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Bartleby and Me: Reflections of an Old Scrivener
"Literary legend" ( New York ) Gay Talese revisits his pioneering career profiling the many "nobodies" who make New York so fascinating, culminating with the strange and riveting story of Dr. Nicholas Bartha, who blew up his Upper East Side brownstone--and himself--rather than give up his beloved patch of NYC real estate. "New York is a city of things unnoticed," a young reporter named Gay Talese wrote sixty years ago. He would spend the rest of his legendary career defying that statement by noticing those details others missed, celebrating the people most reporters overlooked, understanding that it was through these minor characters that the epic story of New York and of America unfolded. Inspired by Melville's great short story "Bartleby the Scrivener," Talese now remembers the unforgettable "nobodies" he has profiled in his pioneering career--from the New York Times 's anonymous obituary writer to Frank Sinatra's entourage. In the book's final act, a remarkable piece of original reporting titled "Dr. Bartha's Brownstone," Talese introduces readers to a new "Bartleby," an unknown doctor who made his mark on the city one summer day in 2006. Rising within the city of New York are about one million buildings. These include skyscrapers, apartment buildings, bodegas, schools, churches, hospitals, and homeless shelters. Also spread through the city are more than 19,000 vacant lots, one of which suddenly appeared some years ago--at 34 East 62d Street, between Madison and Park Avenues--when the unhappy owner of a brownstone at that address blew it up (with himself in it) rather than sell his cherished 19th-century high stoop Neo-Grecian residence in order to pay the court-ordered sum of four-million dollars to the woman who had divorced him three years earlier. This man was a physician of sixty-six named Nicholas Bartha. On the morning of July 10th, 2006, Dr. Bartha had filled his building with gas that he had diverted from a pipe in the basement, and then he set off an explosion that reduced the four-story premises into a fiery heap that would soon injure ten firefighters, five passersby, and damage the interiors of thirteen apartments that stood to the west of the crumbled brownstone. Gay Talese's byline has been synonymous with legendary portrayals of the city's characters, high and low. Bartleby and Me continues that tradition, concluding with an examination of a single 20' x 100' New York City building lot, its serpentine past, and the unexpected triumphs and disasters encountered by its residents and owners--an unlikely cast featuring society wannabes, striving immigrants, Gilded Age powerbrokers, Russian financiers, and even a turncoat during the War of Independence. Concise, elegant, tragic and whimsical, Bartleby and Me is the capstone of a master journalist.
1 pages, Audio CD
Published September 19, 2023
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About the author
Gay Talese
64 books563 followersGay Talese is an American author. 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. His most famous articles are about Joe DiMaggio, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 87 reviews
March 16, 2024
I think this Gay Talese guy might just have a future in this business. I kid. Talese has been a well-known author for decades and this book serves as a partial recounting of his career. Like many famous authors, he has a specific type of writing. I enjoyed this book immensely because I am okay with literary diversions as long as the author keeps it interesting. This is to say, if you want your book to have laser focus on its thesis, then you may want to skip this one. All others, I highly recommend this literary comfort food.
Bartleby & Me is three parts. The first is a memoir of sorts for Talese's career. The second part is about the process of creating one of his most revered works about Frank Sinatra. The last is about a man who blew up his New York brownstone while in it. In each story, Talese states how much he loves getting the view from people often ignored. Yes, Sinatra is interesting, but so is his stand-in. And Talese is going to talk about him if he can.
If you can stand a few diversions, this book is an easy read which I found both interesting and relaxing. Just sit back and let Talese tell his story while you enjoy the ride.
(This book was provided as a review copy by the publisher.)
Bartleby & Me is three parts. The first is a memoir of sorts for Talese's career. The second part is about the process of creating one of his most revered works about Frank Sinatra. The last is about a man who blew up his New York brownstone while in it. In each story, Talese states how much he loves getting the view from people often ignored. Yes, Sinatra is interesting, but so is his stand-in. And Talese is going to talk about him if he can.
If you can stand a few diversions, this book is an easy read which I found both interesting and relaxing. Just sit back and let Talese tell his story while you enjoy the ride.
(This book was provided as a review copy by the publisher.)
October 25, 2023
I was a bit torn by this book. I loved the concept of writing about people that are overlooked. As an example, when the author was assigned to write a story about Frank Sinatra, he decided to tell Sinatra's story by telling the stories of those in Sinatra's entourage. The book almost gives you a "Humans Of New York" vibe. But where I felt the book went astray is that the author would be telling a story about someone, and then seemed to just go into a totally different direction with no warning. So it all just felt a bit broken up to me. I received an advance copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
October 4, 2023
Gay Talese is a dapper dressed gentleman. In fact, I have never seen him give an interview in which he was not dressed in a suit and tie. His father was a fairly famous tailor on the Jersey Shore and that might be the reason.
The dichotomy is that while working as a journalist for the NY Times, Vanity Fair, and other major magazines he has concentrated his energy on working class men and women as his subjects
In his breathtaking biography on the New York Times, "The Kingdom and the Power," (one of my all time favorite biographies) he, once again, concentrates much of the book on the copy editors, printers, journalists reporting on the every day activities of New York City citizens, secretaries, and news stories that got very little attention but nevertheless were major scoops.
Writing about a restaurant, he worked in the kitchen of the restaurant arriving at six in the morning and leaving whenever things slowed down.
At ninety years old he has given us a wonderful and delightful collections of stories mostly about the average person in his latest work "Bartleby and Me." He also expands on stories he had written years ago such as, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," which Vanity Fair has called the "greatest literary-non-fiction story of the twentieth century."
"Bartleby and Me," is relatively short at only 300 pages, considering that some of his non-fiction novels were close to a thousand pages, but at ninety years I can report that this masterful story teller still has it. I highly recommend this book.
The dichotomy is that while working as a journalist for the NY Times, Vanity Fair, and other major magazines he has concentrated his energy on working class men and women as his subjects
In his breathtaking biography on the New York Times, "The Kingdom and the Power," (one of my all time favorite biographies) he, once again, concentrates much of the book on the copy editors, printers, journalists reporting on the every day activities of New York City citizens, secretaries, and news stories that got very little attention but nevertheless were major scoops.
Writing about a restaurant, he worked in the kitchen of the restaurant arriving at six in the morning and leaving whenever things slowed down.
At ninety years old he has given us a wonderful and delightful collections of stories mostly about the average person in his latest work "Bartleby and Me." He also expands on stories he had written years ago such as, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," which Vanity Fair has called the "greatest literary-non-fiction story of the twentieth century."
"Bartleby and Me," is relatively short at only 300 pages, considering that some of his non-fiction novels were close to a thousand pages, but at ninety years I can report that this masterful story teller still has it. I highly recommend this book.
