What do you think the legacy of September 11 will be on New York and New Yorkers?

I don’t know, because none of us can know how it will be remembered if there are more terrorist strikes. I hope nothing like it ever happens again, here, or anywhere. But one thing is certain: we now know we are vulnerable. That has created a kind of healthy fatalism, a sense that we could die while reaching for a cheese danish, but just because of that, we must live as fully as we can.

What is your list of the most influential New Yorkers in history?

Ooof. In no particular order: De Witt Clinton, who was the driving force behind the Erie Canal; James Gordon Bennett, who invented popular journalism; Walt Whitman, who created urban American poetry; Master Juba and John Diamond, an African and an Irishman, who invented tap dancing in the dives of the Five Points; Thomas Nast, the greatest nineteenth-century cartoonist, pursuer of Boss Tweed, inventor of the Democratic donkey, the Republican elephant, and Santa Claus. Boss Tweed is one of them, of course, and Fiorello La Guardia. So are Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays. Teddy Roosevelt should be on any such list, along with Henry James and Edith Wharton. Jonas Salk should be there, and Lionel Trilling.

There is no room for all the artists. But among them should be Sugar Ray Robinson, who brought a savage beauty to prizefighting; Max Roach, Charlie Parker, and John Birks Gillespie, who created a spectacular form of American music; Franz Kline and John Sloan, Ben Shahn and Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns and George Bellows. They all influenced Americans who never saw New York, and many people who never visited America.

What were the biggest turning points in New York history?

Double ooof. Too many to detail. But here are some of them: the American Revolution; the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 and the end of slavery two years later; the Great Fire of 1835, which wiped out the old integrated town and created class-based housing. The Irish Famine of the 1840s and the immense immigration that came from it; the Draft Riots of 1863; the invention (earlier) of the telegraph; the invention of the elevator, which made tall buildings possible; the digging of the first subway and its opening in 1904. The great Italian and Eastern European immigration wave that started in 1880. The arrival of big-time sports around the time of World War I. The phonograph. The radio. Television. The folly of Prohibition, which led to the creation of the modern Mob. And, of course, September 11, 2001.

Forever is not just about New York. It’s about the possibilities of living forever. What are the pros and cons of such a possibility?

The pros are obvious. You’d have time to read all those books, see all those works of art, master all those languages. You’d have time to repair the stupidities of youth.

If you had to live such a life, the best place an earth for doing it would be New York, a city of constant change, of endless fads and fashions, dreadful cruelties and affirmations of life, of extraordinary people, of constant renewal and reinvention. Sooner or later, the best of the world would come to you here: food, literature, art, theater, science, intelligence.

But on a personal level, being a lone person who lives forever would contain one intolerable truth, a kind of human horror: everybody you love would die. In a way, that is the driving force in my novel.

Special thanks to Pete Hamill for talking with us about his new book. You can purchase any of his novels, including his new release Forever, through this site by visiting Amazon.com, Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble or visit your favorite bookstore for more details.