Transcripts For CSPAN2 Gay Talese Talks About Life As A Writer 20170625

A cellphone or participate in the technology from peoples lives. I am a throw back from my boyhood. I was born in 1932. In a little town called ocean city, new jersey near atlantic city. My father and mother owned a store, had a dress shop, tailor shop. My father made beautiful suits. My mother made a lot of money and made nothing but an sold womens dresses with great success. When you a child of shopkeepers anything around, after school i went to Parochial School and after coming home in two or three in the afternoon, i hang around the store and have some chores to do and in my mothers case when she sewed a dress there was cardboard boxes that had to be folded into form and tissue paper and my mother would insert the address into the tissue paper and i do that. I made the boxes. Id hang around and eavesdrop. I was ten or 12 or 13 and i listen to the conversations in the middle of the afternoon in my mothers dress shop and the dialogue between my mother, a very curious woman of italian and american heritage, born in brooklyn and came to this protestant town called ocean city and her customers were regular and most of them were middleaged women for the money to buy dresses. They were more the affluent members of the smalltown community. There has been for the mayor, superintendent of the school, cadillac dealership and these are women of the afternoon. In the afternoon theyd come to her dress shop and talk about their lives. They complain, because during the war there was much to complain about. And a child stood behind the counter, gay talese, listening to stories. Even in my fathers case, more refined men cared about close, there werent many but there were some, theyd come for a fitting and id be listening as the men were honest will, my father would measure them and theyd be having conversation. I was a listener from before i was a teenager and i like tenure on the store because in the store you meet a variety of people, all of them are older and some of them are articulate and some of them maybe not but they all had a circuit look about them and i observed, observed people and i eavesdropped. My imagination was enlarged by the stories of ordinary people in an extraordinary time. It was world war ii, the war was on. It was on in europe and asia and the people came into the store, women who were having to ration, who couldnt buy silk stockings because it was nylon. Men who couldnt fill their tank because there was a rationing on gas. Men who had sons in the army, daughters in the army, uncles working in war plans, the town itself, its an island not far from atlantic city. The town itself is on the ocean and having a border wall, the lights of the boardwalk looking upon the atlantic were black on one side and on the inner part of the light you can have some light coming through. Throughout the town there were homes with stars representing someone of that family was in the service. I grew up in a time in great patriotic american. Everyone was involved in war, unlike now. In those days, you had a great story dominating our life even if we were not participating directly in the war, we were in the order of the war, all of us, even a nine or ten yearold, such as i was in the store. I also was reared in a literary home. I was not George Clinton whose father and mother were in harvard. On the contrary, while i had been in the book business, newspaper business all my life i had worked as a writer of english but english wasnt spoken so well by my father. He was an immigrant from italy and my mother was born in italy, born in brooklyn but she did speak with an accent. What im saying is that in my home life it was not home or apartment was aligned with books. But what i got were verbal stories. I was listening to the stories of women talking about their lives and it wasnt so boring. It was quite interesting. It was the material that created writers of fiction, great story writers or novel titles or play writers, ordinary people were transformed on the american stage or on the american page in terms of creative writing. Into stories of elevation and meaning. In journalism, which is where i would gravitate, the kind of stories that i would like to write about or not necessarily be the agenda of the city managing editor, the domination of news was the good news of important people, recognizable names and the people that you read about in newspapers are people youve heard of, it might be a general political figure or maybe a gangster or a movie star but they were public figures. I grew up thinking that private figures were interesting. I never chose to become a fiction writer. I never aspired to write a novel but i did aspire to write and i did aspire to write as a storyteller about real people with real names, real names. Thats hard sometimes for people to give you their name for publication but i also learned from my mother, primarily in the very patient with people. My mother would talk in that she would listen and then she would listen as people started to talk about their lives and my mother wasnt an aspiring writer but she was an inspiring person. She was curious in way that i inherited about these women who were different from her and they were older, richer, more experienced, more securely american. When youre the son of immigrants as i am, my mother is a child of an immigrant but similar background you want to know about the larger america and who are your spokespeople for those were established