Guy Talese: Tailor of Well Stitched "A Writer's Life"
The ANNOTICO
Report
Since Guy Talese's father was a tailor for the intelligensia and literati, and since his father eschewed
the sewing machine,
and every stitch was hand done, and that Talese was
always impeccably tailored, it is an irresistable
temptation to work
those traits into the headlines, done here rather cleverly.
Talese previous to his " A Writer' Life", a
story of assimilation, was "Unto the Sons" (1992), a
Roots for Italian-Americans, a classic immigration story.
Book
Review
TAILOR OF WELL-STITCHED WRITING TELLS HIS STORY
By John Freeman
The Courier-Journal
Gay Talese has been a literary presence for four
decades. As a sportswriter for The New York Times in
the late '50s, he imported novelistic devices into the locker room,
interviewing the losers as much as the winners. Freelancing later for Esquire,
he became one of the pioneering voices of the New Journalism.
But in recent years Talese has become something of a
character, with his elaborate suits and the town house where he lives with his
longtime wife, Nan Talese. His long overdue book, A
Writer's Life, happily, is a flavorful gumbo.
The backbone is Talese's life, which readers may know
something about thanks to his last big book, Unto the Sons
(1992), a Roots for Italian-Americans. If that book was a classic
immigration story, this is a story about assimilation. Talese's
parents both hailed from Italy, met in Brooklyn, and soon moved to Ocean City,
N.J.
Talese's father was a tailor of bespoke suits:
"He made each suit stitch by stitch, avoiding the use of a sewing machine
because he wanted to feel the needle in his fingers as he
penetrated a piece of silk or wool." Through this breezeway of style,
scents of
"George Garrett was a short, slender, and loquacious man with a strong
voice, and although he was probably then nearing his 70s, he gave no indication
of physical frailty. His stride was vigorous, and so was his handshake when he
greeted my father. ? I saw many stylish men in my father's shop, but none
possessed the jauntiness of Mr. Garrett, who reminded me of one of those
continental boulevardiers often photographed in Esquire."
Talese became a notable journalist for his ability to
capture a person -- draping his descriptions of their speech and thought like a
suit so finely stitched it literally became the figure. Not surprisingly, the
best writing in A Writer's Life is not about Talese
himself but, rather, the people around him, the fellow writers, editors and
night owls, an occasional gangster, and a good many restaurateurs.
"As a young bachelor in New York, and during my 40-plus years as a married
man, I have dined out, on average, four or five times a week," Talese writes. Periodically, A Writer's Life becomes a
paean to Talese's nightly haunts, including Elaine's,
where he began keeping a restaurant journal in the '70s. This note-taking paid
off, as Talese's long profile of the restaurant's
former headwaiter, Nicola Sagnolo, is one of the
book's high points.
But there is some good dish along the way. Talese
reminds us that it was to the novelist John P. Marquand
that a young Jacqueline Bouvier lost her virginity.
About himself, however, Talese provides precious
little in the gossip department. To describe his marriage, he quotes liberally
from a Vanity Fair article that detailed their courtship. Talese
is clearly uncomfortable writing about the subject.
"If I were a practitioner of fiction, a creator of novels, plays, or short
stories," Talese writes, "I would have the
option of doing what these writers can do whenever they feel compelled to write
intimately about themselves."
In other words, he could change some names, make things up. But as this book
makes abundantly clear, he really didn't need to do that. The kid from
John Freeman, a writer who lives in
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