Gay Talese (born February 7, 1932) is an American author. Events 457 - Leo I becomes emperor of the Byzantine Empire. 1074 - Battle of Montesarchio in which the Prince Year 1932 ( MCMXXXII) was a Leap year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. He wrote for The New York Times in the early 1960s and helped to define literary journalism or "new nonfiction reportage", also known as New Journalism. New Journalism was a style of 1960s and 1970s News writing and Journalism which used literary techniques deemed unconventional at the time His most famous articles are about Joe DiMaggio, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. Joseph Paul DiMaggio, born Giuseppe Paolo DiMaggio Jr ( November 25, 1914 &ndash March 8, 1999) nicknamed Joltin' Joe Dean Martin (born Dino Paul Crocetti; June 7 1917 &ndash December 25 1995 was an American Singer, Film Actor, television personality Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra (December 12 1915 &ndash May 14 1998 was an American singer and actor

Talese is a visiting writer at the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California each spring. The Master of Professional Writing Program (referred to as MPW is a graduate writing program which offers a variety of courses at the University of Southern California 's College The University of Southern California (commonly referred to as USC, SC, Southern California, and incorrectly

Contents 1 Biography 2 Origins of a writer 2.1 College 3 Professional career 3.1 Journalism - reporter 3.2 Journalism - essayist 3.3 In popular culture 4 Bibliography 5 References 6 External links

Biography

Gay Talese was born into a Roman Catholic Italian-American family in Ocean City, located just south of Atlantic City. An Italian American is an American of Italian descent and/or dual citizenship Ocean City is a city in Cape May County, New Jersey, United States. His southern Italian father, Joseph Talese, was a tailor who had emigrated to the United States in 1922 and his mother, the former Catherine DePaolo, was a buyer for a Brooklyn department store (he is sometimes erroneously identified as being from Brooklyn). From birth, he felt like an outsider because in addition to being Italian on an island populated with Anglo-Saxon Protestants, the only other Roman Catholics were of Irish descent. The English people (from the adjective in Englisc) are a Nation and Ethnic group native to England who predominantly speak English Protestantism refers to the forms of Christian faith and practice that originated in the 16th century Protestant Reformation.

This was further reinforced when he entered his school years because he wore hand crafted suits from his father's shop which, he later reflected in his memoir Origins of a Nonfiction Writer (1996), caused him to appear to be older than his classmates. He recounted his early years in his book "Unto the Sons".

Talese graduated from Ocean City High School in 1949. See here for the closed Ocean City High School in Maryland Ocean City High School is a four-year comprehensive Public high school located in Ocean ^[1]

Origins of a writer

His entry into writing was entirely happenstance and the unintended consequence of the then high school sophomore's attempt to gain more playing time on the baseball team. Unintended consequences are outcomes that are not (or not limited to what the actor intended in a particular situation The assistant coach had the duty of calling in the chronicle of each game to the local newspaper and when he complained he was too busy to take care of it, the head coach turned to Talese to take over the duties. As he recalls in Origins,

"On the mistaken assumption that relieving the athletic department of its press duties would gain me the gratitude of the coach and get me more playing time, I took the job and even embellished it by using my typing skills to compose my own account of the games rather than merely relaying the information to the newspapers by telephone. "

No matter how random this beginning, Talese soon showed he was no ordinary 15 year old high school reporter. He quickly (after only seven sports articles) was given the job of covering not only the goings-on at the school, but also given his own column for the weekly Ocean City Sentinel-Ledger. By the time he left for college in September 1949, Talese had written some 311 stories and columns for the Sentinel-Ledger.

Talese credits his mother as the role model he followed in developing the interviewing techniques that would serve him so well later in life interviewing such varied subjects as mafia members and middle-class Americans on their sexual habits. He relates in Origins:

"I learned [from my mother] . . . to listen with patience and care, and never to interrupt even when people were having great difficulty in explaining themselves, for during such halting and imprecise moments . . . people are very revealing--what they hesitate to talk about can tell much about them. Their pauses, their evasions, their sudden shifts in subject matter are likely indicators of what embarrasses them, or irritates them, or what they regard as too private or imprudent to be disclosed to another person at that particular time. However, I have also overheard many people discussing candidly with my mother what they had earlier avoided--a reaction that I think had less to do with her inquiring nature or sensitively posed questions than with their gradual acceptance of her as a trustworthy individual in whom they could confide. "