as americans because for twothree or four generations they establish their security in this country. They are known as americans were as marginal people like me, fractional americans or even if youre bored here as i was and i told you in 1932, ocean city, new jersey, i looked at things from the other point of view and that persisted from age 92885. I always look at things when im writing about people and when im writing about people, real people they are not always respected people. Theyre not always well known in some of them are notorious. Ive written about a lot of gangsters or despised people, pornographic people or dubious people those that i wrote about a couple years ago, those are people that are on the fringes of life and not with a great deal of respect paid upon what they do but i had to have a story to tell. Ive been, more than 70 years as a published writer i was being published as 1516, 14 when i was a High School Student writing for the town weekly and i write about high school. I was getting my name in the paper when i was a 15 yearold software in high school. Ocean city newspaper gay talese, High School News and every week week i wasnt good at school but i was good about writing about the school asking about the students themselves as my mother asked her customers at the dress shop. Both my mother and father, to a degree, certainly me, got from communicating straight, looking at people right on with rectification the presence of people, watching their gestures, not only what they said but what they thought many people when you first talk to them tell you what comes into their head and what you think they want you to hear but if you get them longer, get patience, get them to open up and ill tell you more about what they think or what they tell you, at first, might be altered as you get to know them better. They trust you more. So, when i cultivated is a person who is very curious, sincerely, im not a gossip, not a maligned person. I dont want to hurt people when i write. Im not a hatchet writer. In all the years, from 15 yearold schoolboy with 85 yearold veteran journalist, was published hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of articles, short, long, small books, big books, ive never had in my memory anybody call me, write me saying you did me bad, you did me wrong, you violated our confidentiality. I never did that. But i also never wrote for their approval. Ive never been a ghostwriter and in collaboration with people. I keep my distance because i always felt i was a distant person. I always felt i was an outsider looking in. Always thought that boy in the store that i was listening, watching, being an outsider, told not to talk to the customers unless youre spoken to but i had those good manners, respect the privacy of people but curiosity about people. In the small stage of a store and when i left the store, i left my hometown and i went to college in in alabama and i learned about the different type of american. After alabama i came to new york, i happen to meet a student of alabama was from mississippi, i went to tuscaloosa, in 1949 and 53 and i met this guy in french class i didnt learn much but friends but i went to french class. This guy from mississippi who befriended me and you i worked in a College Newspaper and he said gay, do you want to go into journalism when you graduate you ought to go talk to my cousin in new york. Yes, i have a cousin who works for the New York Times. He is the managing editor. Really smart he was from mississippi and the manager of the New York Times. When i graduated from 1953 the first thing i did after i spent some time with my parents in ocean city, new jersey. I took the bus to atlantic city, 43rd street to the bus station, eighth avenue and went to the New York Times building, unannounced, walked in, third floor, theres a receptionist at the desk, elderly man with a bow tie. In the background where these portraits of the sulzberger family, the owners of the New York Times. The gentleman was the receptionist mustve been in his 60s, i walked in and now i because im a son of a taylor i had my clothes made and i dress well. I didnt look like some rag pillar off 22nd street. I walked in as a 21 yearold with a suit and tie and jacket and hat, fedoras. I said good afternoon, may i help you . Im here to see mr. Turner, the managing editor. The receptionist looked at me and said do you have an appointment i said no. I dont have an appointment he said well hes a very busy man and you have no appointment. Yes, but i know his cousin. Oh you know his cousin, i graduated in alabama and his cousin said anytime i go to new york say hello to my cousin. He looked at me with bewilderment because i didnt look like a person who would potentially be a bomb thrower or threatening individual, welldressed, not presumptuous, well mannered but in a sense, walking in off the street, expecting to have the presence of being oneonone with the managing editor of the New York Times. I bewildered this man but he picked up his phone and five minutes later a younger man come everyone was dressed in those days, the mid 1950s. Good afternoon, young man, im herbert, im his executive secretary, how may i help you . I repeat that i went alabama and his cousin he is very busy and how long will you be in town this was 11 00 oclock in the morning. I said ill be in town as long as it takes me to see him. He said, look, he has a 4 00 p. M. Meeting and every 4 00 p. M. To meet with his editors and if you will, back at ten to four i