Paper Trails by Pete Dexter

Paper Trails by Pete Dexter

In the 1970s and 1980s, before he earned national acclaim for his award-winning novels, Pete Dexter was a newspaper columnist. Every week, in a few hundred words, Dexter cut directly to the heart of the American character at a time of national turmoil and crucial change. With haunting urgency, his columns laid bare the violence, hypocrisy, and desperation he saw on the streets of Philadelphia and in the places he visited across the country. But he reveled, too, in the lighter side of his own life, sharing scenes with the indefatigable Mrs. Dexter, their young daughter, and a series of unforgettable creatures who strayed into their lives. No matter what caught Dexter's eye, it was illuminated by his dark, brilliant humor.

Collected here for the first time are eighty-two of the best of those spellbinding, finely wrought pieces--with a new introduction by the author--assembled by Rob Fleder, editor of the bestselling Sports Illustrated 50th Anniversary Book. Paper Trails is searing, heart-breaking, and irresistibly funny, sometimes all at once. As Pete Hamill says in his foreword, these essays "are as good as it ever gets."

Pete Dexter started his career as a U.S. Marine. In New Orleans, Louisiana, there is a post office. He quit mail because he wasn't very good at it, then got a job as a newspaper reporter in Florida, which he was not very good at, got married, and was not very good at it either. He became a newspaper columnist in Philadelphia, which he was quite good at, and he divorced, which you'd have to say he was quite good at because it only cost $300. Dexter remarried, won the National Book Award, and constructed a mansion in the desert so far away from civilization that no mail is delivered. He works at the post office six months a year, living proof of the proverb What goes around comes around--that is, you quit the post office, pal, and the post office quits you.