Jimmy Breslin is celebrated in 'The Man Who Told the Truth'

During the late '80s and early '90s, New York Newsday was home to a pair of the best working columnists in the city, and maybe the whole country. One's style was quiet, incisive, sinuous. The other's was gruff, direct, outsize. But together they romped through the five boroughs, and occasionally (admittedly, rarely) Long Island demanding truth and justice.

Murray Kempton and Jimmy Breslin were legends, and still are. Now, one has a biography worthy of that legend. "Jimmy Breslin: The Man Who Told the Truth," by Richard Esposito (Crime Ink/Penzler, $30), is the life story of a man who almost defied someone to tell it. Born in 1928 in Jamaica, Queens, he began his career as a copy boy for the Long Island Press, and wrapped life in daily journalism over half a century later at Newsday. There was also a Sunday column for the Daily News that he continued up until his death in 2017.

Much happened over those 88 years, and Esposito, who lives part-time in Hampton Bays, gets right to it. There were thousands of columns, 16 (or so) books, and a late-night TV show. Along with Tom Wolfe, Breslin was present at the birth of "New Journalism." Breslin also tried to get New York City to secede when Norman Mailer and he unsuccessfully ran for mayor and city council president, respectively, in 1969.

But the daily grind was his calling. His columns championed the poor, downtrodden and forgotten. There seemed to be just as many about mobsters, goons, con men and other assorted crooks. His columns on Son of Sam were worldwide sensations. Another — about the man who dug JFK's grave — is still taught in journalism school. Among the Daily News columns that got him a Pulitzer in 1986 was one about a single man dying from a disease few then knew about, fewer understood — AIDS.

How to understand Breslin and his many lives? Esposito — the former city editor of New York Newsday and a veteran investigative producer for "Nightline" and NBC News — was in as good a position as anyone to try.

The following was edited for length and clarity:

Why a biography on Breslin, especially since he did his own memoir, 1996's "I Want to Thank My Brain for Remembering Me?"

His memoir is just that. It's not a biography and the book that's closest to his biography is his Damon Runyon biography — Runyon was a big inspiration for him — so I decided to do it. [My agent] knew I had known Jimmy since I was 22, and knew Jimmy had been calling me for 30 years. For all his faults, I really liked him and knew he was a genius.

How many columns did Breslin write, and how many did you end up reading for this?

Roughly 5,000, but first I had to collect them. Like any body of work, some are OK, and he's just jamming a deadline and [effectively wrote], "This is what I got." But the vast majority are good.

But you also write about his contribution to New Journalism.

He and Tom Wolfe sat next to each other at the [New York Herald-Tribune] and I talked to Wolfe about the New York magazine story he wrote about the 'new journalism' [of which Breslin and Wolfe were considered the avatars]. But he and Jimmy simply viewed that as the 'old' journalism. The garbage barge of history [Wolfe said] is littered with movements that begin with the word 'new' — all they were were storytellers who understood how to reach the reader in their heart and gut.

Joe Flaherty, campaign manager of that quixotic 1969 secession ticket, famously observed that "Breslin's life is starred in, written, produced, directed and most importantly publicized by Jimmy Breslin." How did you navigate that as his biographer?

It was in my head all through the writing of this — how do you cut through all the personas and see if you could get to the kid inside. [But] while he's the subject of the book, it's also the narrative of 50 years of American history. That's the other subject.

You write "loss and betrayal ... this is at the core of Breslin. It drove his anger, it drove him [and] it drove those around him insane." Could you elaborate?

He had constant anger. His father walked out on the family when he was a boy. That was the dark spot on his soul, yet he turned that into something that could benefit you, the reader. But then you think about the warmth of his relationships with women: He needed them, loved them, and had the good luck to be raised by women. [Breslin was predeceased by two daughters, Rosemary in 2004 at the age of 44, and Kelly in 2009, also at the age of 44.]

You have a line in the book saying he "wrote columns that began and often ended in bars." How serious was his alcohol abuse?

When I started this, I knew he had been a heavy drinker [and] I don't know how he could write his books, but somehow he could. And then he stopped [and] he never talked about it. But drinking in the newsroom was part of the ethos of the time. When I was a copy boy at the Daily News, after the first edition came out, the whole news desk could get on their coats and go to Costello's where they'd have two or three drinks, then come back for the next edition.

What's Breslin's legacy?

It includes the essence of what makes good journalism: hard work, difficult questions, long hours; certainly. But most importantly Breslin leaves us the lesson that says when you climb to the top of the stairs to find the story, bring compassion, empathy and the ability to see the event through the participant’s eyes. Then you can bring your reader, your viewer, your listener into the room with you and allow them to find emotional clarity. It is a great gift he left all storytellers.