will try to get you to say hello but you will not have more than four or five minutes. Is that agreed . Yes, sir. Come back at 4 00 oclock. I wandered through and left the building wandered 42nd street, having never been there before and im a very provincial boy from new jersey. I wandered times where, i see the lights ive seen them in films and new script but ive never been there. I killed two or three hours wandering around, and a sense of wonderment, curiosity now compounded by the city of towering buildings, the city of the remarkable assortment of people of all colors and dress and style. I returned at 1004 as promised and went back up the building, to the elevator of the third floor. The same receptionist was there and saw me and soon he came out himself. Come this way, gay talese. They open the doors of perception into the vast sitting room, the sitting room of the New York Times had a whole block from 43rd street to 44 street in between those two points were dozens and dozens of rows of desks, behind the desks were typewriters and behind the typewriters were men and women reporters. In those days, youd hear the carriage and the bellringing. They were smoking all over the room. There were editors where people were green eye shades and it was like a cathedral. This vast assortment of activity and this creative newsroom that is the center of the daily newspaper in the making, miracle in the making. He says come with me and i follow him down to the aisle looking at all these reporters and we make a left and we enter a large office im a very large office. In the back of this office is a desk and on the desk sits this man in a gray pinstripe suit, slicked hair with one dark shoe on the desk and is leaning back in a big leather chair. He sees me, hes guiding me into the office, past the Conference Room and in a few minutes will be occupied by the editors for this for a pack meeting. I walk in there and he says this is mr. Gay talese and he graduated from the university of alabama this past june. Sit down tell me what would you like to do with your life. I want to be a reporter, zero, i like to be a reporter in this newspaper. Gay talese, people work a long time. After you work on many papers, metropolitan papers, the chicago tribune, philadelphia inquirer, cleveland then youll have life experience. Mr. Callas, maybe i could be an office boy or something. He looks at andre and said no, no, sorry. By the way how come you are here, did you say smart i know your cousin. Zero, you know my cousin. With my cousin . Your cousin from mississippi jimmy easton. He looked at me with a blank stare of lack of recognition of what i was talking about. At first i was bewildered, 21 yearold gay talese, looking at this major figure, looking askance, like what am i talking about. He didnt have any cousin that he knew by the name that i gave. Finally, the silence, i realize what a bad impression i am making unknowing, coming in here under the assumption that i would be greeted by some cousin southern style. On the contrary, there was now one minute and other editors were about to come in and i could see the door he said thank you, mr. Andres, take his name and if we havent office boy job sometime we can talk. Nice to see you, young man but i said goodbye and thank you for i walked out the door feeling humiliated and down the elevator, across the bus station, back to ocean city, new jersey. It was the summer of 1953 and i was going to call that cousin and say you jerk, what a stupid thing to do. I didnt. Two weeks later, in my mothers to shop, the phone rings. The New York Times is calling, i happen to be there. Gay talese you are interested in an copy boy job yes, sir. Ill be there in four hours. Come two weeks from now and then i stopped started my job is a copy boy. The most glorious time of my life. Twentyone years old, coming to the New York Times as a copy boy. What was wonderful about that time and it was probably the most important job of my life. The beginning of the job meant that in a 14 story New York Times building, as a copy boy, i would not only walk around the city room, third floor delivering messages and essentially a servant boy. There were other theirs, too. I would also carry messages from certain editors on the third floor to the eighth floor which is the sunday magazine section and the template which is the editorial where the people wrote editorials. And to the 14 ford on the 14th for the ivory tower where the sulzberger family, the owners, head offices. You go to the 14th floor and you saw a statue of the sulzbergers really owe their position to adolph fox who died in 1935 and he bought the paper before the 1900s and made the New York Times the great paper that it was and still is. All of this history that im getting up and walking down and the elevators in those days the elevator men were all africanamericans, all wore uniforms and wore white gloves. And caps. And in the elevator there were people who were talking about important literary or historical, i. E. Jobs like i did as a boy in the store. Getting everything by being close to people and seeing how they dressed, their gestures. Im getting a visual sense of the paper for people and that copy boy job that lasted for almost one year, i was called the army and then i came back. I became a reporter but to just quickly move my head, when i left the times after eightnine years as a reporter, nate in 1965, i knew what i wanted to do and i wanted to write about reporters and i wanted to write about i saw the