Remembering Nat Hentoff
When I was a teenager, I wrote him a very early obituary
Before I interviewed Nat Hentoff, I asked his advice on technique; it was my first time.
He said: When you’re done, ask the person: Is there anything I’ve forgotten to ask you? Sometimes there is the best part of your story.
I was barely 19 years old when I met Mr. Hentoff in 2002. The ink still wet on the U.S.A. Patriot Act, his speech on civil liberties in wartime was potent, even for a sleepy room of journalism undergrads. Behind a podium, behind a beard like Fidel, he took questions and cracked jokes about all the school assignments he was helping students complete.
Mr. Hentoff — which made him laugh, you can call me Nat, please, he said — this is a newspaper I make with some friends. I thought you might like it. I handed him a copy as the room emptied out.
The newspaper, which we funded with keg parties, which we laid out in Quark in an basement computer lab, which we shepherded home to our dormitories in a taxi cab from the union printer in Long Island City, 10,000 copies bouncing on our laps over the 59th Street Bridge, was an anarchist broadsheet called NYU inc. My most recent article was about how the traditional student newspaper was spineless, corrupt and in the pocket of the school’s…
