His Life in Pieces: Ambrose Clancy's New Book Offers Four Decades of Stories Worth Telling

Ambrose Clancy is always on the lookout for a good story — especially if it’s about someone who would not normally have a light shined upon him or her.

Often, that means literally.

Take, for instance, the 1990 book “The Night Line: A Memoir of Work,” about Clancy’s time driving a Checker Cab in New York City. Accompanied by a series of photographs shot by ex-cabbie Peter M. Donahoe (several of which are now in the permanent collection of the Museum of the City of New York), the book delved into the drama inherent in the late night lives of Clancy’s passengers.

“I drove a cab for four years in the ’70s,” Clancy said. “At the time, I was at loose ends and looking for work. I was writing and I was desperate to get into print as a journalist, but I needed the money.”

It was a cab driving friend who suggested Clancy give it a try.

“In those days, it was great for people like me who were at loose ends. You could go to the fleet, they were always hiring, and you could be driving a cab within three days,” he said. “That night, you would have money in your hand because of the tips.”

It was also a great way for Clancy to cultivate his listening and journalistic writing skills.

“It did affect my writing,” conceded Clancy. “You learn the city quickly; it’s a fantastic education. Then there’s the city itself — the vibe — and you learn about New Yorkers and the stories come immediately.”

Experiential journalism has long been a trademark for Clancy who, since 2012, has been editor of the Shelter Island Reporter (for the record, he also wrote for The Southampton Press for a while). As a result, Clancy has penned a large number of pieces for a wide and impressive selection of magazines and newspapers over the years, including GQ, The Washington Post, Long Island Business News and the North Shore Sun, to name a few.

Those pieces also include an intriguing 1998 story written for the Long Island Voice, the short-lived subsidiary of The Village Voice, about “The Drunk Train,” an accounting of the inebriated and often unruly masses who frequent the late night weekend LIRR trains bound for Long Island out of Penn Station.

And then there’s the series that Clancy wrote, also for the Long Island Voice, about those among us who are on the clock when the rest of the world is fast asleep.

“I interviewed one of the last milkmen who made deliveries on the island,” Clancy said. “He drove an old rickety van from midnight to six a.m. and I went out with him on a run. That’s was the graveyard shift series — a milkman, a DJ, a cop, a baker — and I hung out with these people.

“They love the night and going to work when everyone is asleep,” he continued. “But it screws them up big time — especially their circadian rhythms.”

Another experiential story had Clancy trying out as a ball boy for the U.S. Open Tennis Championships.

“I’m not a ball boy, I’m a ball geezer,” he clarified.” Chasing balls and throwing balls, I’m surrounded by 218 boys and girls in the best shape of their lives.”

Other stories by Clancy strike a more somber tone, like his 2002 piece for The Washington Post about the Finger Lakes district in which he references the 1779 massacre of Iroquois tribes by American General George Sullivan. Or another story, this one for the Reporter, about Shelter Island’s Sylvester Manor and the truth of the property’s original owners’ history of enslavement. Clancy also wrote about the 2018 case of Reverend Paul Wancura, an 87-year-old retired Episcopalian priest who was found beaten and bound in his remote Shelter Island home after a suspected robbery. Left for dead, Wancura spent nearly a month in the hospital before succumbing to his injuries. The case remains open to this day and is Shelter Island’s only unsolved murder.

“I came to the conclusion that every single place has not the best kind of history,” said Clancy.

It’s no understatement to say that Clancy’s has been a writer’s life. He’s done travel writing, lived in Ireland for two years with his wife, Mary Lydon (where he wrote his first novel, “Blind Pilot”), attended literary conferences, interviewed famous authors and ventured into the conflict zones in Northern Ireland, all while making copious notes and writing long form pieces for magazines and newspapers.

He even had the opportunity to follow the late, legendary Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin around New York City for three days for a 1987 piece in GQ. After its publication, Clancy was gifted with the highest praise possible when Breslin told him he was glad he wouldn’t have to sue him.

Now, Clancy is taking a look back, and has compiled four decades worth of some of his favorite stories in “My Life in Pieces: Writers, Rogues, The Road and The Rock,” a book that revisits his long career as a writer.

“The subtitle tells it all — there are a lot of writer profiles,” Clancy said of “My Life in Pieces,” which is published by Brick Tower Press. “I’ve gone to many literary conferences — it’s stealing to go to one and get paid for it. I’ve done a lot of those. Rogues is about politicians who fit into that category, and the road is my travel writing, which I’ve done a lot of.

“The last part is The Rock, which is Shelter Island and stories I did for the Reporter.”

