Author: Gay Talese
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812977289
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 450
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Book Description
The inner workings of a writer’s life, the interplay between experience and writing, are brilliantly recounted by a master of the art. Gay Talese now focuses on his own life—the zeal for the truth, the narrative edge, the sometimes startling precision, that won accolades for his journalism and best-sellerdom and acclaim for his revelatory books about The New York Times (The Kingdom and the Power), the Mafia (Honor Thy Father), the sex industry (Thy Neighbor’s Wife), and, focusing on his own family, the American immigrant experience (Unto the Sons). How has Talese found his subjects? What has stimulated, blocked, or inspired his writing? Here are his amateur beginnings on his college newspaper; his professional climb at The New York Times; his desire to write on a larger canvas, which led him to magazine writing at Esquire and then to books. We see his involvement with issues of race from his student days in the Deep South to a recent interracial wedding in Selma, Alabama, where he once covered the fierce struggle for civil rights. Here are his reflections on the changing American sexual mores he has written about over the last fifty years, and a striking look at the lives—and their meaning—of Lorena and John Bobbitt. He takes us behind the scenes of his legendary profile of Frank Sinatra, his writings about Joe DiMaggio and heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson, and his interview with the head of a Mafia family.But he is at his most poignant in talking about the ordinary men and women whose stories led to his most memorable work. In remarkable fashion, he traces the history of a single restaurant location in New York, creating an ethnic mosaic of one restaurateur after the other whose dreams were dashed while a successor’s were born. And as he delves into the life of a young female Chinese soccer player, we see his consuming interest in the world in its latest manifestation.In these and other recollections and stories, Talese gives us a fascinating picture of both the serendipity and meticulousness involved in getting a story. He makes clear that every one of us represents 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 the nature of writing in one man’s life, and of writing itself.
Author: Gay Talese
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0802776752
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 284
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Book Description
Collects a series of vignettes and essays from Gay Talese, including "Vogueland," "When I was twenty-five," and "Frank Sinatra has a cold."
Author: Gay Talese
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
ISBN: 0802189733
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192
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Book Description
The controversial chronicle of a motel owner who secretly studied the sex lives of his guests by the renowned journalist and author of Thy Neighbor’s Wife. On January 7, 1980, in the run-up to the publication of his landmark bestseller Thy Neighbor’s Wife, Gay Talese received an anonymous letter from a man in Colorado. “Since learning of your long-awaited study of coast-to-coast sex in America,” the letter began, “I feel I have important information that I could contribute to its contents or to contents of a future book.” The man—Gerald Foos—hen divulged an astonishing secret: he had bought a motel outside Denver for the express purpose of satisfying his voyeuristic desires. Underneath its peaked roof, he had built an “observation platform” through which he could peer down on his unwitting guests. Over the years, Foos sent Talese hundreds of pages of notes on his guests, work that Foos believed made him a pioneering researcher into American society and sexuality. Through his Voyeur’s motel, he witnessed and recorded the harsh effects of the war in Vietnam, the upheaval in gender roles, the decline of segregation, and much more. In The Voyeur’s Motel. “the reader observes Talese observing Foos observing his guests.” An extraordinary work of narrative journalism, it is at once an examination of one unsettling man and a portrait of the secret life of the American heartland over the latter half of the twentieth century (Daily Mail, UK). “This is a weird book about weird people doing weird things, and I wouldn’t have put it down if the house were on fire.” —John Greenya, Washington Times
Author: Gay Talese
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 163286746X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
A selection of classic high points in the illustrious career of Gay Talese. “[High Notes] reminds us of the indefatigable reporting skills and inventive use of language that made Talese a paragon of the New Journalism.” —New York Times Book Review Admired by generations of reporters, Gay Talese has for more than six decades enriched American journalism with an unmatched ability to inhabit the worlds of his subjects. From the article that germinated into Thy Neighbor's Wife, to indelible portraits of Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Lady Gaga, High Notes selects the highlights of Talese’s signature mode, “the art of hanging out.” It’s a bold testament to enduring literary craftsmanship and unparalleled cultural observation from "the most important nonfiction writer of his generation" (David Halberstam).
Author: Gay Talese
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061872288
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 612
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Book Description
The provocative classic work newly updated An intimate personal odyssey across America's changing sexual landscape When first published, Gay Talese's 1981 groundbreaking work, Thy Neighbor's Wife, shocked a nation with its powerful, eye-opening revelations about the sexual activities and proclivities of the American public in the era before AIDS. A marvel of journalistic courage and craft, the book opened a window into a new world built on a new moral foundation, carrying the reader on a remarkable journey from the Playboy Mansion to the Supreme Court, to the backyards and bedrooms of suburbia—through the development of the porn industry, the rise of the "swinger" culture, the legal fight to define obscenity, and the daily sex lives of "ordinary" people. It is the book that forever changed the way Americans look at themselves and one another.
