Interview with Gay Talese

 

Gay Talese Interview – August 1986

Thy Neighbor’s Life
From Books to Blue Laws
Gay Talese Explains It All

By William Kelly

Gay Talese is right at home in Ocean City. He’s just finished his last set of tennis for the day and now – to relax awhile – sits back in a white wicker coach on the big, breezy porch of his traditional Jersey Shore, cedar-shingle house.

Talese is the author of a half-dozen books, the last three of which were best sellers. He’s considered by some to be the archetypical “new journalist,” along with writers Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson.

Born in Ocean City, New Jersey in 1932, Talese started writing sports stories while still in high school. He later attended the University of Alabama, which he graduated from in 1953, then served two years in the Army before getting a job as a reporter for the New York Times.

He threw off the veil of objectivity journalism demanded in the Kingdom and the Power, exposed the real-life adventures of a Mafia don before The Godfather, and went on to study the sexual habits of Americans long before President Ronald Reagan’s Commission on Pornography made the subject newsworthy.

Now, after spending four years researching his family roots from Ocean City to Italy, Talese recently retired to his study once again for the arduous task of writing a new book. The first installment of this latest effort appears in the August issue of Esquire magazine.

After working at the typewriter every morning, Talese plays tennis for a few hours, then works some more. His wife, Nan, is a publisher in Boston. His daughters live out of town – one in New York City and the other in Paris. So, the writer has the house to himself a lot these days.

Dressed neat but casual, Talese takes time from his busy schedule to answer some questions about his life, Ocean City, the blue laws, the art of writing, his new book and why he’s returned home to write it.

William Kelly: The first installment of your new book appears in Esquire this month. Is it finished or is it still a work in progress?

Gay Talese: It’s still in progress, and will be in progress for probably another six months. But, the other installments will be published in Esquire’s next few issues.

WK: Does it have a title?

GT: No, the title of a book is the last thing you do. It’s the easy part.

WK: You have been researching and writing the book for the past four or five years?

GT: Yes. That’s not a long time for me to be working on a book. “They Neighbor’s Wife” took eight years. “The Kingdom and the Power,” my first book of any length took five years. “Honor Thy Father” took four. I do a lot of research, and the writing part is very difficult.

WK: In several of your books you sign off with the dateline, “Ocean City.” Do you do a lot of writing here?

GT: I think I’ve written parts of every book I’ve ever done right here in this very house. The first book I did on New York was done here. I think I usually start books here in the spring.

WK: You begin the first installment of the new book in Ocean City. Why?

GT: I ended my last boo, “They Neighbor’s Wife,” at the Mays Landing nudist camp with people on a boat from Ocean City looking through binoculars at the nudist camp, where I am. This book begins with me near the water, as a child, and picks up pretty much where the last one left off, except it’s more personal than the others, exploring the world that produced me, rather than the world outside of me. It’s something different. But every one of the books I’ve done is connected; every one of the books has something to do with me personally.

The New York Times book is about the only time I’ve had a job – it’s the story of my employment there. “Honor They Father” is the study of an archetypical American embarrassment, the Mafia. Italian-Americans from Mario Cuomo to Frank Sinatra to Lee Iacocca are, and have always been, particularly sensitive to that.

“Thy Neighbor’s Wife” explores the very rigid morality of my past – my family past, my Ocean City past, and exploring that which I am curious about.

WK: Did you get a lot of flack from your neighbors about that book?

GT: I got a lot of flack from every book, especially the last three best sellers in a row. Every one of them has caused me a lot of flack.

“The Kingdom and the Power,” for example, was attacked for exposing the New York Times, for exposing journalism as not being objective, but very subjective, very personal. Anyone who is an editor, publisher or reporter brings his own personal viewpoints into the way he reports, edits, what he chooses to report, what he chooses not to publish, how much space they give to something. That’s what “The Kingdom and the Power” is all about. It was very controversial when it came out but, of course, it was reviewed by newspapers.

My next book, “Honor Thy Father,” was attacked because they said I was glamorizing gangsters, getting too close to the Mafia. That’s a fair criticism because I was close to them. I was living with them.

