A Writer's Life

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Joyce Tenneson (Jacket Photograph). [8], 429, [9] pages. Signed by the author on the title page. Signed by the author. Harvard Bookstore sticker on front of DJ. The author is most poignant in talking about the ordinary men and women whose stories led to his most memorable work. Here are his amateur beginnings on his college newspaper; his professional climb at The New York Times; his desire to write on a larger canvas, which led him to magazine writing at Esquire and then to books. We see his involvement with issues of race from his student days in the Deep South to a recent interracial wedding in Selma, Alabama, where he once covered the fierce struggle for civil rights. Here are his reflections on the changing American sexual mores he has written about over the last fifty years, and a striking look at the lives--and their meaning--of Lorena and John Bobbitt. He takes us behind the scenes of his legendary profile of Frank Sinatra, his writings about Joe DiMaggio and heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson, and his interviews with the head of a Mafia family. In remarkable fashion, he traces the history of a single restaurant location in New York, creating an ethnic mosaic of one restauranteur after another whose dreams were dashed while a successor's were born. As he delves into the life of a young female Chinese soccer player, his consuming interest is in the world in its latest manifestation. Talese gives us a fascinating picture of the serendipity and meticulousness involved in getting a story. He makes clear that every one of us represents a good one, if a writer has the curiosity to know it, diligence to pursue it, & the desire to get it right. Candid, humorous, deeply impassioned--this is a dazzling book about the nature of writing in one man's life, and of writing itself. Gay Talese (born February 7, 1932) is an American writer. As a journalist for The New York Times and Esquire magazine during the 1960s, Talese helped to define contemporary literary journalism. Talese's most famous articles are about Joe DiMaggio and Frank Sinatra. Talese's first piece for the magazine Esquire - a series of scenes in the city - appeared in a special New York issue during July 1960. When the Times newspaper unions had a work stoppage during 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." In 1964, Talese published The Bridge: The Building of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, a reporter-style, non-fiction depiction of the construction of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in New York City. In 1965, he left The New York Times to write full-time at Esquire. His 1966 Esquire article on Frank Sinatra, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold", is one of the most influential American magazine articles of all time, and a pioneering example of New Journalism and creative nonfiction. With what some have called a brilliant structure and pacing, the article focused not just on Sinatra himself, but also on Talese's pursuit of his subject. 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 during 1966. In 2011, Talese won the Norman Mailer Prize for Distinguished Journalism.