building, 229, its move now but it used to be at 229 west 33rd was a store to me. Those people, up and down those different floors and specialty jobs or maybe an advertising salesman or maybe someone that was dealing with the trucks that carried the paper all of those specialty jobs, everyday coordinated their efforts into the making of the daily newspaper a miracle event reflecting the world as best possible from these foreign correspondents and National Correspondents and near bureau and all the stuff was put together and i was observing, i was a boy in the store watching a big picture now. Not a little to shop or tailor shop but i saw them the same way. I saw them as people and they werent facts and figures, they were people, real people with real names and aspirations and talents and specialties. I left the newspaper in 65, im going to write about these people and ill report on reporters. Ill write about editors, ill write about media. In those days, media was not even the language. I spent four years, to in 69 of the book came out and it was about the New York Times. It was about the people, facts and figures it wasnt, it was always people. Thats been the prevailing mission of my life to write about people and not to take the liberties that maybe or Norman Mailer, who i knew, probably every important writer of my lifetime because i lived in new york since 1955 fulltime. I have a wife in the Publishing Business so she knows a lot of writers and i know a lot of writers. Most of them are fiction writers. My wife had the late pat conroy and ian mcewan and a lot of distinguished people you know about. I wanted to be a journalist, a fact person. Untreated, but a storyteller. In addition to my store experience that i have late talked about at too great a life there is also some influence from the short stories that i happen to read and i didnt read much as a High School Student but i came back to the new york and everyone was reading the new yorker. I have never heard of the new yorker. People read the new yorker like they read novels. Im catching up little by little and im reading because i overheard what theyre reading. Im reading john cheever but i never heard of, i mean, john ohara, the short story writers of the new yorker. Im wondering that id like to write like that but i want to write with real names. So the short story form so i borrowed and brought journalism into that. Now, later on tom wolfe would bestow upon me and the new journalism, gay talese is one of the founders. He was very generous but i never thought all i thought i was doing was ordinary people which includes me trying to write a story form, thats it. Nothing more to say. Host you talk about your wife who has her own imprint at random house. All of the people she published at the freedom to be writers and i really wanted to pursue material at a depth that fiction writers can by not naming names. Guest i dont know why it is true but when i was finally catching up as a reader, which really begins when im 2223, working as a reporter but the best writers were always fiction writers, the good writers. I read the good writers and esquire or saturday post or collections, i lived in the village for a while when i first came to new york, i had an apartment on nick to go straight. I catch up with some of the paperworks of some of the private writers, the beat writers, but just regular writers. I wanted to do what was not so well done in the world of nonfiction which was to write well. The nonfiction writers, not many of them were good writers, they were writers of context and they might be doing a biography of Charlie Chaplin or doing a biography of president harry truman or george patton, or a biography of someone in the news and i didnt want to write about anybody in the news. When i was a reporter, i became a general reporter and i wasnt always able to choose my subject. I didnt want to write for the front page of the New York Times. I tended to do everything i could to avoid what they call serious news. The editor this is not the paris review, its a paper record, the New York Times, especially in those days. Im talking about the paper 60 years ago when i was beginning. It was a paper of record. On the front page was usually one of the prominent person said and it could be president of the United States Senate Member or Board Chairman of the board schools in new york or whoever and theyd say that in their direct quote would be i never wanted those direct quotes. I didnt want direct quotes because i didnt believe what they said is what they thought. I always thats i never used a tape recorder. I didnt want to be beholden to what people said and be caught on a little plastic machine and i have to live with it. I didnt want that. I wanted to spend time with people and get them to tell me what they really thought. When youre covering big news youre covering the senate, i cant imagine, i can imagine like anything is a premature death is been stuck as a political reporter. Its a jump off the bridge. I wanted to write about unknown people, i wanted to write about the little woman who said pigeons at the park or a woman who from ukraine cleaned offices in the Chrysler Building for at 4 00 a. M. In the morning or some doorman outside the plot plaza hotel, to be of what it was like to be a bus driver in manhattan or clean the subways in the morning, those obscure characters that people do not recognize and i wanted to be a chronicler of those who are unrecognized, untitled in my first book which was written