July 16, 2023
A writer who is regarded as a peer and equal of the mid-20th century legends of New Journalism such as Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson, Gay Talese continues to advance his storytelling craft at age 91. His latest book is a skillful mashup of new original reporting, a memoir, and some useful scholarly contextualization. The book’s centrepiece marks the return of Talese to his epic Esquire magazine article, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.” He revisits the 1966 non-encounter with Sinatra that led to the article, describes in satisfying detail the challenging process of constructing the piece, and offers sixty years worth of perspective on what occurred following the article’s publication. It’s the ultimate masterclass in practical journalism, but Talese only looks back in order to set up the book’s contemporary concluding act. Dr. Nicholas Bartha, a Manhattan physician of Romanian birth, occupied a four-story brownstone at 34 East 62nd Street. When ordered by a court in 2006 to sell the property as part of divorce proceeding, Dr. Bartha instead decided to blow up the building. He died from injuries suffered during the resulting explosion. Talese recounts the senseless tragedy as embodying something indefinable in the soul of New Yorkers, a brash and not particularly logical attitude that was described by Herman Melville in his 1853 magazine article, “ Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street.” Leave it to Talese to lay out 170 years of bad behaviour by Manhattanites and position himself squarely in the middle. “Bartleby and Me” is as good as anything the author has previously written, and that is saying something.
January 6, 2024
Less Sinatra and more New York please!
Saw this book everywhere in NY bookstores. What I appreciate about Talese is his focus on the underdogs, people who are traditionally underlooked. He writes profiles about the Time’s obituary writer, and if he can’t get an interview with Frank Sinatra, will surround himself with Sinatra’s friends and families instead. I learnt so much about hangers-on when a man becomes famous, so much so that as a writer you can hang around the celebrity for one month and still get no interview. The story on Dr Bartha was eye-opening and entertaining; I enjoyed Talese’s extensive investigation about it including the background stories of the characters in Bartha’s orbit.
However this book lacked a clear structure. There were 3 sections: Bartlebys, Sinatra, brownstones. The sections seemed like a random collection of yet-unpublished works of Talese. And sometimes he goes into too much detail… unnecessary diversions into side characters’ backstories, a random history lesson about brownstone houses but having to date all the way to the 18th century including Edith Wharton, then instructing his readers about how brownstones are reconstructed… before telling us about the architect’s backstory, the construction worker’s backstory, then the backstories of the 2 buyers the house exchanged hands in…
Excerpts
During my writing assignments and my longtime residency in New York City, I have met many people who, in one way or another, remind me of Bartleby. These are people whom I might see regularly but whose private lives remain private. I might know them by one name, or no name, or by little more than a nod, and yet I continually cross paths with them as they perform their duties as doormen, bank tellers, receptionists, waiters, mail carriers, handymen, cleaning women, and counter clerks at the hardware store, dry cleaner, pharmacy, or other places employing people who might meet an obituary editor’s definition of a nobody.
“FS brooding at bar
FS mood music lures dancers
FS voice airy aphrodisiac?
FS lyrics >multitudes love-making in parked cars, penthouses, rented rooms, etc.
FS being stood up tonight by Mia?”
“In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” . . . like so many of his classics, a song that evokes loneliness and sensuality, and when blended with the dim light and the alcohol and nicotine and late night needs, it becomes a kind of airy aphrodisiac. Undoubtedly the words from this song, and others like it, had put millions in the mood, it was music to make love by, and doubtless much love had been made by it all over America at night […] two generations of men had been the beneficiaries of such ballads, for which they were eternally in his debt, for which they may eternally hate him. Nevertheless here he was, the man himself, in the early hours of the morning in Beverly Hills, out of range.”
“Since my dear wife’s passing four years ago, I am alone and free to do as I wish. And I wish I could live like Frank Sinatra. But I can’t.”He paused, then repeated, “I wish I could. But I can’t, because I really don’t know how to live. I’m like a lot of fifty-year-old guys who in our early days knew excitement and adventure. But then, in spite of doing well, our lives have evened out and gone flat. In my case, it’s probably because I’m inwardly conservative. […] I’m caught up. I feel trapped. But when I’m in Frank’s company, everything suddenly changes. He is exciting to be around. He lives every moment. He refuses to grow old. He has great talent, yes, but also knows how to have fun. That’s how it is with so many of us who hang around Frank. He sets an example of how to live and have fun. It’s infectious. He lives our lives for us.”
Among the immigrants who arrived on American shores a century or more ago were people with such names as DiMaggio, Cuomo, Scalia, Iacocca, Coppola, Giamatti, DeLillo, Stella, Scorsese, De Niro, Pelosi and Germanotta (the latter being the ancestors of Lady Gaga)-but it is likely true that none of the progeny of these traveling Italians surpassed the worldwide fame and long-lasting popularity of the singing grandson of a shoemaker from Sicily named Francesco Sinatra.
"He just snapped," said his lawyer, Ira Garr, referring to Dr. Bartha's response to the sheriff's eviction notice. "It was overwhelming for him because, well, he had come to this country with nothing. For many years his parents and he had scraped together the money to buy the town house. This was his American dream, a personification of I’m an American, I've made it in America. I own a piece of valuable property in a valuable neighborhood. And I want to live in this place.”
Saw this book everywhere in NY bookstores. What I appreciate about Talese is his focus on the underdogs, people who are traditionally underlooked. He writes profiles about the Time’s obituary writer, and if he can’t get an interview with Frank Sinatra, will surround himself with Sinatra’s friends and families instead. I learnt so much about hangers-on when a man becomes famous, so much so that as a writer you can hang around the celebrity for one month and still get no interview. The story on Dr Bartha was eye-opening and entertaining; I enjoyed Talese’s extensive investigation about it including the background stories of the characters in Bartha’s orbit.
However this book lacked a clear structure. There were 3 sections: Bartlebys, Sinatra, brownstones. The sections seemed like a random collection of yet-unpublished works of Talese. And sometimes he goes into too much detail… unnecessary diversions into side characters’ backstories, a random history lesson about brownstone houses but having to date all the way to the 18th century including Edith Wharton, then instructing his readers about how brownstones are reconstructed… before telling us about the architect’s backstory, the construction worker’s backstory, then the backstories of the 2 buyers the house exchanged hands in…
Excerpts
During my writing assignments and my longtime residency in New York City, I have met many people who, in one way or another, remind me of Bartleby. These are people whom I might see regularly but whose private lives remain private. I might know them by one name, or no name, or by little more than a nod, and yet I continually cross paths with them as they perform their duties as doormen, bank tellers, receptionists, waiters, mail carriers, handymen, cleaning women, and counter clerks at the hardware store, dry cleaner, pharmacy, or other places employing people who might meet an obituary editor’s definition of a nobody.
“FS brooding at bar
FS mood music lures dancers
FS voice airy aphrodisiac?
FS lyrics >multitudes love-making in parked cars, penthouses, rented rooms, etc.
FS being stood up tonight by Mia?”
“In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” . . . like so many of his classics, a song that evokes loneliness and sensuality, and when blended with the dim light and the alcohol and nicotine and late night needs, it becomes a kind of airy aphrodisiac. Undoubtedly the words from this song, and others like it, had put millions in the mood, it was music to make love by, and doubtless much love had been made by it all over America at night […] two generations of men had been the beneficiaries of such ballads, for which they were eternally in his debt, for which they may eternally hate him. Nevertheless here he was, the man himself, in the early hours of the morning in Beverly Hills, out of range.”
