jaredk said:
For oldhack....2 questions...
1) Why do you suppose Kluger never interviewed Breslin? His "Notes on Sources" includes an interview with Wolfe, but not Breslin.
2) Did H-T people think, as Cannon did, that Breslin was as much fictionalist as journalist?
Not a clue as to why Kluger didn't interview Breslin, except to suggest that there were others in the H-T firmament who were much brighter. Guess Breslin is the best person to ask why it didn't happen. I'd suggest, delicately, that Breslin was larger in life after the H-T.
As one who was an editor at the time, looking closely at H-T copy along with that of others that we called special services, Breslin was not THE star of the H-T, though certainly a star. His piece on Arlington Cemetery, frankly, I don't recall, although I am sure I read it at the time. I know I didn't put it aside at the time and say we have to get this in the paper. Remember, there were were hundreds, maybe thousands, of stories that it was competing against.
The Malcolm X story was the one that first grabbed me by the ass and told me this guy was really something different. My boss, who was about 15 years older than me, hated it because it did not have WWWWH lead. That, IMOE, was what made it great, because it told the story from the time Malcolm W walked into the ballroom.
I have no way of countering the suspicion of others, apparently including the great Cannon, that it and maybe other stuff by Breslin was less than totally accurate. All I can tell you was how it blew me away when I first read it, how it made me say I have to figure out a way to get this story in the paper right now (I failed).
Find a copy and read it, then ask yourself how you would have reacted if you were an editor in 1964 and you had to squeeze it into a tiny news hole.
It's easy, but wrong, to focus on Breslin as the epitome of the H-T. Two words: Red Smith. Read Kluger.