“Thy Neighbor’s Wife” was criticized on many levels – for being scandalous and for humanizing merchants of sexual freedom, as in books, films and magazines.

But, what I like to do in my work, and I’m doing it now, too, is to explore what I think is relevant but hasn’t been explored fully before. I think of myself as a sort of social historian who deals with the history that historians and society have ignored or overlooked. I deal with people who are in the shadows, who are obscure.

There’s a scene in what I am working on now, during World War II, of myself helping my father in a tailor shop, when clothes hangers were impossible to get because of rationing. So now, I’m doing a history of clothes hangers. It’ll only be about a sentence in the book, maybe two, but I’m curious to find out who invented the first coat hanger. You won’t find it in the encyclopedia, and I’ve been calling all over the country to find out. And what’s it worth? But, it’s nice to try to get it right.

WK: Wouldn’t it be safer to write fiction?

GT: It would be safer to write fiction, in a way, but it wouldn’t be so adventuresome. You can get close to the truth – not that anybody can get to the truth. You see whatever your eyes allow you to see, and sometimes we have flawed vision. But, I’ve always been interested in exploring the world of literary realism. I think the reality of people’s lives is astounding, it’s fantastic, it’s unbelievable. I try to get close enough to people’s lives to describe them with certain fullness. It sounds like fiction, but it isn’t.

WK: You read a lot of fiction though?

GT: Yes. My wife, Nan, is publishing the book I’m reading right now, “The Prince of Tides,” by Pat Conroy.

WK: Is that to pick up on certain techniques you can use?

GT: No, it’s not the techniques, it’s just good writing. I read fiction just to get into the mood of the writing, because the best writing is done by fiction writers. They don’t let facts get into the way. What I try to do is to write well, and not let the facts get in the way, either. But I also want to be right, and accurate. That’s why I go through such detail.

WK: You read “Roots” by Alex Haley before starting your current research?

GT: “Roots” was a great idea, and the country was swept up by it. But my taste runs more along the lines of John Updike’s books. They have a great sense of history in the period after World War II – the time in which I’m alive.

WK: Was Ocean City a dreary place in the winter, when you lived here fulltime?

GT: Living in Ocean City was dreary, particularly in the past. Now, it’s not as lonely, there’s more people here.

I’m living in both Ocean City and New York now, but I’m not only here in the summertime. I come here in the winter a lot. I’m not a gambler, but I’m not one to say casinos did nothing for Atlantic City.

One thing they did is, they’ve made it easier to get from Ocean City to New York. It’s only 48 minutes by helicopter, so now I go back and forth a lot. I like to come down here in the winter. It’s dreary in a way, but it contrasts beautifully with New York, and what the city represents.

I have a big house in the center of New York City, surrounded by glamour, glitz, tension, terrorism, and the symbols of opulence – with limousines going around the block. It’s middle Manhattan. It’s very exciting to live in such an ambiance, but I find getting away from the place very beneficial.

Ocean City – its’ closer to what America is, right here. I think by keeping in touch with Ocean City, as I have throughout my life, and recognizing my roots here, I am more able to deal with the reality of other people’s lives. More so, than if I were just gauging my life, through New York, which doesn’t represent anything except New York. It’s a nice balance.

Thomas Wolfe said, “You can’t go home again” – he was half right. I’ve gone home again. I never left in a sense, though I’ve been all over the world.

WK: You’ve helped raise the level of money that a freelance writer can get for quality work. Do you feel you’ve brought it into the same realm as superstar athletes and network anchors?

GT: Well, you know writers, by and large, don’t make enough money considering the amount of difficulty there is in doing what they do.

I make a lot of money, that’s true enough, but I take an awful lot of time to do a book. Five or six years of my life somehow disappears almost every time.

WK: Are you working under any deadline pressure now?

GT: Oh, I have deadline pressure, but I think there’s a greater pressure, the pressure to do your work well. My last book was three or four years late.

WK: You were an average student who succeeded. What advice do you have for struggling students and journalists?

