After more than 50 years, writer Gay Talese still has a zest for his craft, for the story that no one else knows, the tale that emerges only through persistence, persistence, persistence.
His new book, "A Writer's Life," speaks to "what it is that I do, and not only what I've done here, but what I've always done," he says.
This much is certain: Few writers on the planet, if any, have done it Talese's way. Whether he was detailing the Bonanno crime family in "Honor Thy Father," the sexual mores of America in "Thy Neighbor's Wife" or mapping his family's history in "Unto the Sons," he made sure to follow every lead, to pull on each tiny thread of an idea, however unlikely the source and outcome.
As Talese admits, 80 percent of the material he accumulates during interviews goes unused. But the process is necessary.
He is not governed by a "profit-loss mentality," Talese says. "The time spent, as it was, was not governed by how efficient the results were achieved. We're not measuring it by that, but in terms of how good the product is, how accurate, how understood a life is, how complicated. Have I caught the nuances? It's not all linear; it's not like journalism, which is straightforward."
Born in Ocean City, N.J., in 1932, Talese was writing for local newspapers by the time he was in high school. He matriculated to the University of Alabama -- he contends in "A Writer's Life" that he was an average student and none of the elite schools would have him -- and immediately began to forge the style that would serve him so well. In his column "Sports Gay-zing," Talese first took a different approach from his peers, preferring to never humiliate anyone in print: "I invariably found ways to describe delicately each team defeat, each individual inadequacy."
When Alabama's football coach, Homer "Red" Drew, became the object of ire for media and fans, Talese wrote a piece about the coach's heroic service as a Naval officer in World War I.
Talese notes this approach was inspired by one of his childhood icons, writer Frank Yerby, the black author of the novel "The Foxes in the Harrow" and numerous short stories. From Yerby, Talese learned how it was necessary to present a character that readers could embrace, if not necessarily love.
"Without being an apologist, I have to have some sort of feeling for, I have to identity with and have sympathy for, the things and people I write about in order for me to write well," Talese says. "And in order to write well, you have to do it again and again and again. It has to be your highest love. I don't want to spend my time just chopping up people. There are writers who just like to show, in a malicious way, how much smarter they are than the person they are writing about. ... I just try to be honest and see things as best as I can from my own viewpoint."
Sometimes, being honest takes time. "A Writer's Life" is Talese's first book in 14 years and contains ideas for other books he's tried to write in that period.
He wanted to write a book about Elaine Kaufman, the doyenne of Elaine's, the famous New York restaurant and hangout. When her head waiter, Nicola Spagnola, leaves to start his own restaurant, Talese's idea crashes ... until he comes upon the idea to write about the building on East 63rd Street in New York City where Spagnola starts his venture, and where many other restaurants crash and burn. Other ideas pique his interest -- notably, his return to Selma, Ala., for the 25th anniversary of civil rights marches, and the sensationalistic affair of the Bobbitts, John and Lorena.
But the touchstone incident in the book comes after Talese witnesses the U.S. women's victory over China in the 1999 World Cup. Talese becomes fascinated not with the stars, but with Liu Ying, the Chinese soccer player who missed a kick in a shootout that ensured the U.S. victory. During a trip to Europe with his wife, Talese suddenly decides to fly to China to track down the "wrong-footed soccer maiden."
Talese calls it "a quest to know something about her ... this little girl who has an experience on the international stage and then goes back to her little part of the world."
He spends five months tracking Liu Ying, not knowing a single syllable of Chinese. He enlists Phil Knight, the founder and CEO of Nike, and former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, in his mission. He has to know; he can not imagine not knowing, what went through her mind when the U.S. team won because of her error.
Again, there was not enough material for a single book. But like his father, a tailor who emigrated to America from the Calabrian region of Italy, Talese took the bits and pieces of his work, the notes and typewritten pages -- yes, he uses a typewriter -- and stitched together a book that is more than the sum of its parts.
"Yes, that's it, that's what I do," he says. "I write like a tailor. At least that's what I want it to be, a suit that fits and lasts a long time. That mattered to my father, and it matters to me, that the phrases and sentences fit. I take great care in that regard to the prose and the research."
Capsule Review
Gay Talese's "A Writer's Life" is just that: the inner workings of one of the groundbreaking journalists and nonficton writers of the last half of the 20th century. There are stops and starts, ideas that cannot quite be fleshed out, even some seemingly superfluous details about computers and work routines. Individually, the stories seem incomplete; but together, a mosaic emerges, one that illuminates the craftwork, the tenacity, the drive of one of America's finest chroniclers.
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