TWO OF A KIND: Gay Talese

While walking around campus this weekend at the Los Angeles
Times Festival of Books, most people will be dressed casually.
Depending on the weather, some might wear scarves or shorts, but
certainly most will wear denim, enough to please even the most
zealous of Clothesline Project supporters. Especially nowadays,
when pairs range in price from almost nothing to everything you
own, jeans are the great fashion equalizer, worn by everyone in
every situation.

However, when Gay Talese enters Ackerman Grand Ballroom on
Sunday to participate in a panel on creative nonfiction writing, a
shade of that familiar blue will not cover his legs. The son of an
immigrant tailor from southern Italy, Talese takes a noted pride in
his suits, and he’s probably one of very few people who feel more
comfortable in clothes tailored by hand and not machine.

To describe Talese’s style as old-fashioned (he’s been known to
wear fedoras) is to complement one of the most innovative
nonfiction writers alive. Emerging out of a world of American
journalism in the 1950s that emphasized focused, deadline-driven
short articles, Talese wanted more time to work on longer stories.
Soon enough, he was writing magazine pieces, including his most
famous, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," in 1966, that greatly changed
the way journalists approached nonfiction narratives. Talese took a
fly-on-the-wall approach and never interviewed Sinatra for the
story, defining the performer by the people around him instead.

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The New Journalism movement that grew out of the era, which
popularized writers like Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson, could
not have happened without Talese’s words. The ironic development of
New Journalism, which stresses writers’ participation in their
stories, around a self-consciously old-fashioned journalist who
likes to remain invisible, isn’t lost on Talese himself.

"I’m not at all convinced I want to be a New Journalist," Talese
said. "I’ve always considered myself an Old Journalist, as in
old-fashioned. I didn’t want to be an innovator. I didn’t want to
be on the cutting edge."

The main difference between Talese and someone like Wolfe is one
of perspective. Talese began working in journalism as a beat
reporter, and he obsesses over getting the facts right and focusing
on the subjects of his stories like a microscope, subtly adjusting
its lens to make a group of complex organisms perfectly clear.
Wolfe, on the other hand, and many other New Journalists, functions
more like a funhouse mirror, writing to create a distorted
reflection of reality in which the writer, like anyone else, is
visibly present.

"With Wolfe, it’s almost the opposite style of Talese," said
Benjamin Schwarz, the literary editor of The Atlantic Monthly and a
lecturer in the English Department. "You know immediately from the
first line of a Tom Wolfe piece that Tom Wolfe is writing it. Wolfe
will draw so much attention to himself, everything from all caps to
exclamation points."

Talese rarely, if ever, draws attention to himself in his
writing, which makes his new book, "A Writer’s Life," rather
idiosyncratic since the first word of the book is "I." It’s a
memoir, but in typical fashion for Talese, he can’t help telling
other people’s stories while telling his own. "A Writer’s Life"
intersperses Talese’s life with the lives of other figures as well,
from a Chinese women’s soccer player to John and Lorena
Bobbitt.

"It’s a book about writing, and a book about people I thought
were worth writing about," Talese said. "This book is filled with
people who say something about the conditions and trends of the
last 50 years, in which I came of age."

As research, Talese read books upon books about the characters
in "A Writer’s Life," including, for example, 25 books about China
alone. The methodical nature of Talese’s research and writing,
while simple on the page, makes Talese’s job incredibly slow and
taxing.

For these reasons, Talese’s library of published material isn’t
as big as other nonfiction writers. He began working on "A Writer’s
Life" more than a decade ago, and it was finally released to
bookstores this week.

"It’s not supposed to be fun," Talese said. "It’s supposed to be
art. It’s supposed to be aspiring to something very noble."

Like many nonfiction writers before him, Talese considers
nonfiction writing as artistic as fiction, provided it’s done well.
Growing out of daily newspaper beat reporting, Talese learned to
stress facts above everything else, and his obsession with accuracy
persisted long after New Journalists came under fire for blurring
facts in their reporting.

Talese appreciates both fact and fiction writing; when he’s not
working on his own projects, he reads fiction almost exclusively
because it keeps him away from news headlines. The most important
distinction between fiction and nonfiction, according to Talese, is
a strict adherence to fact.

"Whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction, there’s no
difference except nonfiction writers should always get it right,"
Talese said. "You can be just as creative in nonfiction."