College

Perhaps reflecting the still pervasive bigotry at many universities of the era, Talese was rejected by dozens of colleges in New Jersey and nearby states. He eventually was accepted at the University of Alabama, where his selection of a major was, as he described it, a moot choice. "I chose journalism as my college major because that is what I knew," he recalls, "but I really became a student of history. "

It was here that he would begin to employ literary devices more well known in fiction, like establishing the "scene" with minute details and beginning articles in medias res (Latin for "in the midst of things"). In medias res, also medias in res ( Latin for "into the middle of things" is a literary and artistic technique where the Narrative In his junior year, he became the sports editor for the campus newspaper, Crimson-White, and started a column he dubbed "Sports Gay-zing. " For a column entitled "Sports Gay-zing" ("Crimson-White" November 7, 195l) he wrote:

Rhythmic "Sixty Minute Man" emanated from the Supe Store juke box and Larry (The Maestro) Chiodetti beat against the table like mad in keeping time with the jumpy tempo. Events 1492 - The Ensisheim Meteorite the oldest Meteorite with a known date of impact strikes the Earth around noon in a Wheat T-shirted Bobby Marlow was just leaving the Sunday morning bull session and dapper Bill Kilroy had just purchased the morning newspapers.

This was before Lillian Ross did the same in Picture (1952) or Truman Capote used the technique in The Muses are Heard (1956). Lillian Ross (born June 8, 1917) is an American Journalist and author who has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1949 Truman Capote (ˈtruːmən kəˈpoʊti ( 30 September, 1924, New Orleans Louisiana – 25 August, 1984, Los Angeles More importantly, Talese included among his subjects both the "losers" and the unnoticed. He was more interested in those who did not attain the glory of winning and less so in hero-worshipping the winners.

Professional career

Journalism - reporter

After graduating in June 1953, he moved to New York City yet could only find work as a copyboy. The City of New York A gofer or go-fer ('goʊfər gopher) is an Employee who is often sent on errands The job was, however, at the esteemed New York Times and he showed up for his mundane position nevertheless in handstitched Italian suits. He eventually was able to get an article published in the Times, albeit unsigned (without credit). In "Times Square Anniversary" (November 2, 1953), he interviewed the man who was responsible for running the headlines that flash across the famous marquee above Times Square. Events 1570 - A Tidal wave in the North Sea devastates the coast from Holland to Jutland, killing more than 1000 Year 1953 ( MCMLIII) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Times Square is a major intersection in Manhattan, New York City at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West

“	I think most journalists are pretty lazy, number one. A little lazy and also they're spoon-fed information, such as the weapons of mass destruction back in 2003. . . . you have these people who create a package of news, develop it as a story line, a scenario, and they find, as Mailer once said about the press, that they're like a donkey. You have to feed the donkey. The donkey every day has to eat. So [special interests] throw information at this damn animal that eats everything. Tin cans, garbage.	”
—Gay Talese, [2]

He followed this with an article in the February 21, 1954 edition concerning the chairs used on the boardwalk of Atlantic City (something he was familiar with as his home town of Ocean City is the next hamlet south of the gambling mecca). Events 362 - Athanasius returns to Alexandria. 1245 - Thomas, the first known Bishop of Finland Year 1954 ( MCMLIV) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1954 Gregorian calendar) For the record label see Boardwalk Records. for the former Las Vegas hotel see Boardwalk Hotel and Casino. Yet, his budding journalism career would have to be put on hiatus - Talese was drafted into the United States Army in 1954.

While at the University of Alabama, he had been required (as all male students were at the time owing to the ongoing Korean War conflict) to join the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) and had moved to New York awaiting his eventual commission as a second lieutenant. The Korean War refers to a period of military conflict between North Korean and South Korean regimes with major hostilities lasting from June 25 1950 until the Second Lieutenant is the lowest commissioned officer Military rank in many Armed forces. He was sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky, to train in the Tank Corps. Fort Knox is a United States Army post in Kentucky south of Louisville and north of Elizabethtown. His mechanical skills found lacking, he was transferred to the Office of Public Information where he found himself once again working for the local paper, Inside the Turret, and once again soon had his own column, "Fort Knox Confidential. "

Keeping in touch with his former employers at the Times, when Talese completed his military obligation in 1956 he returned to New York as a full-fledged sports reporter. As he would later opine, "Sports is about people who lose and lose and lose. They lose games; then they lose their jobs. It can be very intriguing. " Of the various fields, boxing held the most appeal for Talese, undoubtably because it was about individuals engaged in contests and those individuals in the mid to late 1950s were becoming predominately non-white at the prizefight level. Boxing (sometimes also known as English boxing or pugilism) is a Combat sport in which two participants generally of similar weight, Boxing (sometimes also known as English boxing or pugilism) is a Combat sport in which two participants generally of similar weight, He would write 38 articles about Floyd Patterson alone. Floyd Patterson ( January 4, 1935 – May 11, 2006) was an American heavyweight boxing champion.

