grew up in a working-class Italian Catholic family
As a
teenager took a summer job as a parking attendantHe read and was inspired by James Joyce, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor and Ernest Hemingway
He graduated from Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx in 1954 and from Fordham University in the Bronx with a bachelor's degree in Communication Arts in 1958
He worked as a copywriter
in 1975 he got married
Later on he and his wife moved to Greece, where they lived for 3 years