{"product_id":"a-writers-life-isbn-9780812977288","title":"A Writer's Life","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 \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times (The Kingdom and the Power), \u003c\/i\u003ethe Mafia \u003ci\u003e(Honor Thy Father), \u003c\/i\u003ethe sex industry \u003ci\u003e(Thy Neighbor’s Wife), \u003c\/i\u003eand, focusing on his own family, the American immigrant experience \u003ci\u003e(Unto the Sons).   \u003c\/i\u003eHow 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 \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times;  \u003c\/i\u003ehis desire to write on a larger canvas, which led him to magazine writing at \u003ci\u003eEsquire \u003c\/i\u003eand 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.Gay Talese\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003ewas a reporter for \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e from 1956 to 1965. Since then he has written for the\u003ci\u003e Times, Esquire, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, \u003c\/i\u003eand other national publications. He is the author of eleven books. He lives with his wife, Nan, in New York City.1I am not now, nor have I ever been, fond of the game of soccer. Part   of the reason is probably attributable to my age and the fact that   when I was growing up along the southern shore of New Jersey a half   century ago, the sport was virtually unknown to Americans, except to   those of foreign birth. And even though my father was   foreign-born—he was a dandified but dour custom tailor from a   Calabrian village in southern Italy who became a United States   citizen in the mid-1920s—his references to me about soccer were   associated with his boyhood conflicts over the game, and his desire   to play it in the afternoons with his school friends in an Italian   courtyard instead of merely watching it being played as he sat sewing   at the rear window of the nearby shop to which he was apprenticed;   yet, as he often reminded me, he knew even then that these young male   performers (including his less dutiful brothers and cousins) were   wasting their time and their future lives as they kicked the ball   back and forth when they \u003ci\u003eshould\u003c\/i\u003e have been learning a worthy craft and   anticipating the high cost of a ticket to immigrant prosperity in   America! But no, he continued in his tireless way of warning me, they   idled away their afternoons playing soccer in the courtyard as they   would later play it behind the barbed wire of the Allied prisoner of   war camp in North Africa to which they were sent (they who were not   killed or crippled in combat) following their surrender in 1942 as   infantrymen in Mussolini's losing army. Occasionally they sent   letters to my father describing their confinement; and one day near   the end of World War II he put aside the mail and told me in a tone   of voice that I prefer to believe was more sad than sarcastic,   \"They're still playing soccer!\"The World Cup soccer finale between the women of China and the United   States, held on July 10, 1999, in Pasadena, California, before 90,185   spectators in the Rose Bowl (the largest turnout for any women's   sporting contest in history), was scheduled to be televised to nearly   200 million people around the world. The live telecast that would   begin on this Saturday afternoon in California at 12:30 would be seen   in New York at 3:30 p.m. and in China at 4:30 a.m. on Sunday. I had   not planned to watch the match. On this particular Saturday in New   York I had already made arrangements for midday doubles in Central   Park with a few old pals who shared my faulty recollections on how   well we once played tennis.Before leaving for Central Park I thought I'd tune in to the baseball   game that started at 1:15, featuring the New York Mets and my   cherished Yankees. Irrespective of the weary, though at times   wavering, counsel of my leisure-deprived and now deceased father, the   Yankees had captured my heart and enslaved me forever as a fan back   in February 1944 when, prompted by wartime gas rationing and its   limiting effect on travel, the team shifted its traditional spring   training site from Saint Petersburg, Florida, to a less warm but more   centralized, if rickety, rust-railed ballpark near the Atlantic City   airport, within truancy range of my school. From then on, through war   and peace and extending through the careers of Joe DiMaggio and   Mickey Mantle to the turn-of-the-century stardom of such newcomers as   the shortstop Derek Jeter and the relief pitcher Mariano Rivera, I   have reveled in the New York Yankees' triumphs and lamented their   losses, and on this July Saturday in 1999, I was counting on them to   divert me from several weeks of weak hitting at my typewriter.I needed to relax, to put aside my book for a while, I decided; and I   readily accepted my wife's suggestion, expressed days earlier, that   we spend this weekend quietly in New York. Our two daughters and   their boyfriends would be driving down to the Jersey shore to make   use of our summer home, which we had bought near my parents' place   thirty years ago, following the birth of our second daughter; on   Saturday evening my vigorous ninety-two-year-old widowed mother was   looking forward to taking her granddaughters and their boyfriends to   dine with her at the Taj Mahal casino on the Atlantic City boardwalk,   where she liked to have coffee and dessert in the lounge while   feeding the slot machines.During the previous month my lovely wife and I had celebrated our   fortieth wedding anniversary, and I hope I will not be perceived as   unromantic if I suggest that this lengthy relationship has succeeded   in part because we have regularly lived and worked apart—I as a   researching writer of nonfiction who is often on the road, and she as   an editor and publisher who through the years has carefully avoided   affiliating herself with firms to which I am contractually connected.   