Experts
Gay Talese
Author
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What Keeps Gay Talese Up at Night?
The esteemed writer only loses sleep when the Yankees play on the west coast. Read More
October 16, 2009 | In Arts & Culture
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Big Think Interview With Gay Talese
Big Think interviews the legendary journalist and author of, most recently, “A Writer’s Life.” Read More
September 28, 2009 | In Arts & Culture, Media & Internet
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Getting Drunk at The New York Times
Gay Talese describes the tobacco-filled and liquor-drenched newsrooms of The New York Times in the sixties—where men passed out on typewriters, and no one was quite sure just how the paper actually got out. Read More
September 28, 2009 | In History, Media & Internet
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Since growing up in his parents’ tailoring and dressmaking shop in New Jersey, the writer has maintained a taste for family craftsmanship. Read More
September 28, 2009 | In Arts & Culture
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Overcoming the Need to Be Truthful
The constraints of reality, Gay Talese argues, have turned many great writers away from non-fiction. Yet, with the proper patience and engagement with one’s subject, those bound to the facts can write with the same freedom as any novelist. Read More
September 28, 2009 | In Arts & Culture
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Why Modern Sex is a Lot Like a Trip to KFC
Sex, claims Gay Talese, has always been everywhere—it’s just a matter of how one has to go about finding it. Here he explains how, while there have been few changes in our attitudes toward the act over the last forty years, our means of obtaining it have gradually come to resemble ordering convenience food. Read More
September 28, 2009 | In Love, Sex, & Happiness
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How the Tape Recorder Killed Journalism
Gay Talese describes the deleterious effects that recording devices, hollowed expense accounts, and an emphasis on 'indoor life' have had on the writing process. Read More
September 28, 2009 | In Arts & Culture, Media & Internet
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Making Marriage Work by Forgetting Love and Sex
The key to a lasting relationship, says Gay Talese, is looking past the 'mating game's' wonted rituals and flowery ambiguities and learning to emphasize mutual freedom and respect. Read More
September 28, 2009 | In Love, Sex, & Happiness
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Gay Talese explains how a childhood spent eavesdropping on conversations in a New Jersey dress-shop and a lingering sense of being an outsider prepared him for the writing life. Read More
September 28, 2009 | In Arts & Culture, History
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A chronicler of the lives of others now chronicles his own. Read More
June 27, 2008 | In Love, Sex, & Happiness
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Gay Talese On The Oprah Effect
Oprah keeps books alive in a "multi-task society." Read More
June 27, 2008 | In Arts & Culture, Media & Internet
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Gay Talese introduced storytelling to the practice of journalism. Read More
June 27, 2008 | In Arts & Culture, Media & Internet
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Not much has changed, except journalists are now just as elite as those they cover. Read More
June 27, 2008 | In Media & Internet
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Gay Talese on Dressing the Part
Gay Talese considered truth telling to be his work, and dressed accordingly. Read More
June 27, 2008 | In Arts & Culture
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After 50 years in New York, Gay Talese has maintained the village mentality of his Ocean City childhood. Read More
June 27, 2008 | In History
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Writing has never been fun, but with enough time its pretty good. Read More
June 27, 2008 | In Arts & Culture, Inspiration & Wisdom
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The best interviewers include his mother, and the best techniques include wandering. Read More
June 27, 2008 | In Arts & Culture
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Talese was drawn to journalism by the sense of wonderment about who he was in an alienated society. Read More
June 27, 2008 | In Arts & Culture, Media & Internet
Gay Talese is an American journalist and a nonfiction writer. He wrote for The New York Times in the 1960s after working for its copy and obituary sections. In the 1950s, he was one of the first writers to add minute details, use literary flairs, and begin articles in medias res. These techniques became the foundation of the revolutionary “New Journalism.”
He has written many non-fiction books, beginning with 1964’s The Bridge: The Building of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. His 2006 autobiography A Writer’s Life focuses on his trials and failures as a writer, such as having a profile piece rejected by The New Yorker, which ironically reviewed the book positively and said it had a “distinctly moving” quality.
Gay Talese was recently named the winner of a George Polk Award for career achievement. The awards, presented by Long Island University, are considered among the top prizes in U.S. journalism. Born in 1932, Talese graduated from the University of Alabama with a degree in journalism.
