Trailblazer

by Jennifer Melick   
Posted December 19, 2007

Gay Talese

After months of dogged research and being denied interviews with an uncooperative subject, Talese crafted the audacious 1966 Esquire piece, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.” In the 15,230-word article, he rejected standard profilese in favor of detailed scenes and quick shifts from dialogue to interior monologue—techniques more commonly seen in fiction. Talese thereby revealed more about the perks and insularity of celebrity than if he had gotten a conventional interview.

Tom Wolfe credited Talese with launching the “New Journalism.” The Ocean City native, a son of Italian immigrants, started as a copyboy at the New York Times. He developed a reputation for exhaustively researching “unreportable” subjects—case in point, the sex lives of Americans (Thy Neighbor’s Wife, 1981). The son of a tailor, Talese exhibits a sartorial sophistication that makes the white-suited Wolfe seem a mere dandy. He has published eleven books, including Honor Thy Father (1971), about the Bonnano crime family, and last year’s A Writer’s Life, about his fastidious approach to his craft.