Gay Talese
Gay Talese | |
---|---|
Literary journalism, New Journalism | |
Years active | 1961–present |
Notable works |
|
Spouse |
Nan Ahearn (m. 1959) |
Children | 2 |
Gaetano "Gay" Talese (
Early life and education
Born in Ocean City, New Jersey, the son of Italian immigrant parents,[1] Talese graduated from Ocean City High School in 1949.[7]
Talese's entry into writing was entirely happenstance and the unintended consequence of his attempt as a high school sophomore to gain more playing time in the baseball team. The assistant coach had the duty of telephoning in the chronicle of each game to the local newspaper and when he complained he was too busy to do it properly, the head coach gave Talese the duty.[8]: 237 As Talese recalls in his 1996 memoiristic essay "Origins of a Nonfiction Writer":
On the mistaken assumption that relieving the athletic department of its press duties would gain me the gratitude of the coach and get me more playing time, I took the job and even embellished it by using my typing skills to compose my own account of the games rather than merely relaying the information to the newspapers by telephone.[8]: 237
After only seven sports articles, Talese was given his own column for the weekly Ocean City Sentinel-Ledger in Ocean City. By the time he left for college in September 1949, he had written some 311 stories and columns for the Sentinel-Ledger.[8]: ix–x
Talese credits his mother as the role model he followed in developing the interviewing techniques that he would during his career. He relates in "Origins of a Nonfiction Writer":
I learned [from my mother] ... to listen with patience and care, and never to interrupt even when people were having great difficulty in explaining themselves, for during such halting and imprecise moments ... people are very revealing—what they hesitate to talk about can tell much about them. Their pauses, their evasions, their sudden shifts in subject matter are likely indicators of what embarrasses them, or irritates them, or what they regard as too private or imprudent to be disclosed to another person at that particular time. However, I have also overheard many people discussing candidly with my mother what they had earlier avoided—a reaction that I think had less to do with her inquiring nature or sensitively posed questions than with their gradual acceptance of her as a trustworthy individual in whom they could confide.[8]: 228–229
Talese graduated from the University of Alabama in 1953. His selection of a major was, as he described it, a moot choice. "I chose journalism as my college major because that is what I knew," he recalls, "but I really became a student of history."[8]: ix–x At university, he became a brother of Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity.[9]
It was there that Talese would begin to employ literary devices more well known for fiction, such as establishing the "scene" with minute details and beginning articles in medias res. During his junior year, Talese became the sports editor for the campus newspaper, The Crimson White,[10] and started a column he dubbed "Sports Gay-zing",[11] for which he wrote on November 7, 1951:
Rhythmic "Sixty Minute Man" emanated from the Supe Store juke box and Larry (The Maestro) Chiodetti beat against the table like mad in keeping time with the jumpy tempo. T-shirted Bobby Marlow was just leaving the Sunday morning bull session and dapper Bill Kilroy had just purchased the morning newspapers.[12]
Career
Newspaper reporter
After graduation in June 1953, Talese relocated to
Talese followed this with an article in the February 21, 1954 edition concerning the chairs used on the boardwalk of Atlantic City.[14] However, his budding journalism career would have to be put on hold, as he was drafted into the United States Army in 1954.[10]
Talese had been required (as were all male students at the time owing to the Korean War) to join the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) and had relocated to New York awaiting his eventual commission as a second lieutenant.[15] Talese was sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky, to train in the Tank Corps.[16] Finding his mechanical skills lacking, Talese was transferred to the Office of Public Information where he worked for an army newspaper, Inside the Turret (known today as The Gold Standard), and soon had his own column, "Fort Knox Confidential".[17]
When Talese completed his military service in 1956, he was rehired by The New York Times as a sports reporter.
