[4] In 1959, Larner began a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship at UC Berkeley, but finding himself unsuited for academic life he left graduate school in his first year and came to New York City at 22.
[5] In 1962, Larner was assigned by Dissent magazine to cover the teachers' strike, and spent several months going to elementary school classes in Harlem.
His long account of what he discovered was widely anthologized, having come to the attention of Michael Harrington, author of The Other America: Poverty in the United States, which inspired John F. Kennedy and Robert F.
[citation needed] Also in that year he journeyed south to cover the lunch-counter sit-in strikes organized at black universities, and wrote several pieces for The New Leader and Dissent.
[6] The heroes of Drive, He Said were a college basketball star who has mixed feelings about his stardom and what is expected of him and his revolutionary roommate, who eventually burns the campus down.
"[citation needed] In 1964, Larner won the Aga Khan Prize from The Paris Review, for the best short story of the year, "O the Wonder!
"[citation needed] After 1964, Larner worked as a freelance journalist and published articles, essays and stories in many magazines, including Harpers, The Paris Review, and Life.
In a wide-ranging interview, given in 2016, Larner spoke about his experiences writing for McCarthy, and how that influenced his script for The Candidate:"I thought a campaign was like drifting downriver on a raft, where everything is beautiful: then you begin to hear the roar of the falls up ahead, but it’s too late.
[citation needed] In April 1971, Larner wrote a documentary-style script for a feature film directed by Michael Ritchie and starring Robert Redford about a campaign for senator from California.
"[11] During this time, Larner occasionally wrote speeches for politicians, like Bill Bradley, when he gave his basic position on Israel, or stars like Robert Redford, when he spoke in behalf of environmentalism.
[citation needed] It was in New York that Larner was inspired to write Chicken on Church, both a mock-epic and a love poem to the city, particularly to the neighborhood on the end of Manhattan Island.
Jeremy Larner now lives outside of San Francisco, continuing to write poetry, finishing a Hollywood novel based on "Rack's Rules", and making notes for his memoirs.