“Since my dear wife’s passing four years ago, I am alone and free to do as I wish. And I wish I could live like Frank Sinatra. But I can’t.”He paused, then repeated, “I wish I could. But I can’t, because I really don’t know how to live. I’m like a lot of fifty-year-old guys who in our early days knew excitement and adventure. But then, in spite of doing well, our lives have evened out and gone flat. In my case, it’s probably because I’m inwardly conservative. […] I’m caught up. I feel trapped. But when I’m in Frank’s company, everything suddenly changes. He is exciting to be around. He lives every moment. He refuses to grow old. He has great talent, yes, but also knows how to have fun. That’s how it is with so many of us who hang around Frank. He sets an example of how to live and have fun. It’s infectious. He lives our lives for us.”
Among the immigrants who arrived on American shores a century or more ago were people with such names as DiMaggio, Cuomo, Scalia, Iacocca, Coppola, Giamatti, DeLillo, Stella, Scorsese, De Niro, Pelosi and Germanotta (the latter being the ancestors of Lady Gaga)-but it is likely true that none of the progeny of these traveling Italians surpassed the worldwide fame and long-lasting popularity of the singing grandson of a shoemaker from Sicily named Francesco Sinatra.
"He just snapped," said his lawyer, Ira Garr, referring to Dr. Bartha's response to the sheriff's eviction notice. "It was overwhelming for him because, well, he had come to this country with nothing. For many years his parents and he had scraped together the money to buy the town house. This was his American dream, a personification of I’m an American, I've made it in America. I own a piece of valuable property in a valuable neighborhood. And I want to live in this place.”
February 19, 2025
Escrito por el periodista estadounidense Gay Talese y publicado el año 2023, Bartleby y yo: Retratos de Nueva York se constituye en una suerte de recorrido biográfico de la carrera profesional del propio autor, a medida que repasa sus principales hitos concernientes a su trabajo como periodista en medios tales como el The New York Times y Esquire.
Protagonista del nuevo periodismo estadounidense que vio la luz a mediados del siglo XX, Talese formó parte de una generación de periodistas interesados en aquellos personajes y situaciones opacados por la deslumbrante atracción que ejercían figuras y acontecimientos históricos que marcaron el siglo. Redactores de obituarios, correctores de estilo, dobles de acción, entre otros sujetos que viven y mueren a diario en Nueva York y que transitan aparentemente desapercibidos, son los protagonistas de las historias que Talese confeccionó en sus activos años de ejercicio periodístico, personajes que compara con el Bartleby de Melville en un intento de acompasar sus vidas e historias con la representación simbólica del famoso oficinista de Wall Street.
Tres partes componen el libro. La primera sección corresponde a los primeros años de trabajo de Talese, caracterizado por la confección de reportajes breves de trabajadores y oficios vinculados al periódico The New York Times. La segunda parte, por medio de la crónica de su intento de entrevista al cantante Frank Sinatra, Talese explora las distintas personalidades y trabajadores allegados a este, y como los mismos construyen un atractivo cuadro de uno de los cantantes más famosos del mundo. Y terminando, la tercera parte del libro sigue la trágica sucesión de eventos que llevó a un hombre a explotarse a si mismo y a su edificio en la primera década del siglo XXI.
Entretenido y atractivo, el libro de Talese le toma el pulso a Nueva York y a sus variopintos habitantes.
Protagonista del nuevo periodismo estadounidense que vio la luz a mediados del siglo XX, Talese formó parte de una generación de periodistas interesados en aquellos personajes y situaciones opacados por la deslumbrante atracción que ejercían figuras y acontecimientos históricos que marcaron el siglo. Redactores de obituarios, correctores de estilo, dobles de acción, entre otros sujetos que viven y mueren a diario en Nueva York y que transitan aparentemente desapercibidos, son los protagonistas de las historias que Talese confeccionó en sus activos años de ejercicio periodístico, personajes que compara con el Bartleby de Melville en un intento de acompasar sus vidas e historias con la representación simbólica del famoso oficinista de Wall Street.
Tres partes componen el libro. La primera sección corresponde a los primeros años de trabajo de Talese, caracterizado por la confección de reportajes breves de trabajadores y oficios vinculados al periódico The New York Times. La segunda parte, por medio de la crónica de su intento de entrevista al cantante Frank Sinatra, Talese explora las distintas personalidades y trabajadores allegados a este, y como los mismos construyen un atractivo cuadro de uno de los cantantes más famosos del mundo. Y terminando, la tercera parte del libro sigue la trágica sucesión de eventos que llevó a un hombre a explotarse a si mismo y a su edificio en la primera década del siglo XXI.
Entretenido y atractivo, el libro de Talese le toma el pulso a Nueva York y a sus variopintos habitantes.
January 10, 2025
I'm going to keep this book for the writing -- every time I can't figure out how to phrase something I'll open it at random and luxuriate in the perfect sentences. The first half, until midway through the Sinatra business is transportive. I was in 1940s New York having a drink at Gough's, smelling the ink on the New York Times, watching people with hats and polka-dotted ties walk by. As the story moved from midcentury to modern, however, my interest dimmed, until I couldn't care less about what type of granite was going to serve as the face of a $32 million dollar mansion. Even if I had to push through the last third, I savored every word just for the phrasing.
November 17, 2024
Felt like listening to an interesting old uncle relate the highlights of his life. Sometimes a little dry, and I wondered why some details were given out of order. Three chapters on trying to interview Sinatra... and failing. Though I liked the recorded confrontation between Sinatra and Harlan Ellison. Could just picture that.
May 5, 2024
I really, really enjoyed this. Talese is masterful at making the seemingly mundane interesting. The Frank Sinatra section was a particular highlight.
April 13, 2025
Contame lo que quieras Gay, solo quiero pasar tiempo con vos.
August 4, 2024
Que Gay Talese explique cómo elaboró el mejor reportaje (perfil) de la historia de la revista New Yorker es el mejor regalo que ha hecho a los futuros periodistas. Y a sus lectores. Disfrútenlo.
December 3, 2023
The book is separated into 3 parts, the first being about his early career in journalism. The second part is about his frustrating attempts to interview Frank Sinatra resulting in an article entitled “ Frank Sinatra has a cold”. The third part of the book focuses on Nicolas Bartha, which I found fascinating.
The author includes plenty of historical facts as well as present day information and he is a masterful storyteller. He has such an engaging style of writing and this is a book I totally enjoyed.
The author includes plenty of historical facts as well as present day information and he is a masterful storyteller. He has such an engaging style of writing and this is a book I totally enjoyed.
August 10, 2024
I enjoyed part of this part-memoir, part-essay collection. Talese is a Writer, which means he can certainly describe and paint word pictures, but does so amid long, sometimes rambling sentences. He seems to be aware that he is Writing, and his stories affirm that awareness. Even his new journalistic endeavor—the story of a doctor who blew up his NYC brownstone (killing himself) rather than sell it to pay his ex-wife, seems to contain several ending chapters about the building’s and lot’s history just to allow for a poignant final line. It feels like much of this book is an old Writer congratulating himself on past and present cleverness.