Talese was then assigned to the Times' Albany Bureau to cover state politics. It was a short-lived assignment, however, as his exacting habits and meticulous style soon irritated his new editors so much that they recalled him to the city, assigning him to write minor obituaries.[8]: 257–259 Talese puts it, "I was banished to the obituary desk as punishment – to break me. There were major obituaries and minor obituaries. I was sent to write minor obituaries not even seven paragraphs long." After a year working for the Times obituary section, he began to write articles for the Sunday Times, which was then managed as a separate organization from the daily Times by editor Lester Markel.[12]
Magazine reporter
Talese's first piece for the magazine Esquire – a series of scenes in New York City – appeared in a special New York issue in July 1960.[19]: 23 When the Times newspaper unions had a work stoppage in December 1962, Talese had plenty of time to watch rehearsals for a production by Broadway director Joshua Logan for an Esquire profile. As Carol Polsgrove indicates in her history of Esquire during the 1960s, it was the kind of reporting he liked to do best: "just being there, observing, waiting for the climactic moment when the mask would drop and true character would reveal itself."[19]: 60
In 1964, Talese published
Talese's celebrated Esquire essay about Joe DiMaggio, "The Silent Season of a Hero" – in part a meditation on the transient nature of fame – was also published in 1966.[22][23]
For his part, Talese regarded his 1966 profile of obituarist Alden Whitman, "Mr. Bad News", as his finest.[24]
A number of Talese's Esquire essays were collected into the 1970 book Fame and Obscurity; in its introduction, Talese paid tribute to two writers he admired, citing "an aspiration on my part to somehow bring to reportage the tone that Irwin Shaw and John O'Hara had brought to the short story."[25]
In 1971, Talese published Honor Thy Father, a book about the travails of the Bonanno crime family in the 1960s, especially Salvatore Bonanno and his father Joseph. The book was based on seven years of research and interviews. Honor Thy Father was made into a TV movie in 1973.[26]
Talese signed a $1.2 million contract with
In 2008,
In 2011, Talese won the Norman Mailer Prize for Distinguished Journalism.[30]
Personal life
In 1959, Talese married writer
Talese was a close friend of fellow journalist and author Tom Wolfe.[34]
Views
Talese is a lifelong Democrat. Despite this, he was a fierce critic of President Barack Obama and has defended President Donald Trump on several occasions. In an February 2017 interview with Haaretz, Talese said, “This crazy Trump, hustler, real estate tycoon, I think he’s better than Obama. We love to say Obama is Frederick Douglass, Obama is Booker T. Washington, Obama is Paul Robeson, the enlightenment. Well it didn’t work."[35]
Controversies
In April 2016, Talese spoke at a panel at a
In June 2016, the credibility of Talese's book The Voyeur's Motel, whose subject was
In a November 2017 interview with
In popular culture
- Talese appeared as a character in several strips of the comic Doonesbury.[43]
Bibliography
As author[44]
- New York: A Serendipiter's Journey (1961)
- The Bridge: The Building of the ISBN 978-0802776440
- The Overreachers (1965; compilation of past reportage)
- ISBN 978-0812977684
- ISBN 978-1015280809
- ISBN 978-0061665363
- ISBN 978-0061665431
- ISBN 978-0679410348
- The Gay Talese Reader: Portraits and Encounters (2003; contains material from New York: A Serendipiter's Journey, The Overreachers and Fame and Obscurity) ISBN 978-0802776754
- ISBN 978-0679410966
- The Silent Season of a Hero: The Sports Writing of Gay Talese (2010; compilation of past reportage) ISBN 978-0802777539
- ISBN 978-0802126979
- Frank Sinatra Has a Cold (2016; coffee table book version of the 1966 article with photographs by ISBN 978-3836588294
- Bartleby and Me: Reflections of an Old Scrivener (2023) ISBN 978-0358455479
As editor
- Writing Creative Nonfiction: The Literature of Reality (1995; with Barbara Lounsberry) ISBN 978-0060465872
References
- ^ a b "About Gay Talese". Random House. Archived from the original on April 11, 2013. Retrieved November 29, 2017.
- ^ Gay Talese (July 2, 2009). "Once Around the Island With Gay Talese". The New York Times.
- ^ Gay Talese (February 17, 2009). "When Panhandlers Need a Wordsmith's Touch". The New York Times.
- ^ Sarah Ellison (June 13, 2011). "A New Kingdom: Gay Talese Sounds Off On The New York Times—Past, Present, and Future". Vanity Fair.
- ^ Vanessa V. Friedman (August 11, 1995). "It Wasn't Pretty, Folks, But Didn't We Have Fun?: 'Esquire' in the Sixties (book review)". Entertainment Weekly.
- ^ Jonathan Van Meter (April 26, 2009). "A Nonfiction Marriage". New York.
- ^ "The ultimate New Jersey high school yearbook: T–Z and also...", The Star-Ledger, June 27, 1999. Retrieved August 4, 2007.
- ^ ISBN 978-0802776754.
- ISBN 9780679410966.
- ^ a b Pappu, Sridhar (November 20, 2015). "What Literary Legend Gay Talese Thinks About Alabama Football's Chances This Year". New York Magazine. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
- ^ Canfield, Kevin (September 24, 2010). "A Q&A With Gay Talese, Sportswriter - TV - Vulture". New York Magazine. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
- ^ a b c d Lounsberry, Barbara. "Portrait of an (Nonfiction) Artist". Random House. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
- ^ "New journalism pioneer Gay Talese wins Polk Award". CBC. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
- ^ Talese, Gay J. (February 21, 1954). "famous Rolling Chairs Beside the Sea". The New York Times. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
- ^ "Don Noble: Gay Talese thoroughly explains 'A Writer's Life'". The Tuscaloosa News. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
- ^ Sperrazza, Casey (August 23, 2015). "Alabama Not Just Football: 30 Amazing People Who Were Built By Bama". Bama Hammer. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
- ISBN 9781400033560.
