Writer Gay Talese honored for his classic 'New Journalism' Sinatra profile
Arts
Writer Gay Talese honored for his classic ‘New Journalism’ Sinatra profile
A half century after completing a magazine piece that had frustrated and disappointed him, Gay Talese was honored at the 21 Club for his landmark Esquire story on Frank Sinatra. Tom Wolfe, Robert Caro and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg were among those seated at the banquet table Monday night as toasts were offered to Talese, whose “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” has been reissued by Taschen as an illustrated coffee-table book. “That is a classic,” Wolfe said of Talese’s story, joking that his longtime friend included such rich and intimate detail in his work he would say to himself, “He’s making this stuff up.”
He was the first Italian in my lifetime to really be accepted by Americans, and that meant a lot to a kid like me.
Gay Talese on Sinatra
Talese’s stylish, 15,000-word epic was published in Esquire’s April 1966 issue and is widely regarded as a model for the expansive and self-consciously literary “New Journalism” of the '60s and '70s and as one of the greatest and most revealing celebrity profiles, even though Talese had never spoken to Sinatra. Talese doubted that he was up to the assignment, but he deeply identified with the singer, who died in 1998, as a fellow Italian and New Jersey native. Talese flew to Los Angeles 1965 and for weeks followed Sinatra everywhere, from the recording studio to a hotel nightclub in Las Vegas where comedian Don Rickles was performing.
Sinatra with a cold is Picasso without paint, Ferrari without fuel. It affects not only his own psyche but also seems to cause a kind of psychosomatic nasal drip within dozens of people who work for him, drink with him, love him, depend on him for their own welfare and stability.
Opening line in Talese’s article