July 24, 2023
My thanks to both Netgalley and the publisher Mariner Books for an advance copy of a book about a master of nonfiction discussing his past, his stories, and the people he has, met, with a new narrative about the City of New York.
A few years ago I was blessed to work with a young lady whose favorite story was Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville. She loved the story, and the idea behind it. The story deals basically with a gentleman working as a clerk in a law office, who is very good at his job, and is content doing what he does. When asked to do something else, he declines, and things happen from there. Some consider it a story about being stubborn, holding one's ideals. My friend so it as being true to oneself, and having the courage to be who you want to be, and darn the consequences. Currently she travels the country and Canada in an RV, working remotely with a dog and two cats, and is one of the happiest people I know. Gay Talese would love to interview her, cause I know the stories that she tells me would sound even more amazing and wonderful coming off of his pages. Talese is the same as Bartleby. Sure of his skills as a writer about people and their lives, not events but the people who lived them. As shown in his book, editors might not thing much, and many a good idea has been set aside, but Talese is still a trailblazer in many ways. Bartleby and Me: Reflections of an Old Scrivener is both a profile of the writer as a young man learning his craft, a look behind the curtain at how he works, and the profile that made his name. The book ends with a new work, a profile of New York City dealing with the City's love of property, celebrity, scandal and,of course, violence.
The book begins with a profile of the City written by a young man on the move, starting with the New York Times as a copy boy along with a description of the Herman Melville tale about Bartleby. Slowly he sold some articles, mostly profiles, before entering the army, where he wrote more profiles, and learned more about the world through listening. Returning to the Times, he wrote more profiles, before leaving and joining Esquire where his writing began to be noticed. Esquire sent Talese to California to interview Frank Sinatra, who Talese never got to sit down with, only observed from afar, with discussions from many around him. This lead to is famous piece, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" a revelatory work about a man and his place in, told without interviewing the Chairman of the Board himself. From there were other books, some failures, and the final piece, a tale about a New York doctor, his famous house, love, loss, death and the eventual explosion.
A remarkable book that really looks at the work, the skill and frankly the luck that it took to be Gay Talese. Stories about his youth, his marriage, his books and many of his famous profiles. The writing is of course great, but it is the behind the scenes information that I really enjoyed. The using of cardboard from laundered shirts, cutting them up to make file cards, and ideas how the story should be structured. The simple joy in talking to Sinatra's stand-in or his tailor. Coming across people with interesting stories, and getting that story out of them. The highs of being Gay Talese, and the stories that editors never could get behind of want. And of course a new piece that captures a lot of what made Talese such a force, an interesting story, with real consequences, and lots of weight from the past weighing on a person.
So many great characters, so many interesting facts and stories. The boxer Floyd Patterson was a character that really stuck out to me. I'll leave it to readers to find out why, as I was just touched by their last interaction. A great book about writing, journalism and being aware of what the world holds. Everyone has a story, everyone is interesting, one just has to ask.
A few years ago I was blessed to work with a young lady whose favorite story was Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville. She loved the story, and the idea behind it. The story deals basically with a gentleman working as a clerk in a law office, who is very good at his job, and is content doing what he does. When asked to do something else, he declines, and things happen from there. Some consider it a story about being stubborn, holding one's ideals. My friend so it as being true to oneself, and having the courage to be who you want to be, and darn the consequences. Currently she travels the country and Canada in an RV, working remotely with a dog and two cats, and is one of the happiest people I know. Gay Talese would love to interview her, cause I know the stories that she tells me would sound even more amazing and wonderful coming off of his pages. Talese is the same as Bartleby. Sure of his skills as a writer about people and their lives, not events but the people who lived them. As shown in his book, editors might not thing much, and many a good idea has been set aside, but Talese is still a trailblazer in many ways. Bartleby and Me: Reflections of an Old Scrivener is both a profile of the writer as a young man learning his craft, a look behind the curtain at how he works, and the profile that made his name. The book ends with a new work, a profile of New York City dealing with the City's love of property, celebrity, scandal and,of course, violence.
The book begins with a profile of the City written by a young man on the move, starting with the New York Times as a copy boy along with a description of the Herman Melville tale about Bartleby. Slowly he sold some articles, mostly profiles, before entering the army, where he wrote more profiles, and learned more about the world through listening. Returning to the Times, he wrote more profiles, before leaving and joining Esquire where his writing began to be noticed. Esquire sent Talese to California to interview Frank Sinatra, who Talese never got to sit down with, only observed from afar, with discussions from many around him. This lead to is famous piece, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" a revelatory work about a man and his place in, told without interviewing the Chairman of the Board himself. From there were other books, some failures, and the final piece, a tale about a New York doctor, his famous house, love, loss, death and the eventual explosion.
A remarkable book that really looks at the work, the skill and frankly the luck that it took to be Gay Talese. Stories about his youth, his marriage, his books and many of his famous profiles. The writing is of course great, but it is the behind the scenes information that I really enjoyed. The using of cardboard from laundered shirts, cutting them up to make file cards, and ideas how the story should be structured. The simple joy in talking to Sinatra's stand-in or his tailor. Coming across people with interesting stories, and getting that story out of them. The highs of being Gay Talese, and the stories that editors never could get behind of want. And of course a new piece that captures a lot of what made Talese such a force, an interesting story, with real consequences, and lots of weight from the past weighing on a person.
So many great characters, so many interesting facts and stories. The boxer Floyd Patterson was a character that really stuck out to me. I'll leave it to readers to find out why, as I was just touched by their last interaction. A great book about writing, journalism and being aware of what the world holds. Everyone has a story, everyone is interesting, one just has to ask.
December 3, 2023
I loved the stories of old New York society, the stories of the little guy, and the stories of mid-century characters such as Frank Sinatra. In this thoughtful book, Talese, 93, gathers up a series of his New York Times columns starting in November, 1953 which spotlighted ordinary characters. I can lose myself in his writing style all day long. “Growing up in a small Jersey shore town in the late 1940s, I dreamed of someday working for a great newspaper. But I did not necessarily want to write news. News was ephemeral and it accentuated the negative. It was largely concerned with what went wrong yesterday rather than what went right…As a reader, I was always drawn to fiction writers who could make ordinary people seem extraordinary. Out of a nobody they could create a memorable somebody.” Precisely.
When I was a young journalism student in the 1970s, I wanted to write features. Stories where I could dive deeply into a small event and let that tiny story reverberate into the larger landscape. My first success at this was a story I wrote in the Daily Utah Chronicle where I profiled then-U.S. Senator Jake Garn after taking a plane ride with him. I titled it ‘Water, Wilderness, and the Panama Canal”. The senator read my obscure article and offered me a position in his DC office for the summer. Heady stuff. Talese was one of the fathers of the New Journalism which dominated my young adulthood.