For this, he would be rewarded with a promotion to the Albany Bureau to cover state politics. It was a short-lived assignment, however, as Talese's exacting habits and meticulous style soon irritated his new editors to the point that they recalled him to the city, assigning him to write minor obituaries. He puts it, "I was banished to the obituary desk as punishment--to break me. There were major obituaries and minor obituaries. I was sent to write minor obituaries not even seven paragraphs long. "

Journalism - essayist

After a year in the Times obituary section, he began to write articles for the Sunday Times which was run as a separate organization from the daily Times by editor Lester Markel.

Talese wrote The Bridge (1964), a reporter-style, non-fiction depiction of the construction of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York City. The Bridge The Building of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge was a 1964 book by Gay Talese about the construction of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is a double-decked Suspension bridge that connects the boroughs of Staten Island and Brooklyn in New Talese's 1966 Esquire article on Frank Sinatra, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," is one of the most influential American magazine articles of all time, and a pioneering example of New Journalism. Esquire is a Men's magazine by the Hearst Corporation with a strong literary tradition Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra (December 12 1915 &ndash May 14 1998 was an American singer and actor "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" is a profile of Frank Sinatra written by Gay Talese for the April 1966 issue of ''Esquire''. New Journalism was a style of 1960s and 1970s News writing and Journalism which used literary techniques deemed unconventional at the time With what some have called a brilliant structure and pacing, the article focused not just on Sinatra himself, but also on Talese's pursuit of his subject.

Talese's celebrated Esquire piece about Joe DiMaggio, The Silent Season of a Hero,—in part a meditation on the transient nature of fame—also appeared in 1966. When a number of Esquire pieces were collected into a book called Fame and Obscurity Talese paid tribute in its introduction to two writers he admired by citing "an aspiration on my part to somehow bring to reportage the tone that Irwin Shaw and John O'Hara had brought to the short story. Fame and Obscurity A Book About New York a Bridge and Celebrities on the Edge was a 1970 book by Gay Talese. Irwin Shaw ( February 27 1913 &ndash May 16 1984) was an American playwright screenwriter and novelist who was also a highly regarded short John Henry O'Hara ( January 31, 1905 &ndash April 11, 1970) was an American Writer. " Honor Thy Father (1971) was made into a feature film.

Talese is married to Nan Talese, a New York editor who runs the Nan A. Nan Talese (née Ahern is an American editor and a veteran of the New York publishing industry Talese/Doubleday imprint. Gay and Nan Talese's marriage will be the subject of Talese's next book, the third in a series published by Knopf. Alfred A Knopf Inc is a New York publishing house founded by Alfred A ^[3] The first two books, Unto the Sons and A Writer's Life, were published in 1992 and 2006, respectively. A Writer's Life is a 2006 autobiography by Gay Talese. The book focuses on many of the stories that Talese attempted to tell but failed such as spending six

In popular culture

Gay Talese appeared in several strips of the comic Doonesbury, giving an interview to radio host Mark Slackmeyer to promote his book Thy Neighbor's Wife. Doonesbury is a Comic strip by G B Trudeau that chronicles the adventures and lives of a vast array of different characters of different ages professions

Bibliography

• A Writer's Life (2006)
• Origins of a Nonfiction Writer (1996)
• Unto the Sons (1992)
• Thy Neighbor's Wife (1981)
• Honor Thy Father (1971)
• Fame and Obscurity (1970)
• The Kingdom and the Power (1969)
• The Bridge: The Building of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (1964)

References

External links

• Official site
• 1992 audio interview with Gay Talese by Don Swaim at Wired for Books. Events 612 BC - Killing of Sinsharishkun, King of Assyrian Empire Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Don Swaim (born 1936 is an American journalist and broadcaster. Wired for Books is an online educational project of the WOUB Center for Public Media at Ohio University in Athens Ohio.

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