Author: Gay Talese
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0802719155
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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Book Description
As a young reporter for The New York Times, in 1961 Gay Talese published his first book, New York-A Serendipiter's Journey, a series of vignettes and essays that began, "New York is a city of things unnoticed. It is a city with cats sleeping under parked cars, two stone armadillos crawling up St. Patrick's Cathedral, and thousands of ants creeping on top of the Empire State Building." Attention to detail and observation of the unnoticed is the hallmark of Gay Talese's writing, and The Gay Talese Reader brings together the best of his essays and classic profiles. This collection opens with "New York Is a City of Things Unnoticed," and includes "Silent Season of a Hero" (about Joe DiMaggio), "Ali in Havana," and "Looking for Hemingway" as well as several other favorite pieces. It also features a previously unpublished article on the infamous case of Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt, and concludes with the autobiographical pieces that are among Talese's finest writings. These works give insight into the progression of a writer at the pinnacle of his craft. Whether he is detailing the unseen and sometimes quirky world of New York City or profiling Ol' Blue Eyes in "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," Talese captures his subjects-be they famous, infamous, or merely unusual-in his own inimitable, elegant fashion. The essays and profiles collected in The Gay Talese Reader are works of art, each carefully crafted to create a portrait of an unforgettable individual, place or moment.
Author: Gay Talese
Publisher: Taschen
ISBN: 9783836576185
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Gay Talese's crystalline portrait of Frank Sinatra combined faithful fact with vivid storytelling in a triumph of New Journalism. It is now published alongside notes and correspondence from the author's archives and photographs from Phil Stern--the only photographer granted access to Sinatra over an extraordinary four decade period.First published as a signed Collector's Edition, now available in an unlimited edition
Author: Gay Talese
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679644733
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 577
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Book Description
“Beautifully documented . . . no less than a landmark in the field of writing and journalism.”—The Nation “Fascinating . . . Seldom has anyone been so successful in making a newspaper come alive as a human institution.”—The New York Times In this century and the last, most of history's important news stories have been broken to a waiting nation by The New York Times. In The Kingdom and the Power, former Times correspondent and bestselling author Gay Talese lays bare the secret internal intrigues at the daily, revealing the stories behind the personalities, rivalries, and scopes at the most influential paper in the world. In gripping detail, Talese examines the private and public lives of the famed Ochs family, along with their direct descendants, the Sulzbergers, and their hobnobbing with presidents, kings, ambassadors, and cabinet members; the vicious struggles for power and control at the paper; and the amazing story of how a bankrupt newspaper turned itself around and grew to Olympian heights. Regarded as a classic piece of journalism, The Kingdom and the Power is as gripping as a work of fiction and as relevant as today's headlines. Praise for The Kingdom and the Power “I know of no book about a great institution which is so detailed, so intensely personalized, or so dramatized as this volume about The New York Times.”—The Christian Science Monitor “A serious and important account of one of the few genuinely powerful institutions in our society.”—The New Leader “A superb study of people and power.”—Women's Wear Daily
Author: Gay Talese
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0802777538
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 318
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Book Description
Chronicles the writing of the legendary sports journalist, from his first high school job, to becoming the sports reporter for the New York Times, including his pieces on Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali's visit to Fidel Castro and never-before-published articles. Original.
Author: Gay Talese
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1620409119
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 194
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Book Description
For the fiftieth anniversary of the completion of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, a beautifully produced, heavily illustrated edition of Gay Talese's classic history of the iconic structure, now with a new introduction by the author. The Verrazano Narrows Bridge, linking the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Staten Island, is an engineering marvel. At 13,700 feet, it is the longest suspension bridge in the United States and the sixth longest in the world. But the sheer size of the bridge is only one part of its complicated, fascinating history. Renowned journalist Gay Talese chronicled the human drama the bridge's completion: from the construction workers high on the beams to the backroom dealing that displaced whole neighborhoods to make way for the bridge, through to the opening of this marvel of human ingenuity and engineering. Now in a new, beautifully packaged edition featuring dozens of breathtaking photos and architectural drawings, The Bridge remains both a riveting narrative of politics and courage and a demonstration of Talese's consummate reporting and storytelling that will captivate new generations of readers.
