The Talented Mr. Talese
What can you say about a guy who writes a sentence like this:
The tallest man in New York, Edward Carmel, stands 8 feet 2 inches, weighs 475 pounds, eats like a horse and lives in the Bronx.
The glorious matter-of-factness of that. The astonishing statistics presented in monotone, the silly cliché, the surprise ba-boom of “the Bronx.” It’s a pitch-perfect introduction that meshes extraordinary with ordinary.
Or what about a guy who distills the essence of a time, a place and a subculture with this eat-your heart-out-Devil-Wears-Prada sentence:
Each weekday morning a group of suave and wrinkle-proof women, who call each other “dear” and “dahling” and can speak in italics and curse in French, move into Manhattan’s Graybar Building, elevate to the nineteenth floor, and then slip behind their desks at Vogue…
Come on. “Wrinkle-proof?” (He could have written unwrinkled.) “Speaking in italics?” (He could have written speaking emphatically.) “Elevating” to the nineteenth floor? (He could have written take the elevator.) But he didn’t. And you know why? Because he is a master.
This is a guy who made the life of a shy, balding obit writer as compellingly readable, as deeply engrossing as the life of Frank Sinatra, a man who made equal sense of bridge builders and Broadway directors, newspaper executives and massage parlor owners, Italian immigrants and Black prize fighters.
This is Gay Talese, who turned 93 years old last week.
In his generation of pioneering literary journalists, Tom Wolfe was flashier; Joan Didion was brainier; Jimmy Breslin was ballsier; and Truman Capote was…well, Truman Capote. But Talese, Talese was the best. Sharp and observant without nastiness. Elegant without frills. Empathetic but no patsy. Smart but no show-off.
I bought my first Talese book, a paperback edition of Fame and Obscurity, at a used bookstore in San Francisco for $1.25. I had never heard of the guy. I had never heard of literary journalism. After four years at Medill School of Journalism slogging my way through inverted pyramid news stories and another six months writing drek for a little newspaper, I had had it with journalism. It wasn’t about writing. It was about ordering information. It wasn’t about people. It was about sources. Why–I asked myself after I quit the paper and started selling batik on Embarcadero Square–did I ever want to be a journalist in the first place?
Talese answered that question for me.
And still does.