reasons for writing the book saying, “when you understand your own mortality; I wanted [my grandson] to understand why this weird guy with the beard had such a passion about the city.” On another level Hamill says he wanted the reader “to feel some excitement about the place he lives, to inspire some kids to find out more.”
But while education is part of the book’s themes, Hamill’s own journey into New York is equally important and fascinating. Following his own personal experiences about being “the last generation of white Americans that were poor,” Hamill makes Downtown to be a virtual Oz wonderland. His poverty also gave him a sense of empathy. “I was able to understand blacks in a certain way; I was able to understand Latinos in a certain way, at least emotionally,” he said, and this follows not only in the novel but Hamill’s career as well
Throughout his extensive career as a journalist, he has been known for pulling for the people seemingly out of power. “You don’t ever look down on somebody unless you were giving them a hand to get up,” Hamill said, recalling how his mother scolded him after making jokes about beggars at the West Side Piers.
It was a lesson he never forgot. And through his writing Hamill did what good he could to give people a hand up. So while “Downtown” may teach something about the city, judging by the man, teaching about empathy may not just be a secondary theme.