Talese shines in his short takes. He compares his “nobodies” to Bartleby, the famous scrivener described by Melville who “… sits quietly through the day, head bent, pen in hand, scribbling prodigiously at a corner desk” in a law office where no one notices him. Talese writes about the elderly man who works in the Times archive, the aging silent screen star who lives alone in NYC waiting to be noticed, and the obituary writer with a despairing personal life. My all-time favorite Talese column concerned James Torpey who operated “the paper’s famous electromechanical moving-letter news sign that was illuminated by nearly 15,000 20-watt bulbs and spelled out the latest headlines in five-foot-tall gold lettering that rotated around the fourth-floor cornice of the slender wedge-shaped 25-story Tower” on Times Square. What a job! Torpey received the headlines from the Times newsroom and quickly located each letter needed to spell out the headline, locked them into a rotating rail set on a conveyor track, and sent them out to the world. “Thousands of light bulbs instantaneously spelled out the headline and passersby could see it from blocks away.” Talese described Torpey as “a headline-making man whose name had never appeared in print” although he announced the end of world wars and the elections of presidents.
The last part of the book takes a strange turn, with one long piece on Talese’s 1966 Vanity Fair profile of Frank Sinatra and another even longer piece on an insane man who committed suicide in 1970 by blowing up himself in his childhood brownstone on 34th East 62nd Street. The Sinatra sketch is a masterful one, capturing Sinatra at 50 when he was big enough to disdain the publicity but egotistical enough to still want it. “When Sinatra sits to dine, his trusted friends are close; and no matter where he is, no matter how elegant the place may be, there is something of the neighborhood showing because Sinatra, no matter how far he has come, is still something of the boy from the neighborhood – only now he can take his neighborhood life with him.” All of Talese’s writing made me wistful for a time gone by before newspapers disappeared and social media began to broadcast the tedious details of our lives in unintelligible acronyms.
When I was a young journalism student in the 1970s, I wanted to write features. Stories where I could dive deeply into a small event and let that tiny story reverberate into the larger landscape. My first success at this was a story I wrote in the Daily Utah Chronicle where I profiled then-U.S. Senator Jake Garn after taking a plane ride with him. I titled it ‘Water, Wilderness, and the Panama Canal”. The senator read my obscure article and offered me a position in his DC office for the summer. Heady stuff. Talese was one of the fathers of the New Journalism which dominated my young adulthood.
Talese shines in his short takes. He compares his “nobodies” to Bartleby, the famous scrivener described by Melville who “… sits quietly through the day, head bent, pen in hand, scribbling prodigiously at a corner desk” in a law office where no one notices him. Talese writes about the elderly man who works in the Times archive, the aging silent screen star who lives alone in NYC waiting to be noticed, and the obituary writer with a despairing personal life. My all-time favorite Talese column concerned James Torpey who operated “the paper’s famous electromechanical moving-letter news sign that was illuminated by nearly 15,000 20-watt bulbs and spelled out the latest headlines in five-foot-tall gold lettering that rotated around the fourth-floor cornice of the slender wedge-shaped 25-story Tower” on Times Square. What a job! Torpey received the headlines from the Times newsroom and quickly located each letter needed to spell out the headline, locked them into a rotating rail set on a conveyor track, and sent them out to the world. “Thousands of light bulbs instantaneously spelled out the headline and passersby could see it from blocks away.” Talese described Torpey as “a headline-making man whose name had never appeared in print” although he announced the end of world wars and the elections of presidents.
The last part of the book takes a strange turn, with one long piece on Talese’s 1966 Vanity Fair profile of Frank Sinatra and another even longer piece on an insane man who committed suicide in 1970 by blowing up himself in his childhood brownstone on 34th East 62nd Street. The Sinatra sketch is a masterful one, capturing Sinatra at 50 when he was big enough to disdain the publicity but egotistical enough to still want it. “When Sinatra sits to dine, his trusted friends are close; and no matter where he is, no matter how elegant the place may be, there is something of the neighborhood showing because Sinatra, no matter how far he has come, is still something of the boy from the neighborhood – only now he can take his neighborhood life with him.” All of Talese’s writing made me wistful for a time gone by before newspapers disappeared and social media began to broadcast the tedious details of our lives in unintelligible acronyms.
January 13, 2024
Bartleby & Me is the story of a career more than a typical story of a life. In the first of three parts, Talese begins in the beginning, when his primary detail did not involve writing and he was only too happy when his interest in Bartleby-like nobodies occasionally proved saleable. What started as occasional writing turned Talese into a notable enough practitioner of his craft that he entered into an arrangement with Esquire which is recognizable as being of the one-for-them-one-for-me variety, whereby for himself, Talese profiled the New York Times’s obituary writer and for them he profiled Frank Sinatra.
The middle part’s title “In Sinatra’s Shadow,” which could serve as an alternative title for the book as a whole, as the story of his career—in more ways than one—often seems to be reduced to “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” very possibly the most recognized piece of American magazine journalism in history. Notable for the portrait Talese was able to paint of Sinatra while getting virtually no access to the man, despite having been promised it, we learn from Taleses’s behind-the-scenes account that, if he would have preferred not to be covering Sinatra at all, he almost certainly preferred “having” to construct the profile in this oblique manner to a more traditional one, by speaking to the Bartlebys behind and beside Sinatra, digging into their private lives and motivations, uncovering footholds for understanding and sympathy.
From such a peak, it is downhill (if gradually so) for Talese in the eyes of editors, who grow to have as little interest in what he is interested in writing as he has in what they are interested, which results in an interleaving of accounts of the stories that weren’t published or couldn’t be expanded as desired, sort of a photonegative of his career—the career that wasn’t. His process, and love thereof, well established in the first two parts—where we are privileged with all of the details of the private interests (foremost among these being his own thoughts) of his Bartleby-like existence, the ones that may or may not have explained Bartleby’s behavior—he is able to stand back while presenting the story of Nicholas Bartha in “Dr. Bartha’s Brownstone,” which feels like a closing triumph, a worthy capper to the story of Talese’s career and one that feels almost smuggled in, as if his interest would no longer be permitted to stand alone, as if it also had to fall under Sinatra’s shadow, included only as part of a package deal.
All of Bartleby & Me leads to this final part (as has all of Talese’s career), with the scale of the pieces increasing as Talese himself takes more and more of a backseat. It highlights Talese’s ability not just to demonstrate the “humanity” of someone—that overpraised ability, which really just requires one to do glorified reminding—but to demonstrate that someone—anyone—can be interesting, given the right treatment by the right person, someone like Talese who can sense what is interesting about a given subject and supply just the right particulars to compel his audience, and who knows how to expand stories forward and backward in time and in all directions in space, recognizing that there are subsidiary stories all the way down.
The middle part’s title “In Sinatra’s Shadow,” which could serve as an alternative title for the book as a whole, as the story of his career—in more ways than one—often seems to be reduced to “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” very possibly the most recognized piece of American magazine journalism in history. Notable for the portrait Talese was able to paint of Sinatra while getting virtually no access to the man, despite having been promised it, we learn from Taleses’s behind-the-scenes account that, if he would have preferred not to be covering Sinatra at all, he almost certainly preferred “having” to construct the profile in this oblique manner to a more traditional one, by speaking to the Bartlebys behind and beside Sinatra, digging into their private lives and motivations, uncovering footholds for understanding and sympathy.