when i was a New York Times reporter, published in 1961 and was called new york somewhere differ this journey. Its a book about nobody. Its about people in the shadows of the city and their my kind of people, my kind of person, they had a high priority in my life. Even now, the books i publish in a couple years of the same odd characters written by an 8485 yearold guy that the 2425 yearold guy was writing about when i was that age. Same kind of character. Its a world of nonfiction but its storytelling. I dont want to compete with great writers but i wanted to be as a nonfiction writer, considered serious writer, no less so than my hero or carson the color or whoever. I wanted to be a serious person of nonfiction, its hard when you work at a newspaper, especially, the paper of record. It can be done if you have the perseverance and patience. Host before we leave the world of nonfiction, we have a quote from you that nonfiction writers are the secondclass citizens, the ellis island of literature, we just cant quite get in and it pleases me off. [laughter] guest i remember saying that to katie who did this excellent interview with the paris review. Well, i dont feel any differently now. I mean, im not resentful, i mean, i am aware that we nonfiction writers do not have the status of fiction writers and i wish we could do something about it but all i can do, all any of us can do, care about nonfiction writers but wanted to be a literary form was to just do it, just do it. And just let your work stand for the best you can do and i keep presenting that i keep about my age so much but its all i can tell you is that an 85 i look back on the long career from being published at 15 and being published at 85 and theres never i dont remember anything of all the stuff i did for newspapers or magazines or other periodicals or other book publishers, i dont remember anything i did that i felt ashamed of. I am on the seams. Everything i wrote, i tried to do the best i could with writing, to say nothing of the fact to do the best i could in describing the people who are willing to trust me, allow me to talk to them. More important than talk, hang out. The art of hanging out. In order to get people to give you the time to talk to them, and more importantly, move with them, to go on errands with them, to hang around with them in their place of business i remember once i got to know a famous broadway director, not famous now but in my time, joshua logan, in the 1960s was a very big broadway known for mr. Roberts on broadway it became a movie. Also, south pacific, it was a very big play and a movie as well. He had a lot of big hit like that. One time, and 62, i wanted to write about him and he finally said okay. Im rehearsing a new play, now, so ill be at rehearsals. I said, mr. Logan, can i come watch rehearsals . I wont violate if its off the record you can come. But the rehearsals are boring. Thats okay. The next two weeks, every day, im in a broadway theater watching mr. Logan rehearsal play they called tiger, tiger, burning bright. Its not a plate you would know but in 62 it had an allblack cast which was interesting. Diana stands, al freeman junior a lot of names that broadway people when know and i watched them rehearsal and it was amazing. When you watch a broadway show in rehearsal you are seeing the Creative Process of the director, correcting, claudette oneill, was a mid black have the woman in her mid 50s and she was doing something on stage that he didnt like and they had an argument in one of the arguments was so interesting and i kept notes later on with this knowledge put it into the piece and theres a piece called tiger, tiger, burning bright or Something Like that. What im talking to you about is the importance of being there. Hanging out, showing up. Today i dont want to to abruptly change subjects but technology is taking over. I think it took over in the 60s when i was still in the newspaper and i saw more and more people using tape recorders and that means theyd walk out and shovel microphone in the face of the mayor of new york and say mr. Mayor, bob loblaw. This is not the kind of quote we want. I want to talk to you and you tell me something. I will say, you really mean that was mike maybe i should i was working with the people on their own notation. Im not falsifying anything but what im doing is probing into their psyche and trying to get them to do a better job of explaining what they are trying to explain in trying to improve to the point that i can quote and have an interesting quote rather than just some verifiable s quote of the tape recorder which is the first draft in their mind kind of stuff. I dont know what im talking about this at such length but when talking about is a lifetimes experience of trying within the realm of nonfiction, journalism, if you will, to write stories. And to write about them in a way that honest but not disrespectful. What do i mean by that . I mean theres a way in which you can write, if youre careful with your language, with the pros, you can say things that might in the wrong hands be damaging or unflattering but if you take care and use this wonderful english language, use it wisely and subtly, you can say the same thing without being blunt or crude or cool. Ill give you an example when i was doing a book on the New York Times, arthur hayes sulzberger, who was the big boss when i first joined the paper, i interviewed him later on when he had a heart attack and he was ill and his son was thinking about taking over. Arthur