My Times

There's no more witty and astute a voyager through the worlds of news than John Corry, who for more than thirty years plied his trade in New York, mostly for The New York Times, and briefly for Harper's under Willie Morris. During these years, Corry, who started his career filling paste pots at the Times and finished as the paper's first TV news critic, went to Greece in search of (nonexistent) torture victims of the junta, and to Cuba in search of Castro's (nonexistent) heaven on earth. He covered such politico-celebrities as the Kennedys and the Rockefellers, and such literary celebrities as Jerzy Kosinski. And he did a memorable series on one square block on Manhattan's Upper West Side . But Corry's biggest story is the one he covers in this book - how the news changed, from the stolid search for facts, to the fanciful New Journalism that he helped create on the pages of Harper's, and finally to the TV news reporting he covered at the Times. The old days there, lovingly re-created, smell of tobacco and scotch, and are filled with serious journalists whose raffish side emerged after the paper had been put to bed. The new days began at Harper's under Willie Morris, when David Halberstam, Norman Mailer, and others were blurring the distinction between news and feature writing. The same watchful eye and nose for the poseur that won John Corry dedicated admirers in the past informs this entertaining book. We are fascinated and amused to find a front-row seat at the founding of the neoconservative movement (in a Chinese restaurant on the Upper West Side), to have an insider's view of the "old boy" foreign-affairs network at fashionable dinner parties, and to be present day and night at the Times during the fabled tenure of Abe Rosenthal and Arthur Gelb. Funny, witty, pithy, My Times is destined to join the ranks of the great newspaper memoirs.