From such a peak, it is downhill (if gradually so) for Talese in the eyes of editors, who grow to have as little interest in what he is interested in writing as he has in what they are interested, which results in an interleaving of accounts of the stories that weren’t published or couldn’t be expanded as desired, sort of a photonegative of his career—the career that wasn’t. His process, and love thereof, well established in the first two parts—where we are privileged with all of the details of the private interests (foremost among these being his own thoughts) of his Bartleby-like existence, the ones that may or may not have explained Bartleby’s behavior—he is able to stand back while presenting the story of Nicholas Bartha in “Dr. Bartha’s Brownstone,” which feels like a closing triumph, a worthy capper to the story of Talese’s career and one that feels almost smuggled in, as if his interest would no longer be permitted to stand alone, as if it also had to fall under Sinatra’s shadow, included only as part of a package deal.
All of Bartleby & Me leads to this final part (as has all of Talese’s career), with the scale of the pieces increasing as Talese himself takes more and more of a backseat. It highlights Talese’s ability not just to demonstrate the “humanity” of someone—that overpraised ability, which really just requires one to do glorified reminding—but to demonstrate that someone—anyone—can be interesting, given the right treatment by the right person, someone like Talese who can sense what is interesting about a given subject and supply just the right particulars to compel his audience, and who knows how to expand stories forward and backward in time and in all directions in space, recognizing that there are subsidiary stories all the way down.
February 3, 2025
(Read the audiobook edition via Audible.)
A master work by a brilliant journalist. The various stories here generally celebrate the "nobodies" who keep a great city like New York running, but there's also Talese's classic Esquire profile of Frank Sinatra based on the author's failed attempts at setting a formal interview. Even without the cooperation of the moody but supremely gifted greatest singer ever, Talese compiles an extremely evocative and revealing portrait by talking to those around him and witnessing the disasterous rehearsal and triumphant performance of a television special. The article is called "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold", and it's regarded by many as the greatest Esquire piece ever. While a true journalist trained in the New York Times newsroom of old, Talese nevertheless discovers responsible ways of putting himself in the story (as a last resort) New Journalism-style, and strikes gold.
In a look back at his early days at the Times, Talese discovers his niche through a fascination with individuals with everyday, unique, unnoticed and/or unusual jobs. It's "What's My Line?" writ large, e.g. the electrition who programs the text news feed over Times Square, or the formerly anonymous auteur of the Newspaper of Record's fabled obituaries. For each subject the reader can only appreciate with awe the depth of Talese's commitment to researching the personal details of seemingly everyone who comes into contact with each subject. His asides are sometimes brief, and sometimes they go on until you get a precious jewel, like the name of a great general contractor in Manhattan
The centerpiece of the volume is “Dr. Bartha’s Brownstone,” a profile of the Upper East Side doctor pushed over the edge by an adverse divorce proceeding. The story goes into remarkable detail about Bartha's life (including family origins as influenced by life under both Nazi and Communist oppression) through his slow, steady rise via exceptional thrift and work ethic to residence in an Upper East Side Manhattan townhouse at 34 East 62nd Street. The building's entire history gets a fascinating treatment, up to and after Bartha turns it into rubble, whereupon we get detailed insights into exactly what goes into buying and constructing a replacement edifice from scratch in today's New York.
I can only compare the attention to detail here to Robert Caro's masterpiece "The Power Broker", the most extraordinary audiobook I've ever heard. This book is way, way shorter, but the underlying research -- and the social import you may wish to find in it -- is in that league!
Having read all of Tom Wolfe and all I'm inclined to read of Caro, it's a pleasure to rediscover in Gay Talese another superstar of recent journalism.
A master work by a brilliant journalist. The various stories here generally celebrate the "nobodies" who keep a great city like New York running, but there's also Talese's classic Esquire profile of Frank Sinatra based on the author's failed attempts at setting a formal interview. Even without the cooperation of the moody but supremely gifted greatest singer ever, Talese compiles an extremely evocative and revealing portrait by talking to those around him and witnessing the disasterous rehearsal and triumphant performance of a television special. The article is called "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold", and it's regarded by many as the greatest Esquire piece ever. While a true journalist trained in the New York Times newsroom of old, Talese nevertheless discovers responsible ways of putting himself in the story (as a last resort) New Journalism-style, and strikes gold.
In a look back at his early days at the Times, Talese discovers his niche through a fascination with individuals with everyday, unique, unnoticed and/or unusual jobs. It's "What's My Line?" writ large, e.g. the electrition who programs the text news feed over Times Square, or the formerly anonymous auteur of the Newspaper of Record's fabled obituaries. For each subject the reader can only appreciate with awe the depth of Talese's commitment to researching the personal details of seemingly everyone who comes into contact with each subject. His asides are sometimes brief, and sometimes they go on until you get a precious jewel, like the name of a great general contractor in Manhattan
The centerpiece of the volume is “Dr. Bartha’s Brownstone,” a profile of the Upper East Side doctor pushed over the edge by an adverse divorce proceeding. The story goes into remarkable detail about Bartha's life (including family origins as influenced by life under both Nazi and Communist oppression) through his slow, steady rise via exceptional thrift and work ethic to residence in an Upper East Side Manhattan townhouse at 34 East 62nd Street. The building's entire history gets a fascinating treatment, up to and after Bartha turns it into rubble, whereupon we get detailed insights into exactly what goes into buying and constructing a replacement edifice from scratch in today's New York.
I can only compare the attention to detail here to Robert Caro's masterpiece "The Power Broker", the most extraordinary audiobook I've ever heard. This book is way, way shorter, but the underlying research -- and the social import you may wish to find in it -- is in that league!
Having read all of Tom Wolfe and all I'm inclined to read of Caro, it's a pleasure to rediscover in Gay Talese another superstar of recent journalism.
October 9, 2023
John McPhee's last book, "Tabula Rasa, Volume 1" was a scrap book of bits and pieces from over the years that never made it into full blown articles or books. It was OK, but it was a lesser work by the master of narrative nonfiction.
Gay Talese, another master of narrative nonfiction, has now released a similar volume. I suspect that in both cases the desire to keep publishing new books has outlasted the energy and drive necessary to write the long pieces that both Talese and McPhee specialized in. McPhee is 92 years old. Talese is 91.
This book is a mixture of biography and profiles. The biography is mostly a telling of the evolution of Talese's professional life from newspaper man to magazine writer to free-lance writer. He mentions some difficulties in his personal life over the years but does not dwell on them.
The Bartleby title is based on the idea that, like Melville's Bartleby", Talese was always fascinated by writing about ordinary people who live fascinating or interesting life. He includes the life story of a newspaper writer who ends up being the king of obituaries for the New York Times. The long piece at the end is about a New York city doctor who becomes so obsessed about his brownstone that he blows it up rather than let it get taken to satisfy a lien from his divorce. In both pieces we get the full complicated and conflicted life stories of the subjects.