hayes was well known within our office through all the years i worked there was a goodlooking guy, mary to the bosses daughter but he had an eye for women. He was such a goodlooking, movie star guys. Get a movie star girlfriend. It wasnt a covert relationship. He bring her into the building and on the 14th floor he had a bedroom. It was incredible. When you think about now and people on socks are fired because of girlfriends and actual dalliances and all the stuff. In the New York Times, in my period, it was so much more blatant. No one was losing their jobs. Least of all the owner of the paper this guy was incredible. Okay. What im doing a piece, the book that i did in 69 im interviewing him and he at that time he was retired more or less and he was living with his wife in a big apartment overlooking the museum and 82nd avenue. Im talking to him he was sick and in a chair and im trying to interview him and a goodlooking nurse comes in goodlooking nurse, gorgeous and she had a glass of water any pill. Mr. Sulzberger, are you ready . She put the pill in his mouth and gave him the water. She turns this beautiful body around and she goes down the hall. Im watching him watch her. All the way this guy is looking at this beautiful woman she had. In that description i didnt say this but mr. Sulzberger had an eye for an ankle. An eye for an angle, that tells you everything. Its gotten salty, everyone knew this guy was a guy that appreciated women more than just his wife and an eye for an angle. Im not saying thats a great poetic phrase that its the underwriting, its a subtle understatement, im an underwriter, theres no reason to make people seem unattractive unattractive. If you can Say Something that gives you, the reader, what you want to say whats relevant and true. Maybe not entirely flattering but at least its not insulting. With logan, hes a homosexual, but he had a wife. Im back to the director now. One time he had a fight with Claudia Mcneil, this black actress who was powerful shes like oprah winfrey. Mr. Logan was a pistachio refined southerner but he had a wife and adopted a son. People were gay but they were married and its okay. At one time he said, you know, claudia, she was on the stage and he says oh, claudia, you like the queen up there. She turns around, youre the queen. He looked at her, zero, claudia. What a quote that is, i thought. I came to write the piece i wrote that. I called him up after i finish the piece after i delivered in mr. Logan i told you that something that bothered me i would let you know and i know that Claudia Mcneil said what she said because we all heard it, not only me but other people in the theater, other actors, yes, i know. Can you change it . Can you change your the queen . I said, well, whats the suggestion . How about mistress . Youre the mistress . I thought, okay. I thought, now, wait a minute but why should i it doesnt affect the piece. It was a rich, rich peace and it wasnt just one scene. It was a lot of things. I didnt so change what i was doing, a profile of a man in a tent situation trying to direct a plate that would not be a hit, incidentally. But this confrontation which he had with many actresses that many do have this all the time. It was in the piece that i think was in esquire, when he died, and an anthology of my work, youll find this piece about joshua logan, the queen, youre the queen, i put in after he died during his lifetime i just changed that and now maybe one could argue that wasnt a very good change and a reduced sometimes you make a writer the writer has the right to write. I have the right to change. I wont have logan change for me im not writing for the approval of anybody, youre not an honest journalist to do that, as you know. But im also not a cruel and vindictive im sensitive to other people. They gave me an opportunity to invade their privacy and to tolerate my presence, to allow me into the inner world as a director was rehearsing a play for broadway and the allows a writer like me, reporter like me to sit in an empty theater, day after day after day while he rehearses a cast of maybe 25 people with all the lighting im having the right to be pretty to that most private self of a director. I feel i owe him or her, i owe them a kind of respect. I owe them respect. I do that. Host where did the name gay come from . Guest my italian father had a father named. [inaudible] we are from the southern part of italy, the fourpart, the peninsula. My father was the only immigrant he left in 1920 and became a citizen of the United States in 1928. He settled in ocean city, new jersey, with a little tailor shop. He married my mother in 1929 and he attended a wedding in brooklyn of a cousin of his named nick and nick married a girl who was my mothers sister. He would have another son nick and my cousin, my age, did goodfellows and casino and other things with mr. Scorsese and married to that wellknown and very witty while nora efron for 20 plus years. My father, anyway, met my mother at this wedding of the elder nick. But in world war ii it made a profound difference on a train difference on me. My fathers younger brothers who didnt integrate were in the fascist army. As a boy going to the movies, even have television in those days, you got the news from going to the movies, the march of time, those cartoon things for children. I went to the movies of some of my fellow students in grade school and Later High School and i see the italians captured and stuck in trucks and driven off to prison camps and two of