But when we are together under the same roof, sharing what I shall   take the liberty of calling a harmonious and happy coexistence that   began in the mid-1950s with a courtship kindled in a cold-water flat   in Greenwich Village and then moved uptown and expanded with children   in a brownstone still owned and occupied by the two of us (two spry   senior citizens determined not to die on a cruise ship), I must admit   that I have frequently taken advantage of my wife's domestic presence   as a literary professional, seeking her opinion not only on what I am   thinking of writing but also on what I have written; and while her   responses occasionally differ from those expressed later by my   acknowledged editor, I consider myself more blessed than burdened   when I have varying views to choose from, finding this far preferable   to the lack of editorial access that many of my writer friends often   complain about. But to writers who bemoan their lives of neglect and   loneliness, let me say this: When one's own work is not going well,   having a wife who is an editor can be even \u003ci\u003emore\u003c\/i\u003e demoralizing,   particularly during those at-home weekends and nights when she is   avidly reading other people's words while reclining on our marital   bed under a crinkling spread of manuscript pages that lie atop our   designer duvet or between the sheets, which in due time she will   shake out in order to reclaim the pages and stack them neatly on her   bedside table before turning out the lights and possibly dreaming of   when the pages will be transformed into a beautifully bound,   critically acclaimed book.In any event, on this weekend when we decided (she decided) to remain   in New York, and while she was upstairs editing the chapters of a   manuscript we had slept with on Friday night, I was downstairs   watching the Yankee-Mets game (the Yankees took a quick 2-0 lead on   Paul O'Neill's first-inning homer, following Bernie Williams's   single). Between innings I was thinking ahead to my tennis match and   reminding myself that I must toss the ball higher when serving and   seize every opportunity to get to the net.I had been introduced to tennis by my gym teacher during my junior   year in high school, and even though our school did not then field a   tennis team, I played the game as often as I could during lunchtime   recess because I could play it better than the ungainly classmates   whom I selected as opponents and who also served under me as staff   members on the student newspaper. That I never achieved distinction   while competing on a varsity level in a major sport (football,   basketball, baseball, or track) did not upset me because our school's   teams were mediocre in these sports. Besides which, as the players'   chronicler and potential critic (in addition to working on the school   paper I wrote about sports as well as classroom activities in my   extracurricular role as scholastic correspondent for my hometown   weekly and the Atlantic City daily), I was suddenly experiencing the   dubious eminence of being a journalist, of having my callow character   and identity boosted, if not enhanced, by my bylined articles and the   stamp-size photo of myself that appeared above my school-page column   in the town weekly, to say nothing of the many privileges that were   now mine to select, such as to travel to out-of-town games on the   team bus in a reserved seat behind the coach, or to catch a ride   later in a chrome-embellished Buick coup driven by the athletic   director's pretty wife.As ineffectual as the players usually were, fumbling the football   constantly, striking out habitually, and missing most of their foul   shots, I never humiliated them in print. I invariably found ways to   describe delicately each team defeat, each individual inadequacy. I   seemed to possess in my writing a precocious flare for rhetoric and   circumlocution long before I could accurately spell either word. My   approach to journalism was strongly influenced throughout my high   school years by a florid novelist named Frank Yerby, a Georgia-born   black man who later settled in Spain and wrote prolifically about   bejeweled and crinoline-skirted women of such erotic excess that,   were it not for Yerby's illusory prose style, which somehow   obfuscated what to me was breathtakingly obscene, his books would   have been censored throughout the United States, and I would have   been denied the opportunity to request each and every one of them   sheepishly from the proprietress of our town library, and furthermore   would not then have tried to emulate Yerby's palliative way with   words in my attempts to cloak and cover up the misdeeds and   deficiencies of our school's athletes in my newspaper articles.While my evasive and roundabout reportage might be ascribed to my   desire to maintain friendly relations with the athletes and encourage   their continuing participation in interviews, I believe that   practical matters had far less to do with it than did my