The Bartleby theme doesn't work well because Talese's most famous story is "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" which was published in Esquire in 1966. It was one of the pioneering New Journalism celebrity profiles. The article was about writing the article and about the effect of Sinatra on everything around him. Talese became famous for a new approach to celebrity journalism.
Almost half of this book is Talese's story of writing the article. It is pretty meta to write a piece about a piece about writing a piece. Talese says he was reluctant to write it. He explains in detail all of the PR and managers surrounding Sinatra. It is also clear that Talese has his own celebrity friends. The boxer Floyd Patterson is a buddy. The singer Andy Williams, the writer Norman Mailer and the actor James Brolin are all pals. All of this doesn't fit in with the idea that he is just telling stories of regular people.
This is a fine solid collection of stuff which Talese is entitled to release after a long, impressive career.
Gay Talese, another master of narrative nonfiction, has now released a similar volume. I suspect that in both cases the desire to keep publishing new books has outlasted the energy and drive necessary to write the long pieces that both Talese and McPhee specialized in. McPhee is 92 years old. Talese is 91.
This book is a mixture of biography and profiles. The biography is mostly a telling of the evolution of Talese's professional life from newspaper man to magazine writer to free-lance writer. He mentions some difficulties in his personal life over the years but does not dwell on them.
The Bartleby title is based on the idea that, like Melville's Bartleby", Talese was always fascinated by writing about ordinary people who live fascinating or interesting life. He includes the life story of a newspaper writer who ends up being the king of obituaries for the New York Times. The long piece at the end is about a New York city doctor who becomes so obsessed about his brownstone that he blows it up rather than let it get taken to satisfy a lien from his divorce. In both pieces we get the full complicated and conflicted life stories of the subjects.
The Bartleby theme doesn't work well because Talese's most famous story is "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" which was published in Esquire in 1966. It was one of the pioneering New Journalism celebrity profiles. The article was about writing the article and about the effect of Sinatra on everything around him. Talese became famous for a new approach to celebrity journalism.
Almost half of this book is Talese's story of writing the article. It is pretty meta to write a piece about a piece about writing a piece. Talese says he was reluctant to write it. He explains in detail all of the PR and managers surrounding Sinatra. It is also clear that Talese has his own celebrity friends. The boxer Floyd Patterson is a buddy. The singer Andy Williams, the writer Norman Mailer and the actor James Brolin are all pals. All of this doesn't fit in with the idea that he is just telling stories of regular people.
This is a fine solid collection of stuff which Talese is entitled to release after a long, impressive career.
February 15, 2024
Have to go with a safe 3 stars.
It's a Good Read. Talese is clearly a talented writer, evidenced both by this work and certainly by a long and lush career as a writer. So - enjoyable to consume: well told, descriptive, captivating (as one would hope).
Storytelling is strong and the writing is engaging. In this three-part tome, parts 1 & 2 shine brightest, giving readers (especially non-New Yorkers) a great lens into the world of the ordinary that is Talese's inspirational playground.
The Sinatra story is equally compelling: From its overall content and sharing insights on a man of generations past, but also for the satisfying perspective from which it is written: the story is about the process of pursuing an interview and writing a story, not about the actual man himself. The story of the story IS the story.
Part 3 is a topic interesting on the surface, but (I think) overtold and forcibly stretched beyond its natural lifespan in order to fill additional pages or meet a word length. The Bartha story has a little too much anecdotal and historical detail not central to the story, and the telling of the tale should have ended with the explosion. The pages that follow are just wasted ink.
Overall a Good Read, and I'd read more work by the author, though not at retail prices. SO - it's off to the used book store with a new author to pursue!
It's a Good Read. Talese is clearly a talented writer, evidenced both by this work and certainly by a long and lush career as a writer. So - enjoyable to consume: well told, descriptive, captivating (as one would hope).
Storytelling is strong and the writing is engaging. In this three-part tome, parts 1 & 2 shine brightest, giving readers (especially non-New Yorkers) a great lens into the world of the ordinary that is Talese's inspirational playground.
The Sinatra story is equally compelling: From its overall content and sharing insights on a man of generations past, but also for the satisfying perspective from which it is written: the story is about the process of pursuing an interview and writing a story, not about the actual man himself. The story of the story IS the story.
Part 3 is a topic interesting on the surface, but (I think) overtold and forcibly stretched beyond its natural lifespan in order to fill additional pages or meet a word length. The Bartha story has a little too much anecdotal and historical detail not central to the story, and the telling of the tale should have ended with the explosion. The pages that follow are just wasted ink.
Overall a Good Read, and I'd read more work by the author, though not at retail prices. SO - it's off to the used book store with a new author to pursue!
September 19, 2023
This book helped me rediscover why I love journalism.
Bartleby & Me is a triptych containing Gay Talese's personal memoirs of being a journalist at The New York Times and Esquire in the middle of the 20th century; a description of his experience reporteting on Frank Sinatra for a feature in Esquire; and a standalone feature (spread throughout several chapters) in which Talese documents the litigious and fatal history of an Upper East Side property over the course of two hundred–odd years.
The format is a bit wonky, and these three components don't mesh together very neatly, but this can be forgiven considering this is the capstone of Talese's decades-long career. Even within the three sections, Talese meanders through subjects, relishing the opportunity to lift up a rock when he gets to it and examine the characters living underneath.
Talese writes in a straightforward yet elegant manner. When I re-read sentences, it wasn't because I couldn't comprehend them, but because I was trying to crack how I could emulate his style in my own writing.
Bartleby & Me is a triptych containing Gay Talese's personal memoirs of being a journalist at The New York Times and Esquire in the middle of the 20th century; a description of his experience reporteting on Frank Sinatra for a feature in Esquire; and a standalone feature (spread throughout several chapters) in which Talese documents the litigious and fatal history of an Upper East Side property over the course of two hundred–odd years.
The format is a bit wonky, and these three components don't mesh together very neatly, but this can be forgiven considering this is the capstone of Talese's decades-long career. Even within the three sections, Talese meanders through subjects, relishing the opportunity to lift up a rock when he gets to it and examine the characters living underneath.
Talese writes in a straightforward yet elegant manner. When I re-read sentences, it wasn't because I couldn't comprehend them, but because I was trying to crack how I could emulate his style in my own writing.
December 23, 2023
Confession--I'm a huge Talese fan. And this is Talese in prime form.
If you've never read Talese, prepare for Caro-like deep dives into the lives of little men and women, giving them their due. His curiosity leads him to uncover the quirkiest and most fascinating details about people and places--I can only imagine the hours he must spend in archives and city records departments. A lost art.
It was fun to get more insights on his classic essay, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," for Esquire and a glimpse into what publishing once was, and never will be again, sadly. The length alone of that essay would never make it across the pitch-transom today. It was also somehow heartening (as a struggling writer) to hear that even Gay Talese gets rejected--a lot. But his rejections reflect the changing tastes of readers I fear. Those with a fast-twitch mind will find this book painful.
Only complaint is that the Bartha story went on too long, even for a diehard Talese fan. A postscript for the building would have sufficed after the big bang.