my fathers brothers had this happen to them. They were captured by the bridges and sent to concentration camps, sorry, a prison camp. I saw the war as a nine yearoldten yearold in 194243 from different points of view. As a journalist i see things from different points of view. As im speaking to now, its 2017, were approaching the summer and i have been for the last year most americans who keep up with the news, reading my New York Times, my only job is the New York Times. Im reading the New York Times and reading about the Washington Post and reading about the Television News whether its cnn or ws nbc or fox or whatever and it seems like russia has become the enemy. Im thinking, i mean, Jared Kushner was with the russian ambassador. This guys with the russians, this guy. Zero no. Wait a minute. What is going on here . Why are the russian people or the russian nation the enemy . They are the enemy, well. I go on television and spending time with the enemy. Im wondering, as a journalist, when did it become generally accepted that russia is the enemy. Journalists are not asking the question. Theyre going ahead with prevailing and political point of view in the post decline of hillary clinton, the loss of that election. And all the reasons that are attributed to the russians. It may be the russians and maybe when im older, hopefully, if im not dead by then, well find out that the russians fix the election that the russians penetrated the ballot boxes i dont know how thats possible but every day when i watch the news or watch these spies or interview, the white house and the question now, what am i talking to you about talking about looking at Current Events from another point of view and i dont know whether it was James Baldwin quoting henry james or what but some quote i remember was the americans, American People generally have a difficult time recognizing from other peoples point of view, other nations point of view their own reality. Something that singular american im not sure that prevalent but im not sure its not. What i can tell you, as a writer, as a reporter, i would see things through different points of view because i came out of that awareness. It might be true that a palestinian reporter in new york, if there is, i dont know if there is one but maybe some muslim writers maybe, muslim religion or origin might give you baldwin, theres never been a better writer than James Baldwin. I knew him personally, lucky to know him in the 60s, been to his house many times. This very room you are in now is better dinner guests. At one time, i saw him at a with tom wicker, Washington Bureau chief he led led the New York Times when kennedy was killed. Great reporter. I knew tom wicker and i met him through david, my old friend, his wife and they had dinner and im bought over jimmy baldwin. Wicker was from the south, North Carolina and jimmy baldwin, this is like 64 because of before selma and baldwin and wicker got into an argument. White southerners against the black poet, black radical brilliant and also outrageous baldwin. He had a strong point of view and boy, he let you know what his point of view was. It wasnt sitting well with the New York Times columnist bureau chief. I said to him, fine, baldwin starts screaming at wicker and wicker starts to meet at baldwin. And there within 4 feet of where were sitting at the dining room table. The wife said you cant talk to tom that way. You cant to and shes crying and she left the table and went over there. Near that window and she put her head into the curtains and she screaming and tom said all the stuff. Im hearing, jesus, this is interesting. We have the white south, liberal white south people like tom wicker or my old friend term turner calhoun or Willie Morris was a wonderful editor of harpers magazine, came from mississippi, tom wolfe, William Styron, they were from the south styron was a liberal southerner and Willie Morris was in tom wicker was but sometimes they confront a very outspoken black voice and theres the problem of communication or understanding. I dont know im getting into this but this is what i remember and also, how different points of view you kind of see things from different points of view. If youre open to it. If you are not open to it, journalists are not now open to it. Why is russian people are great people, great culture, great writers, great singers, great artists, great history. They did great battles in world war ii against the nazis but now in my lifetime from the end of world war ii, stalingrad, i remember all the stuff, of course as a boy, reading about it. But now, germany is not the enemy anymore. Ms. Merkel germany, the nazis were with my brothers who were in mussolinis army but now the germanies are wonderful people and the japanese are tolerant. When i was a kid and i go to the post office and my father would want me to deliver it in italy and i go to the post office in this little town and thered be a poster of hitler and mussolini and uncle sam wants you to draft and buy bonds and now the germans are wonderful people, japanese are okay people, italians are okay people, russians are not okay people. [laughter] this is not a political show. Not sure i would talk about this. Host the original question that we started with was where did the name, gay, come from . You started to tell the story speak. Speak. Guest i should certainly listen better. My grandfather was guy and he was not an immigrant but a migratory worker. He was a stonemason, came from italy on a vote with other