GT: I think it’s important for people who are struggling as students to realize whatever grade they are given in their schoolwork is not a continuing evaluation of their own worth as a person. I believe the educational system, in giving a grade to a student, is really giving grades for conformity.

Too often, an “A” student is one who conforms, memorizing a textbook or a lecture, and forgetting to incorporate the thought behind it into their own mind. A person who isn’t an excellent student could still be an explorer, a person who is learning what is not part of the curriculum. Who is growing, but not in the area limited to student activities.

As for writers, a writer has to be an explorer. You can’t teach writing in an English class because everyone has a different approach to writing. The only thing writers have in common is their curiosity. You can’t teach curiosity, people either are curious or they’re not. A writer must also have the patience to pursue the lives of other people.

WK: Let’s talk about Ocean City.

GT: I’m amazed at what’s going on. On the surface people think Ocean City is a quiet, plain, predictable community of people that do not have bizarre edges, but they do. Mayor Roy Gillian is a terrific character because he’s exposing the hypocrisy of the town.

Look at the drama on the boardwalk. You have the sense of the Sabbath, of going back to the Old Testament – Thou Shalt Not Do Certain Things On Sunday because it’s a day of rest, because God willed it.

One Sunday, I was on the boardwalk when the Ferris wheel lights were out, the ride was quiet, the electricity turned off. That’s the will of the administration, but Gillian is raising the issue of why are we closing this, and this, and this and not this and this. Why are the tennis courts closed? They’re not doing it now, but they closed them a couple of weeks ago.

I play tennis, and it certainly was not in my best interest to have them closed. On the one hand, I’m irritated, but on the other, I’m amused. I think it’s terrific Gillian is pointing fingers at the pious people around here.

Personally, I’m glad there is a blue law in this town. I don’t want bars. I don’t want to have “Joe’s Grill” across the street, and teenagers keeping me awake until five in the morning. I don’t mind them having bars in Somers Point, where they can stay up ‘till seven in the morning if they want to, and throw Molotov cocktails at someone else. Whatever they do over there is all right, but I don’t want to hear it in Ocean City.

Ever since the town was founded by the Lake Brothers, we in Ocean City have been re-examining the cravings of the flesh balanced against the will of the spirit.

WK: What else?

GT: I regret there’s not more restoration in Ocean City, so that it can capture the character Cape May has. Cape May is nice, but a little too far south or I’d spend more time there. Ocean City and Cape May were quite alike at one time, in the 1800s and early 1900s. I don’t know when Ocean City started to change while Cape May stayed pretty much the same as it was.

Ocean City has allowed some sloppy architecture to get mixed up with the Victorian qualities of the town. All across America we’ve seen the rise of the junk culture – shopping malls, where you can’t tell if you’re in San Jose, California or Tombstone, Arizona.

WK: Do you go to the beach?

GT: Infrequently. I go a few times a year, when my wife is down, and I want to read. I spend my days mostly on the tennis court, which is where I was today, where I was yesterday, and where I will be tomorrow.

WK: Do you set any particular time of the day to write?

GT: I work from about 8:30 a.m. ‘till about 1 o’clock, then I go back around 6 p.m. and work ‘till 8:30 p.m. I go out about 9, and get home around 12, even if I go out to dinner, whether I’m here or in New York. I drink wine, have a martini before dinner, but I don’t sit at the bar and listen to the piano player until 2 in the morning and get bombed. That’s not the way to get work done.

On the other hand, I’m not a rigid abstainer in any sense of the word. I love to eat and relax, but during the daytime, I don’t even have a beer for lunch. I usually smoke cigarettes when I’m working, and a cigar in the evening.

WK: As one who has dug into his roots, what have you found?

GT: Not just one thing. There is the recognition that you don’t have to take a boat to China. It’s very nice to have been to the Orient, and I’ve spent a lot of time in Europe these past few years. But, with that perspective, it’s nice to come back to a relatively tranquil town like Ocean City and find, easily, there is as much worth exploring here as there is in some of the great cities of the world.