Early Career
His early literary influences ranged from writers like Raymond Chandler, Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor, and Philip Roth to film directors like Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Sidney Lumet, and Werner Herzog. He studied at Wesleyan University in Connecticut and won the Paul Horgan prize for best short fiction by a student. He started in journalism as an assistant to writer Pete Hamill before reporting for the Newark Star-Ledger in New Jersey and the Norwich Bulletin in Connecticut. He reported on crime for New York magazine but found inspiration for his first novel at the New York Department of Probation saying that it was a "virtual social microcosm."
Read more about this topic: Peter Blauner
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or career:
“For the writer, there is nothing quite like having someone say that he or she understands, that you have reached them and affected them with what you have written. It is the feeling early humans must have experienced when the firelight first overcame the darkness of the cave. It is the communal cooking pot, the Street, all over again. It is our need to know we are not alone.”
—Virginia Hamilton (b. 1936)
“My ambition in life: to become successful enough to resume my career as a neurasthenic.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)