Gay Talese, who's rarely if ever published in The New Yorker during his illustruous career, broke into the august magazine a couple of weeks ago with a profile of New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi. In tandem with the piece, The New Yorker web site ran a video of Talese giving a tour of his "bunker," his writing office located in the basement below the New York townhome he shares with his wife, Nan, the noted book publisher.
To enter his retreat, Talese must walk down the stairs of his townhome, traverse a few steps on the sidewalk, then go down a few more stairs to a room that once served as a wine cellar. The video shows Talese making this short jaunt. Once in his hideaway, Talese displayed a glee in his work, and clothing.
The dapper, elegantly graying man, saying his haberdashery derives from his Italian heritage, sported a beige suit, blue striped shirt, yellow tie and staw fedora. His soundproof office, which lacks a phone, is crammed with files of Talese's work for five decades. He gave a demonstration of his reporting methods, how he interviews his subjects without taking notes, then immediately writes down the conversation on pieces of cardboard specifically cut to fit his jacket pockets. Connecting to his sylish clothes, the cardboard looked like the kind cleaners place into startched shirts. I was somewhat surprised to see Talese working on a desktop computer; I half-expected him to be of the old school that still works on a typewriter, or even writes longhand. That Talese in his 70s remains so vital and attractive is inspiring.
Much of Talese's classic work was done for Esquire magazine. It's good that the New Yorker is now accepting Talese's pieces; editor David Remnick has opened the magazine to a wider variety of writers.
The piece on Girardi displays the controlled qualities of masters like Talese, who uses simple declarative sentences and well-chosen facts such as hitting statistics to build an interesting, understated narrative. His profile reminded me of the work of another master long associated with The New Yorker, John McPhee.
Talese, McPhee and Robert Caro are among a generation of writers who gave heightened literary quality to nonfiction writing. Tom Wolfe is another illustrous member of that generation, who, however, has turned to novel writing late in his career.
With eulogies of print continuing, a new generation of writers such as Katherine Boo and Michael Lewis have continued producing vital nonfiction works, continuing in the path of Talese, McPhee, Caro and others.
The recent death of legendary New York Times publisher Punch Sulzberger made me want to go back to Talese's classic book "The Power and the Glory," about how Sulzberger revitalized the Times. Seeing the video of Talese in his work space increased my desire to revisit that book, along with Talese's other work, such as his Esquire pieces on Joe DiMaggio and Frank Sinatra. Talese is such an epitome of New York style and culture, that it's striking to remember that he is a proud graduate of the University of Alabama.
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