Talese's memoir details his writing travails

Life on the American road these days is filled with irritations, distractions, disappointments. Even a celebrity writer is not immune, as Gay Talese is learning. It has taken three phone calls to arrange some afternoon room service at Seattle's tony Alexis Hotel and all he is requesting is "some fresh fruit and a large cappuccino ... can you make one of those?"

The 74-year-old non-fiction master from New York City has settled into his suite for the first interview of his national book tour and he has reason to be a bit irked that room service trouble has intruded, as has a late flight north from L.A. "A Writer's Life" (Alfred A. Knopf, 430 pages, $26) is Talese's first book in 14 years, an eon in this megabyte world, and Talese is wary about the book's reception, especially since the newspaper where he worked for nine years, The New York Times, has run a caustic critique in its Sunday book review.

Room service's knock on the door is another distraction as the writer is saying he wanted his most personal book to reflect "the whole quest of the non-fiction writer for stories," but Talese bounds to answer the tap-tap.

A young waiter steps into the room and Talese greets him with a hearty salutation: "How are you doing, my friend?" The waiter answers, "Fine, thank you," but soon seems a bit taken aback. He has come into a suite where some business is being transacted and he expects to duck in, duck out, but this well-dressed gentleman keeps chatting away.

This room-service encounter could be a moment in one of Talese's memorable magazine pieces, collected in 2003's "The Gay Talese Reader" (Walker & Co., 265 pages, $14.95). These include his 1966 Esquire story on Frank Sinatra with its immortal line: "Frank Sinatra had a cold." Esquire picked that as "the best story it ever published" in its 70-year history, a distinction even more remarkable since Talese wrote it after weeks spent in the vicinity of Sinatra, but without an interview of the man.

This room-service encounter also could be a moment in one of Talese's best sellers, "The Kingdom and the Power" (about The New York Times), "Honor Thy Father" (about the Mafia), "Thy Neighbor's Wife" (about sex in America) or "Unto the Sons" (about his Italian ancestors, including his namesake, Gaetano Talese). This room-service encounter, so casual, so unrehearsed, is revealing of character -- in this case, Talese's own.

In three minutes with the young waiter, Talese has displayed his impeccable manners, his intense curiosity, his utter genuineness and respect in dealing with people of all stations, especially those usually ignored by the rich and powerful.

Talese's writing relies on these people to provide knowledge and perspective from behind the scenes, as Sinatra's various hangers-on did: his press agent, his pal, his protector, even the little lady who toted a satchel with Sinatra's 60 hairpieces. Talese managed to win their confidence, expending much of his custom-made Italian shoe leather as he circled his subject.

This same technique of "tireless legwork" is employed in "A Writer's Life," perhaps surprisingly so. In this age of tattle-all memoir, Talese has taken a decidedly different, even startling approach. There are few revelations about his personal life, but far more pages devoted to all his travails in writing a follow-up book to 1992's "Unto the Sons."

It was to be the second of three books for which Knopf had paid Talese a reported advance of $7 million. But the legendary slow worker, who admits having a "ridiculous life as a prolific writer of unfinished manuscripts," was encountering setbacks in starting the new book.

He had pursued the story of John and Lorena Bobbitt, with that most notorious slice by an Ikea kitchen knife, on an assignment for the New Yorker, only to have then-editor Tina Brown decide she didn't want to publish "the penile saga." He had pursued the story of one building in Manhattan, a graveyard for 12 restaurants, only to be told by his Knopf editor that he was not interested because the subject lacked the "very large sales potential" expected of a Talese title.

He also had done much writing on his own experiences as a young reporter covering the civil rights struggles in Selma, Ala., including the pivotal 1965 march known as "Bloody Sunday." This history unfolded near where Talese attended the University of Alabama, the only college that would accept him. He had kept those notes for decades and was sure the material was worthy of inclusion in a book, just as were the Bobbitt and building sagas.

"I can do three little books," Talese remembers thinking. "But why don't I write about being a writer, what a writer thinks, what a writer does, what a writer does when he's writing, as well as the people he writes about.

"Because I am much more interested in other people. I would not want people to think that Gay Talese is so self-important. Even I would not want to read all that much about Gay Talese."

