Warren Hinckle

Peter Collier on the passing of Warren Hinckle:

When I joined Ramparts in 1966, Hinckle was already well on his way at age twenty-seven to becoming a living legend. While most of the staff came to work in street-fighter chic, he had his own homemade version of bella figura, showing up most days in a tie and three-piece suit, although sometimes changing pace with patent leather dancing pumps and a maroon velvet jacket. Jowly and plump and conveying an impression of fluid retention, he was an imperious alcoholic and only those who didn’t realize how Irish he was regarded it as paradoxical that he should become more fluent and inventive the more he drank, and that he never—even after several hours at Cookie Pacetti’s, the working-class watering hole where he went to escape intellectuals and politicos—appeared drunk.