"Nothing quite like the beat demimonde exists anymore, not with the same literary élan, the same desperate vitality. Being a poor New York writer or painter has become too expensive — or too crushing — to permit such animated congregation"
New Year's Day 50 years ago: "But in its monumental ugliness it commands that special morbid fascination that all New Yorkers feel toward their city, despise it as they may."
McDarrah was utterly tenacious on an assignment. No one could intimidate him—and, in any context, he had no compunction telling you exactly what he thought and intended.
