The inner workings of a writer’s life, the interplay between
experience and writing, are brilliantly recounted by a master of
the art. Gay Talese now focuses on his own life—the zeal for the
truth, the narrative edge, the sometimes startling precision, that
won accolades for his journalism and best-sellerdom and acclaim for
his revelatory books about The New York Times The Kingdom and
the Power, the Mafia Honor Thy Father, the sex
industry Thy Neighbor’s Wife, and, focusing on his own
family, the American immigrant experience Unto the
Sons.
How has Talese found his subjects? What has stimulated, blocked, or
inspired his writing? 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 interview with the head of a Mafia family.
But he is at his most poignant in talking about the ordinary men
and women whose stories led to his most memorable work. In
remarkable fashion, he traces the history of a single restaurant
location in New York, creating an ethnic mosaic of one restaurateur
after the other whose dreams were dashed while a successor’s were
born. And as he delves into the life of a young female Chinese
soccer player, we see his consuming interest in the world in its
latest manifestation.
In these and other recollections and stories, Talese gives us a
fascinating picture of both 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,
the diligence to pursue it, and the desire to get it right.
Candid, humorous, deeply impassioned—a dazzling book about the
nature of writing in one man’s life, and of writing itself.
From the Hardcover edition.
關於作者：
Gay Talese was a reporter for The New York Times from
1956 to 1965. Since then he has written for the Times, Esquire,
The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and other national
publications. He is the author of eleven books. He lives with his
wife, Nan, in New York City
From the Hardcover edition.
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