Gay Talese: Confessions of an Open-Air Chronicler

In a letter dated December 4, 1965, a reporter wrote: “In any case, I hope to do him justice in my profile for Esquire , to offer a stirring portrait of Sinatra and the man, showing his effect on his friends, his enemies, and his times.” Tormented, after a month of wandering around, talking to people around him but without achieving his goal of sharing a moment with “The Voice,” he made a last desperate attempt by letter to contact him, hoping to put into practice the text that his editor had assigned him.

The article, titled "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," was published in April 1966 and established its author, Gay Talese , as a leading figure in the so-called "New Journalism." That letter, which was ultimately never answered, can be read in Bartleby and Me: Portraits of New York , the latest book by an author who, at 93, is writing his own requiem and a synthesis of his literary philosophy.

“After being transferred to the news department in 1959, I continued to focus my articles on the lives of anonymous people,” Talese writes after recounting his beginnings as a staff writer at The New York Times , his heart in one hand and the other on his typewriter. Talese recounts, through brief sketches, how he made this keen eye for “things that go unnoticed” a trademark. Later, so-called “narrative journalism” made a cult of it, taking it to the extreme.

The author of The Voyeur's Motel recalls a literary piece that encapsulates the concept of this book: Herman Melville's short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener," and its subtitle ("A Wall Street Story"). It tells the story of a scribe who "would rather not," and exemplifies the archetype of the character he will most be interested in narrating: a drab being, with a seemingly dull life, who hides secrets and miseries. He thus recounts the lives of various secondary characters he encountered in the Times newsroom, such as the electrician and the archivist, leading up to Alden Whitman, the obituary editor, about whom he will write a long profile eloquently titled "Mr. Bad News."

“To whom do the imprints on the bolts and beams of such vertiginous buildings in such an immense city belong?” Talese asked himself in the preface to The Bridge , a 1964 text. It is another example of how his eye fell on the lives of anonymous subjects: the ironworkers who built the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, which connects Brooklyn and Staten Island.

A colossal engineering feat that, at 4,176 meters long, became one of the longest suspension bridges in the world. It told a story encompassing adventure, courage, challenges, and emotion. It even recounted the death of a worker, Gerald McKee, with novel-like drama. About the end, he writes: “When everything was ready (…) the politicians would give their speeches, everyone would applaud, and the credit would go entirely to the engineers. And the ironworker wouldn't care a fig. He'd be puffing out his chest in the bars.”

The first part of Bartleby and I is a tribute to the city that never sleeps. It's composed of brief adventures and portraits interspersed with journalistic anecdotes—such as his time covering the protests in Selma, led by Martin Luther King, which culminated in the so-called "Bloody Sunday" of March 7, 1965—his time in military service learning to operate a tank, and some advice from the journalism profession. One example: when a colleague recommends that he not conduct interviews by telephone, as interviewees are more reluctant to open up and share intimate details, and the opportunity to decipher body language is lost. Today, in times of media-driven journalism and job insecurity abound amid increasingly accelerated routines, this becomes even more significant.

The second part, "In the Shadow of Sinatra," is the most interesting for those fans or journalism students who were dazzled by the aforementioned singer's profile, where he follows him everywhere and ends up portraying him through his surroundings and his absences. Here he writes the making-of of that brilliant chronicle, recounting everything that was never known, from his editor's initial assignment to all the difficulties he had to overcome, using the same novelistic and stylized prose that characterizes his style, adding a pulse worthy of a mystery novel. At several points, he confesses, he was close to abandoning the mission. He quotes a relentless editor who tried to prevent him from throwing in the towel: "Stay where you are and keep doing what you're doing. Keep talking to whoever you're talking to."

"Dr. Bartha's Brownstone" is the title of the third chapter. This, perhaps, could be a book within a book. It tells the story of a Romanian doctor who commits suicide by blowing up the small building where he lived, a so-called brownstone apartment, a typical row of buildings famous in New York for their distinctive architecture. Here Talese not only narrates this tragic story but also tells several others: immigration to the United States, a divorce, and its aftermath. The ending is somewhat abrupt, but the execution is worthy of his most accomplished plays.

With the death of Tom Wolfe (in May 2018), and the previous losses of Truman Capote (1984) and Norman Mailer (2007), Gay Talese is the only exemplar of the so-called New Journalism in the world of the living. Although he is only cited as a reference in that canonical anthology published by Wolfe in 1973, no one can doubt that the author of exquisite portraits and profiles laid the foundations for this journalistic renewal. The man made a cult of his elegance both in his prose and in his particular way of dressing, with hats and suits that his father taught him to value. When he began writing for the Times and Esquire, they asked him to seek out "reports that went beyond impartiality and rigor to embrace good prose."

Reading Bartleby and I , it's impossible not to be drawn back to a time when stories were valued for their narrative density, not their number of views on social media. While the author has recently had some setbacks—his failed chronicle "The Voyeur's Motel," where he was sold rotten fish, or opinions favorable to Donald Trump that were highly questioned and later qualified—this book functions as a memoir intertwined with his own Tao. A way of seeing that teaches much more than what it writes.

Bartleby and I. Portraits of New York , Gay Talese. Alfaguara, 336 pages.