A Town Without Time
Gay Talese's New York
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
From legendary journalist Gay Talese, a collection of his greatest reporting on New York City.
“Along with Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe and others, Mr. Talese has been acclaimed as a virtuoso of the novelistic New Journalism.” —Wall Street Journal
“They fly in quietly—unnoticed, like the cats, the ants, the doorman with three bullets in his head, and most of the other offbeat wonders in this town without time.” —from “New York Is a City of Things Unnoticed,” Talese’s first Esquire story, 1960
For over six decades, Gay Talese has told New York stories. They are the stories of daring bridge builders, disappearing gangsters, intrepid Vogue editors, unassuming doormen who’ve seen too much. They are set in the star-studded salons of George Plimpton’s apartment, in the tense newsroom of a still burgeoning New York Times, in an electric studio session with Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga recording their debut.
With the wit, elegance, and depth of insight that has long characterized his work, Talese’s New York reporting showcases a master of the form at his finest, making intelligible the city’s vibrant beating pulse, capturing the charming, the eccentric, and the overlooked. Whether prowling the night streets to discover the social hierarchy of alley cats, or uncovering the triumph and terror of building the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, or plunging into the hidden, sordid world of a recently blown-up apartment building, Talese excavates the city around him with a reporter’s eye and an artist’s flair, crafting delightful, profound, indelible portraits of the people who live there. Spanning the 1950s to today, the fourteen pieces in this collection are a time capsule of what New York once was and still is—Talese proves time and time again that, even as the city changes, his view of it remains as timeless as ever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this exuberant anthology, journalist Talese (Bartleby and Me) brings together highlights from his six-decade career reporting on New York City. His eclectic range of subjects captures the multitudes contained within the five boroughs, including the gutsy and sometimes reckless ironworkers who built the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in the early 1960s, a woman from a wealthy family who chose to live on the streets for reasons opaque to her loved ones and Talese, and a physician who blew up his Manhattan townhouse with himself inside to prevent his ex-wife from claiming the property in their divorce. Other selections focus on more well-known New Yorkers. For instance, Talese investigates how the 1964 kidnapping of mobster Joe Bonanno rippled through his biological and crime families, and offers an intimate account of a playful studio session with Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga. Talese's exceptional eye for character shines in his 1966 profile of Frank Sinatra, which portrays the crooner as a lion in winter fighting off not only a cold but also the cultural upheavals of the 1960s that left him straining for relevance. Each piece reads like a gripping short story, rendered in vivid detail by an assured writer who helped transform reporting into a literary endeavor. This love letter to the Big Apple doubles as a testament to Talese's considerable skills.