Inside, the book is divided into five distinct sections that reflect various facets of his writerly life — “Words, Words, Words,” shares stories of the various literary figures Clancy has interviewed or encountered over the years; Lawn Guyland, which may be fairly self-explanatory, includes stories like the aforementioned drunk train, a piece about Camp Siegfried — the Bund gathering spot in Yaphank — and tales from the graveyard shift, among others; “New York, New York,” encompasses stories written about the five boroughs; “Places” is a selection of Clancy’s travel writing; and finally, “Gimme Shelter” are the stories and columns that Clancy penned in more recent years for the Shelter Island Reporter, where he remains editor.

This Thursday, May 8, at 6 p.m., Clancy will be at the Riverhead Library to share some of the stories from “My Life in Pieces: Writers, Rogues, The Road and The Rock” and sign copies of the book.

It should come as no surprise that a writer named Ambrose Clancy would find inspiration in Ireland, and that country figured prominently in the formation of his career early on.

“Ireland plays a significant role in this book and me becoming a professional writer,” he said. “I was driving a cab, Mary was transcribing tapes and working as a freelance editor. We were living in the city and she scored a job with a stockbroker who wanted to write a book about how to get rich in the market. She said, ‘Yeah, we can do that.’”

Clancy and Lydon teamed up to write the book, and though it was never published, the couple ended up with $4,000 for their efforts.

“It was Mary’s idea — she said why don’t we do the great escape? Let’s get out of here. Let’s go live abroad,” Clancy said. “English was our only language, and England didn’t ring the bell. But we’re both Irish Americans, so we said, ‘let’s go’ — and we did. To have the great escape was one idea, but I also had this thing in mind — I was really ambitious to be a published writer and journalist. This is the late ’70s, the troubles in Northern Ireland were really boiling over. I thought, ‘I can go and report on this, sell stories to American publications and I’ll get a name for that.’”

With press credentials in hand from an editor at The Village Voice, Clancy and Lydon headed across the pond where he set out to become a writer.

“It worked. We got to Ireland, rented a flat in Dublin and loved it,” Clancy said. “It was a three-hour train ride up to Belfast where I had the living hell scared out of me numerous times. Press credentials are an amazing thing — they got me in with the paramilitary groups, Protestants or loyalists, volunteer forces, armed gangs from the provisional IRA. They knew what The Village Voice was, so I would meet them and talk and they would slam the other side.”

When Clancy asked Niall Kiely, a journalist from the Irish Times, what he should say when men with automatic weapons asked if he was Catholic or Protestant, Clancy was told, “Say you’re American. As an American, you’re out of this thing.”

“Both sides were eager to talk and share their beliefs,” Clancy said. “I published maybe two pieces, but I had this other plan during my time in the North and in Dublin. I can write a novel. That’s what I did. We moved to a little village on the Atlantic in County Clare, I wrote this book, that was ‘Blind Pilot,’ the $4,000 ran out, we came back home and I started driving a cab again.”

Clancy’s novel is set in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, and it was published by William Morrow in 1980. Coincidentally, it will be reissued within the month by Brick Tower Press as a trade paperback.

The publication of “Blind Pilot” was a turning point in that it attracted editors from newspapers and magazines who began assigning Clancy profiles and travel writing pieces related to Ireland.

“There are worse things than being pigeonholed and writing about Ireland,” he said. “I also loved it. For travel writing, they pay you to get on a plane.”

The idea to put Clancy’s writings into book form came from Shelter Island resident John Colby, the publisher of Brick Tower Press who formerly worked for Doubleday.

“He came to me and said he had been reading the Reporter and found my old stuff online and asked, ‘Did you ever consider a collection?’” Clancy recalled.

“I did, and it was a difficult process,” he said. “A collection is pulling all these pieces together and making a unity of some kind — that was difficult.

“But in a way, it’s like meeting old pals. What do you choose? Who’s your favorite child?” he continued. “What was great fun is writing the introduction of each section and the introduction to the pieces. I can still remember the time and place I did them.”

As he looks back at a four-decade writing career, what does Clancy ultimately feel makes for a good story?

“One that pays really well,” he joked.

While that certainly is true, he added thoughtfully, “I think it really comes down to people. When I started out being a travel writer, I went looking for places and I found people. A good story always comes back to the people.”

Ambrose Clancy will discuss his new book “My Life in Pieces: Writers, Rogues, The Road and The Rock” on Thursday, May 8, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at Riverhead Free Library, 330 Court Street in Riverhead. A book signing will follow.