own youthful   identity with disappointment and the fact that, except for my skill   in writing pieces that softened the harsh reality of the truth, I   could do nothing exceptionally well. The grades I received from   teachers in elementary as well as high school consistently placed me   in the lower half of my class. Next to chemistry and math, English   was my worst subject. In 1949, I was rejected by the two dozen   colleges that I applied to in my native state of New Jersey and   neighboring Pennsylvania and New York. That I was accepted into the   freshman class at the University of Alabama was entirely the result   of my father's appeals to a magnanimous Birmingham-born physician who   practiced in our town and wore suits superbly designed and tailored   by my father, and by this physician's own subsequent petitions on my   behalf to his onetime classmate and everlasting friend then serving   as Alabama's dean of admissions.My main achievements during my four years on the Alabama campus were   being appointed sports editor of the college weekly and the   popularity I gained through my authorship of a column called \"Sports   Gay-zing,\" which, often blending humor with solicitousness and a   veiled viewpoint, made the best of perhaps some of the worst displays   of athleticism in the school's proud history. Even the Alabama   football team, long accustomed to justifying its national reputation   as a perennial top-ten powerhouse, suffered when I was a student   through many days sadder than any since the Civil War. While gridiron   glory would be restored after 1958 with the arrival of the now   legendary coach Paul \"Bear\" Bryant, the football schedule during my   time was more often than not the cause of a statewide weekend wake;   and the coach of the team, a New Englander named Harold \"Red\" Drew,   was routinely burned in effigy on Saturday nights in the center of   the campus by raucous crowds of fraternity men and their girlfriends   from sororities in which the pledges had spent the afternoon sewing   together sackcloth body-size figures with bug eyes and fat   rouge-smeared faces that were supposed to replicate the features of   Red Drew.Although Drew never complained about any of this to me or my staff, I   began to feel very sorry for him, and in our sports section I always   tried to put a positive spin on his downward-spiraling career. In one   of my columns I emphasized the valor he had shown while serving his   country as a naval officer in World War I, highlighting an occasion   on which he had jumped two thousand feet from a blimp into the Gulf   of Mexico. This leap in 1917, when Drew was an ensign, established   him as the first parachute jumper in naval history, or so I wrote   after getting the information from a yellowed newspaper clipping that   was pasted in an old scrapbook lent to me by the coach's wife. I also   illustrated what I wrote with a World War I–vintage photograph   showing a lean and broad-shouldered Ensign Drew standing in front of   a double-winged navy fighter plane at a base in the Panama Canal,   wearing jodhpurs and knee-high boots and an officer's cap decorated   with an insignia and bearing a peak that shaded his eyes from the sun   without concealing an understated smile that I hoped my readers would   see as the mark of a modest and fearless warrior—thinking, naïvely,   that this would arouse their patriotism and extinguish a few of the   nighttime torches that they raised in vilifying Coach Drew and also   at times his venerable assistant, Henry \"Hank\" Crisp, who specialized   in directing Alabama's porous front line of defense.In yet another futile attempt on my part to divert the fans from such   disastrous performances as were customarily presented throughout such   seasons as 1951, for example, when the team lost six out of eleven   games, I dramatized the tragedy partly with words lifted from   Shakespeare:    To be, or not to be: that is the question:Whether 'tis Drew or Crisp who must suffer theslings and arrows of outrageous blocking, or to takearms against football writers, and by opposing endthem?    To win: to lose: to get wrecked, routed, o'erwhelmedand consumed by prissy Villanova. . . .    Ah, to sleep, for in that sleep of death one dreamsof our opponents who plunged and fled with leather footballunder arm, around, under, and over Bama walls. . . .    I left Red Drew to his own fate following my graduation in the spring   of 1953. A year later I read that he had resigned in the wake of his   team's 4-5-2 record, which might have been considered outstanding if   compared with the accomplishments of his successor, J. B. \"Ears\"   Whitworth, who in 1955 lost ten games without winning even one.   During these two years I did not return to the campus to witness any   of these engagements, being assigned for my military service to an   armored unit in Kentucky much of the time, and then stationed with   that unit in Germany for part of the time, until my discharge in the   winter of 1955 enabled me to accept a reportorial job in the sports   department of the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e.[quote]--The Washington Post","brand":"Random House Trade Paperbacks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304005292261,"sku":"NP9780812977288","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780812977288.jpg?v=1767720939","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/a-writers-life-isbn-9780812977288","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}