If you've never read Talese, prepare for Caro-like deep dives into the lives of little men and women, giving them their due. His curiosity leads him to uncover the quirkiest and most fascinating details about people and places--I can only imagine the hours he must spend in archives and city records departments. A lost art.
It was fun to get more insights on his classic essay, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," for Esquire and a glimpse into what publishing once was, and never will be again, sadly. The length alone of that essay would never make it across the pitch-transom today. It was also somehow heartening (as a struggling writer) to hear that even Gay Talese gets rejected--a lot. But his rejections reflect the changing tastes of readers I fear. Those with a fast-twitch mind will find this book painful.
Only complaint is that the Bartha story went on too long, even for a diehard Talese fan. A postscript for the building would have sufficed after the big bang.
September 24, 2025
This was much better than I expected: an old -- and old-school -- journalist takes us behind the scenes on his career working for the NYTimes& Esquire. Talese was one of the innovators of "New Journalism" and his deconstruction of his legendary magazine piece "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" is enthralling to any writer who ever got assigned a story that they couldn't -- for reasone beyond their control -- complete. (Talese was assigned to intervu Sinatra and never got to do it -- but managed to write a story that was later voted the best thing Esq ever pubbed). Far less interesting, I thought, were the last few chapters detailing a crazy man's destruction of his own brownstone. The opening chapters offer a wonderful portrait of old-timey newsroom protocols from the POV of depts like the copy desk & the morgue, which people like me who worked in 20th century pre-internet newsrooms will enjoy. Vaguely interesting were his descriptions of his late-career misses -- book projects that didn't pan out -- despite his bestsellers abt the NYT (Kingdom & the Power) and the mob (Honor Thy Father).
June 16, 2023
Gay Talese's "Frank Sinatra Has A Cold" is a 26 page monument to journalism and non-fiction writing that is as impressive in 2023 as it was in 1966. Long considered to be the gold standard of what a story lacking its central subject can be, Talese peels back the curtain in "Bartleby and Me" (named for everyone's favorite scrivener) to showcase how the sausage was made. This is the middle third of the book, focused on the famous story. But the buns of the Sinatra Sandwich are just as appetizing, with the first third documenting how Talese found himself in the position to head to Los Angeles (with stops in the Army, the New York Times, and the most fascinating depiction of an obituary writer you can imagine). The final segment details a new story, on the rise, fall, and rise again of one Dr. Nicholas Bartha's brownstone. The fall, Bartha's doing, and both rises are recounted in the sort of detail one would expect from Talese.
April 23, 2024
Gay Talese noted writer for Esquire Magazine has written a piece about his writing process and one story he was fascinated with. Typically he likes to write about the unnoticed people inout lives, doormen, waiters, salesmen. In order to satisfy his editors, they want stories about celebrities that will sell magazines. This is two stores put together. One is his experience as a writer of people profiles, his most famous is Frank Sinatra has a Vold. The second was the sad story of a physician who blows up his brownstone in NY because he cannot afford the 4 million judgement against it by his ex-wife in a divorce settlement. It was so unfortunate that by a culmination of bias by the judge, not appearing in court, the doctor owed more than he could ever get for the house in a sale.
He therefore blew himself and the house up. Paradoxically, open space in NY was worth more than one with a building on it.
He therefore blew himself and the house up. Paradoxically, open space in NY was worth more than one with a building on it.
November 22, 2023
When accused of shameless namedropping in his (first) autobiography, David Niven suggested that "if you're having dinner with Chairman Mao, you don't write about the waiter." Gay Talese has had a brilliant career, first with the NY Times, then Esquire and many other magazines, writing about "nobodies." One of the best examples in this valedictory collection is the famous piece Talese wrote for Esquire profiling Frank Sinatra. Talese followed Old Blue Eyes around for a month, often within range but kept at arm's length by Sinatra's handlers. But he wrote a compelling piece using the stories and perspectives of those who surrounded the singer, from his bodyguard to his tailor to the woman who curated his toupees. At 91, Mr Talese still has an outstanding eye and ear and knows how to write compellingly, resulting in a book that is a pleasure to read.
December 13, 2023
I don't think in my life I'd ever read a book by Gay Talese, so it may seem strange to start with a book about writing. But it was very very good. It can be divided into thirds. The first third describes Talese's work as a writer generally--starting out in the publishing world, stories he did and did not complete, etc.
The second section is the backstory of his famous piece "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," one of the most famous magazine profiles of all time. The behind-the-scene look fascinates. Then the third section is more like a long magazine piece on a man who blew himself up inside his pricey Upper West Side townhouse. This is the sort of thing with which Talese seems to excel--take a nobody, pull back the curtain, and reveal quite an interesting life. Great work.
He had a previous book about writing. I'll need to read that now too!
The second section is the backstory of his famous piece "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," one of the most famous magazine profiles of all time. The behind-the-scene look fascinates. Then the third section is more like a long magazine piece on a man who blew himself up inside his pricey Upper West Side townhouse. This is the sort of thing with which Talese seems to excel--take a nobody, pull back the curtain, and reveal quite an interesting life. Great work.
He had a previous book about writing. I'll need to read that now too!
October 21, 2023
An odd little book. The first third consists of entertaining pastiches from Talese's career as a journalist at the New York Times and Esquire. The middle third is his account of writing perhaps the most famous piece of journalism ever, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold." This section is probably five times longer than the piece itself and, while interesting, is a little repetitive. At the end of this middle-third section, Talese recalls how he became an author of several weighty nonfiction works but then how he hit a dry spell where editors were rejecting many of his ideas. One, about a New York doctor and his brownstone home, becomes the final section of the book. Talese is a great writer, so I recommend this book even if it is a little uneven.
April 2, 2024
This was not what I thought it was; I was expecting stories more along the lines of New Yorkers: A City and Its People in Our Time, but the book is instead divided into three sections which are long-form pieces about interesting stories/people from Talese's past work in journalism. I did enjoy it once I understood more clearly what it was. To sum up the author's approach to his work, as he himself says, he would rather interview Frank Sinatra's double than the man himself - side stories and minor characters were his specialty.
June 5, 2024
I most enjoyed the earlier chapters of the book when Talese was discussing how he got his start in journalism at the Times (as a copy boy) and his early career. Talese is a great writer who made feel that I too was living those moments looking for a way into the psyche and life of Frank Sinatra for example. The latter part of the book that is a long story about the life of a lot in uptown Manhattan was less engrossing because it was historical and at times I found Talese’s diving down each rabbit hole approach a bit annoying. It came across as showing off all of his research. At the end of the day, you can’t help but be enriched by good writing.
November 20, 2023
Talese is one of the inventors of what Tom Wolfe called "The New Journalism" so I approached this book as his "how-to" analysis, especially since I had liked his book on the New York Times (The Kingdom and the Power) so much. I expected an autobiography, and the beginning delivered that but the book was pretty much a detailed analysies of HOW he wrote "Frank Sinatra has a cold" at a greater length than I expected, followed by a gripping story he had never told before. THAT was good. The best part is he still writes well, so it was never boring. Still . . .
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