My Times

A veteran reporter recounts his experiences at The New York Times, discussing Greece under the junta, on the trail of tortured political prisoners, and Cuba, and offers anecdotes about the fabled William Morris and others.

Corry spent more than three decades at the New York Times , leaving the paper from 1968 to 1971 for Willie Morris's Harper's before ending his affiliation with the "paper of record" in 1988. He is delightfully candid about portraying himself as a rather annoyingly naive and suggestible patsy in the 1960s who eventually developed his own news sense, and got in trouble for it in the 1980s with several pieces, especially one about Jerzy Kosinski, ghostwriters and the CIA. He is equally probing about the paper itself, which, he shows, is treated by its employees with a reverence usually reserved for religious institutions and which he feels has become the temple of political correctness. A TV critic for a while, Corry has little respect for TV news, and he dismisses the so-called New Journalism as fiction. The prevailing note in the book is honesty and that makes Corry's autobiography a treat to read.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A top journalist's engaging, worldly-wise account of a 35-year career in what, on the evidence of his wryly anecdotal text, comes off as the news game. All told, Corry spent 31 years with The New York Times (where, in the 1950's, he started as a copyboy in the sports department). Now a fellow at Columbia's Gannett Center for Media Studies, he forsook his otherwise lifelong employer in 1969 for Harper's, returning in 1971 to the Times after Willie Morris had been ousted as editor of that magazine. During his tenure at both publications, Corry formed strong and independent opinions on Manhattan's viscerally liberal literary establishment, as well as on its governance and cafe society. Never forgetting that the access he enjoyed almost anywhere in the world was more institutional than personal, the author covered a wealth of stories at home and abroad--stories ranging from Castro's Cuba through the suicide of Phillip Graham (then head of The Washington Post); political prisoners erroneously believed to be held by a Greek junta; Jackie O.; and Jerzy Kosinski (whose vilification by The Village Voice Corry rebutted in a lengthy Times article). Moreover, as a longtime proprietor of the Times's ``About New York'' column, the author offered readers perceptive takes on the city's haut monde and lesser lights. But he didn't write (as he does here with rueful wit) of his crumbling marriage, financial woes, love affairs, and problems with alcohol. Nor did he pass the sort of public judgment he passes here on famed colleagues and contemporaries--David Halberstam, John Lindsay, Norman Mailer, William Paley, Harrison Salisbury (who ``never met a revolution he didn't like''), William Styron, et al.--though, during a stint as the paper's TV critic, he had a lot to say about the media's handling of news. An absorbing memoir of a journalist's life during the best and worst of times. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Corry, who has been writing for the New York Times for 31 years, has produced another book about that hallowed institution. But it is more than that; it is a story of other aspects of his life, as well. He chronicles his years at Harper's , his coverage of Castro's revolution, a controversial story about the novelist Jerzy Kosinski, and a couple of his love affairs. As a self-described conservative, Corry has harsh words for several former collegues as well as others in the media who do not live up to his standards. This is an interesting book for people who enjoy reading about the good and bad old days of newspapering. Public libraries will want to acquire it.
- Rebecca Wondriska, Trinity Coll. Lib., Hartford, Ct.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Corry's anecdotal memoir of three decades in journalism--from copyboy to reporter, editor, columnist, and critic at the New York Times, interrupted by a three-year stint at Willie Morris' Harper's--hopscotches through the years, lamenting the changes in journalism, politics, and daily life since the Eisenhower years and scoring points in the Big Apple's interminable culture wars. Corry focuses on stories that support his neoconservative worldview: the Greek colonels not torturing writers and artists; repression in Castro's Cuba ten years after the revolution; style over substance in John Lindsay's mayoralty; the pitched battle among intellectuals over Jerzy Kosinski's integrity. The famous dance through these pages, earning praise or blame based largely on their positions along the political spectrum. For Corry, like other neocons, the 1960s were the nation's breaking point; he bewails the introduction of moral considerations into politics and journalism and the introduction of women into the Times' newsroom. Appropriately critical of media manipulation, Corry's last few pages jerk tears as boldly as a Dickens deathbed. Still, My Times offers readers fascinating, opinionated glimpses of letters and journalism in New York. Mary Carroll