WRITER'S LIFE, A

The inner workings of a writer’s life, the interplay betweenexperience and writing, are brilliantly recounted by a master ofthe art. Gay Talese now focuses on his own life—the zeal for thetruth, the narrative edge, the sometimes startling precision, thatwon accolades for his journalism and best-sellerdom and acclaim forhis revelatory books about The New York Times (The Kingdom andthe Power), the Mafia (Honor Thy Father), the sexindustry (Thy Neighbor’s Wife), and, focusing on his ownfamily, the American immigrant experience (Unto theSons).
How has Talese found his subjects? What has stimulated, blocked, orinspired his writing? Here are his amateur beginnings on hiscollege newspaper; his professional climb at The New YorkTimes; his desire to write on a larger canvas, which led him tomagazine writing at Esquire and then to books. We see hisinvolvement with issues of race from his student days in the DeepSouth to a recent interracial wedding in Selma, Alabama, where heonce covered the fierce struggle for civil rights. Here are hisreflections on the changing American sexual mores he has writtenabout over the last fifty years, and a striking look at thelives—and their meaning—of Lorena and John Bobbitt. He takes usbehind the scenes of his legendary profile of Frank Sinatra, hiswritings about Joe DiMaggio and heavyweight champion FloydPatterson, and his interview with the head of a Mafia family.
But he is at his most poignant in talking about the ordinary menand women whose stories led to his most memorable work. Inremarkable fashion, he traces the history of a single restaurantlocation in New York, creating an ethnic mosaic of one restaurateurafter the other whose dreams were dashed while a successor’s wereborn. And as he delves into the life of a young female Chinesesoccer player, we see his consuming interest in the world in itslatest manifestation.
In these and other recollections and stories, Talese gives us afascinating picture of both the serendipity and meticulousnessinvolved in getting a story. He makes clear that every one of usrepresents 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 thenature of writing in one man’s life, and of writing itself.
From the Hardcover edition.