- ^ Mustich, James (September 30, 2010). "Gay Talese: BN Review". Barnes & Noble.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-393-03792-0.
- ^ Gordon, Meryl (January 25, 2017). "From Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga, the Greatest Hits of Gay Talese". The New York Times. Retrieved September 13, 2023.
- ^ Rozzo, Mark (April 9, 2021). "The story behind the greatest ever portrait of Frank Sinatra". British GQ. Retrieved September 13, 2023.
- ^ Talese, Gay (October 27, 2021). "Joe DiMaggio and the Silent Season of a Hero". Esquire. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
- ^ Seitz, Jonathan. ""Why's this so good?" No. 24: Gay Talese on Joe DiMaggio". Nieman Foundation. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
- ^ Brown, Mick (November 14, 2015). "'I wanted to elevate journalism': Gay Talese, the writer who nailed Frank Sinatra". Telegraph Magazine. London.
- ^ Maloff, Saul (August 2, 1970). "Fame and Obscurity". The New York Times. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
- ^ "Honor Thy Father". Time Out. September 10, 2012.
- ^ a b Schwartz, Tony (October 9, 1979). "U.A. Pays $2.5 Million For Book by Gay Talese". The New York Times. p. C9. Retrieved January 22, 2019.
- ^ Blyth, Jeffrey (October 13, 1979). "UA pays record fee for rights to porn book". Screen International. p. 24.
- ^ Talese, Gay (October 31, 2014). "Gay Talese on Charlie Manson's Home on the Range". The Daily Beast. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
- ^ "Gay Talese". The American Academy in Berlin. Retrieved September 13, 2023.
- ^ "A Nonfiction Marriage". New York. April 26, 2009. Retrieved September 11, 2009.
- ^ "Talese's memoir details his writing travails". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. May 16, 2006. Retrieved September 11, 2009.
- ^ Jonathan Van Meter (May 4, 2009). "A Nonfiction Marriage". New York Magazine. Retrieved March 25, 2012.
- ^ Talese, Gay (May 26, 2018). "The Tom Wolfe I Knew". Rolling Stone.
- ^ Sharir, Moran (February 3, 2017). "Legendary reporter Gay Talese explains why he finds Trump inspiring". Haaretz.
- ^ Ward, Kat (April 2, 2016). "Gay Talese Just Not That into Women Writers". The Cut. Retrieved November 9, 2017.
- ^ Farhi, Paul (June 30, 2016). "Author Gay Talese disavows his latest book amid credibility questions". The Washington Post. Retrieved November 9, 2017.
- ^ Talese, Gay (July 15, 2016), "Gay Talese: The Washington Post Was Wrong About My Book", Late Night with Seth Myers, retrieved March 12, 2023
- ^ a b Hatch, Jenavieve (November 8, 2017). "Gay Talese Says Kevin Spacey Accusers Should Just 'Suck It Up'". HuffPost. Retrieved November 8, 2017.
- ^ France, Lisa Respers (November 9, 2017). "Gay Talese: Kevin Spacey accuser should 'suck it up'". CNN. Retrieved November 9, 2017.
- ^ Sykes, Tom (November 8, 2017). "Gay Talese Defends Kevin Spacey: 'Jesus, Suck It Up Once in a While!'". The Daily Beast. Retrieved November 9, 2017.
- ^ Andrews, Travis M. (November 8, 2017). "Author Gay Talese feels sorry for Kevin Spacey, says his accusers should 'suck it up'". The Washington Post. Retrieved November 9, 2017.
- ^ Mitgang, Herbert (July 12, 1981). "Reading and Writing; AGING AGITATOR". The New York Times. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
- ^ "Gay Talese - Books". Random House. Retrieved September 16, 2023.
External links
- Official website
- Gay Talese at IMDb
- "Gay Talese", Big Think
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- Katie Roiphe (Summer 2009). "Gay Talese, The Art of Nonfiction No. 2". The Paris Review. Summer 2009 (189).
- "Gay Talese talks with David L. Ulin". Los Angeles Times. October 15, 2010.
- "Gay Talese Reads from Thy Neighbor's Wife", Vanity Fair, April 14, 2009
- "Gay Talese: 'Sinatra Has a Cold'", NPR, September 9, 2003