Inspiration struck when I saw an interview with legendary New York Times journalist and author Gay Talese. I had heard his name, but that was about it.
Described by a college professor as “the most curious person I ever met” and that Talese “takes a cinematic approach in his writing”, I was intrigued as journalism was my first foray into professional writing back in suburban Chicago in the late 1990s-2000s.
I needed to read some of this magic, and when I found his book, A Writer’s Life, it sounded perfect. I was going to learn the writing secrets of a master journalist.
I loved his first sentence of his epic 756-page book, “I am not now, nor have I ever been, fond of the game of soccer.” How wonderfully random as he begins the story of a young female Chinese soccer player in the 1999 FIFA World Cup. Where was this heading to writing advice? I hit an observation, maybe around page 80.
“Writing is often like driving a truck at night without headlights, losing your way along the road, and spending a decade in a ditch.”
Decade? For Talese, yes. Most of his non-fiction books took years to complete. He lamented this:
“Even when taking into account the systemically slow and exacting process by which I have always produced prose, a virtual Stone Age method that I regrettably discovered to be my most natural mode, I could not be contented with the paltry number of pages that I had turned out between 1995 and 1999.”
I can relate to being “Stone Ageish” as I can only post once every two weeks, while others run circles around me (which is totally cool) and I’m still working on my memoir after three-plus years; I just process my non-fiction stories slowly. And if I’m being embarrassingly honest here, I am a slow reader, too. I just saw someone’s list of books they read this summer; it included eight titles. I read three. Well, three and a half.
Anyway, I continued reading and reading (slowly). I was finally on page 350 when I paused; I hadn’t found a single writer’s tip or observation in 200+ pages. I was frustrated because I had already decided that Gay Talese was going to be my next post. I was going to share his wonderful writing instructions with fellow writers; except that I couldn’t find any.
A Writer’s Life is a story of all the stories Talese researched, but not enough to his satisfaction to publish; the strangest, by far, being the unlikely story of John and Lorena Bobbitt. Enough said there.
I mean, his credentials are notable. His book, The Kingdom and the Power, a 1969 non-fiction story about the inner workings at The New York Times, was his first bestseller. Talese wrote a profile for Esquire Magazine on Frank Sinatra titled “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.” Widely recognized as one of the greatest celebrity profiles ever written, it is a masterpiece of New Journalism, which mixes investigative reporting with atmospheric storytelling (SO up my alley.) He didn’t interview Sinatra; he interviewed everyone around him. He is an exhaustive researcher.
I faced the hard truth that A Writer’s Life would not give away any information from what he learned as a writer. Well, shoot. There would be no “snatch this pebble from my hand” moments in this tome.
There remains, however, something about him I like a lot. The very first piece he wrote as a reporter for the New York Times was just a short one, with no byline. When he looked up at The New York Times Building, he wondered who was the person responsible for changing the light bulbs of the iconic electronic rotating sign which circled the building; and who added the information in it?
Well, he found out. He learned that there was a “genial gentleman, the head electrician” on the fourth floor who was responsible for the bulbs and for typing in the news that would flash around the building. He wanted to be “the lamplighter” for the people who are in the dark. I love how he saw things that many others do not.
I am happy that I can still file Talese’s story and style into the massive A Writer’s Life folder anyway, as it remains an acclaimed example that there are endless approaches to successful fiction or non-fiction writing. One can write decades-slow and cinematically, or prolifically, or edit-as-you-go, or don’t edit until the story is in place, or add rich detail, or don’t add a lot of extra prose. They all fit under the vast writer’s sky of ways to complete a story. We have to follow who we are.
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