Three fine story threads, but how to weave them into one book -- that was the dilemma of this son of an immigrant Italian tailor on the Jersey shore. Then, some channel surfing on a Saturday afternoon presented a new possibility. Talese, who had always shunned soccer, watched transfixed as the women's teams from the United States and China fought their epic 1999 World Cup battle in L.A., a scoreless tie in regulation and overtime that ultimately would be decided by penalty kicks.

When a Chinese player named Liu Ying missed a penalty kick and cost China the game, Talese sensed a big story. As the sometime sportswriter saw it, "Never in the history of China had a single person so suddenly been embarrassed in front of so many people -- including 100 million from her home country."

There were problems with the big story. What had transpired was across the continent, so Talese had no access to its subject. And then no editor was interested in publishing the envisioned story. And there was the fact that Talese knew no one in China. But after celebrating his 40th wedding anniversary in Europe with his wife (Nan Talese, noted Doubleday book editor), the writer impulsively altered his itinerary and set off to China for five frustrating months.

That experience is recounted in "A Writer's Life" and provides its long-sought unifying thread, although the stitch is not seamless. The book opens with Talese recounting the China soccer player story, then abruptly shifts into a flashback of 300 pages. It defies usual memoir chronology, but it makes perfect sense to the writer who fervently believes in "serendipity" and was intent on creating "non-fiction that would not fit into categories."

Talese likens "A Writer's Life" to his Sinatra piece in how it dances around its subject. Both the new book and the old article are like the writer himself -- understated yet self-assured, complex and polished, overflowing with rich storytelling.

These different plotlines may be of varying interest, with the tabloid Bobbitt case carrying the distinct aroma of stale news, but Talese's new volume still provides a memorable account of the challenges and disappointments of the word trade.

Forget the Hemingwayesque writer notions of nothing to do but sit in a Paris cafe and jot a few notes amid sips of cappuccino.

"Writing," writes Talese, "is often like driving a truck at night without headlights, losing your way along the road, and spending a decade in a ditch."

That is unavoidable even when the writer has a sterling reputation. Talese took a break from his overdue book to chronicle a visit to Cuba by Muhammad Ali in 1996. As often happens with his painstaking reportage, "the piece kind of grew," but Talese was convinced "it was long but it was good."

Talese's 13,000-word story on "Ali in Havana" was rejected by 10 magazines, including several that had earned reputations for publishing long pieces of the sort that Talese pioneered. Rejections came in from the New Yorker, GQ, Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Harper's.

Esquire finally reversed its rejection, but not before Talese had suffered a final indignity of being offered just $100 for the Ali story by another magazine. That "Ali in Havana" was later reprinted in "The Best American Essays 1997" was some satisfaction for Talese, but did not entirely remove the hurt of its birth.

"Here it was 1996-1997 and I was in my late 60s and I am supposed to be a literary icon and I still got rejections," Talese relates. "It isn't always smooth sailing. This is the life of a writer -- it doesn't change if you have a reputable reputation or have had a best seller or are known among some people as 'the father of literary non-fiction.' "

His reputation also was of no use as Talese grappled with his memoir. Nan Talese told the Los Angeles Times that her husband was "depressed" during much of the writing of the book and that she had "never seen him so troubled, so worried that he might have lost his way."

Talese counters, "I was depressed when I was a rookie reporter, I've been depressed my whole life."

An ignominious moment springs forth from the writer's memory, as fresh as yesterday. It was 1959 and the young reporter at The New York Times was building a reputation for strong and inventive pieces, especially on a publication known then for its gray record-of-the-day prose.

Talese had done more than 25 pieces for the Times magazine and his latest was a profile of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller. But then he received a call from the editor of the magazine about to go to press. Talese sat down at the editor's desk and heard him say, "I'm going to kill this piece."

"Why?" asked the reporter.

"Because I don't like the way you approached the governor."

Talese sat there stunned for a moment, then started to cry. The editor was obviously embarrassed by the outburst, but Talese just couldn't stop himself. He had put so much into the piece, knew it was his best.

"That was a total disastrous experience -- that he could crush me like an ant," Talese stresses. "My feelings of frustration certainly didn't start with 'A Writer's Life' at age 65. When I was younger, I always cared very much about what I was doing. I've always felt very deeply."

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