laborers. He made seven trips from italy settling in the heart of philadelphia outside of a place called ambler. There was a lot of stone work to be done there and he would do six months or so as a laborer and go back to italy, he had he died. He was only 40 years old in 1914. There was a lot of asbestos and network. My mother, when i was born in 1932, and my father, italians usually name a male child after eight and parent. I would automatically be guy but my mother wouldnt have it. She was an american, aspiring american. She wasnt going to be some spaghetti commercial american. She was a refined, welldressed, manager shot, she looked the part. She wasnt going to have, in world war ii, with two of her husbands brothers in the italian army, she wasnt going to have some kid called gay. We were americans. Italian was never spoken in our house. I cant speak i never learned to words of italian my whole life. It was never spoken. We were american. We were american, damn right we were. Particularly whether your country is the enemy in a situation like it was in world war ii. My mother settled for gay. My father didnt fight the issue because, he too, was a little bit defensive, i think, i dont think, i know he was defensive wanting to be american. Join the rotary club, the only italian in the rotary club. He put American Flag in front of the store every day. He wasnt the only one, the shopkeepers, the main street of our town all that. They took the flag an American Flag in one of his brothers were saluting the flag of miscellanies italy so the kid observing future reporter started seeing the war in different ways. So that is why im not guy. Otherwise, i might have been. Host as an outsider, catholic from immigrant family, ocean city, new jersey, at what point, gay talese, did you feel like a new york or any friend of tom wolfe and philip roth and david and the New York Times . Guest never. I felt, and often feel, how wonderful i could know these people. In fact, styron lived in the house for two years and i dont know how well you knew William Styron and i dont know your audience today, over 50 years of age wouldve heard of styron. Some of his work became movies like sophies choice, if you remember that movie, maybe they read about confessions of nat turner, it was controversial but, anyway, before i bought this house for filling this interview i rented parts of it and i had a couple apartments here that i couldnt afford but i held on to some apartments and i had a lease for more than i can afford so i put styron, who was a random house author and my wife worked at random house, shes been in publishing for 60 years and was a younger editor at 6263. Random house published styron. So, and said is he looking for a place to stay smart we have a third floor and we are not using it. For two years he and sometimes his wife, rose, would come in here. They had a key and sometimes you come alone in right and he was then writing confessions of nat turner. I know it because he at night, he would come down, he bring his yellow line had and had beautiful handwriting. Sometimes, even i can understand my handwriting but some people have i remember the nuns i knew had a beautiful handwriting. Styron had been in writing. Hed come down at night and read what hed written that day about the confessions of matt turner. I was mesmerized by him in his talents, his handwriting. And the fact that in this little house where wicker would be fighting with jimmy baldwin, another side of there would be writing about the confessions of nat turner getting back to the slave revolution where this black guy turned on the little white woman who taught him to read. I dont know if your member that but also i have a sense of self that isolated from my main persona. I must just say that im always two people. My own definition of what two people is. Im having my conversation on having a dialogue with you but also what is above your head. Also where we are. Im aware that there is a camera man here and outside a taxi driver. I have a sense of the art here but theres a lot going on. I am also not so unaware of th that. Not always only a reporter but a reporter on the reporter. Im not so surprisingly to writing about my personal life now but ive always wanted to write about my personal life because it is so daring for a journalist. Even embarrassing situations recently about a year ago i had a book called the lawyers motel. Im up there with one in colorado, this lawyer i dont want to go into great detail, but this guy that i knew wrote me to tell me what he was doing at the motel. They were up there in the roof of the attic and beginning in 1965 and 1980 he wrote me a letter of what he was doing. What he wrote in the latte letts true but he wouldnt let me write about him. For 30 years they send me a record of what they saw but im not going to use it unless i get his name. In 2014 he writes now i can give you my name because the statute of limitations im not going to be prosecuted from any privacy. So i wrote this book. I think reporters are warriors and the book the king and the power they see the imperfections of people and places. Most see the imperfection of people and places. That is true in 2017 to see the imperfections. Not positive its always been negative, people not looking good. Most news scrutinizes cometh criticizes and if ultimately not destroy it certainly does harm the wellbeing and livelihood of the people that are in the news. I dont want to be that kind of journalist, and im not that kind of journalist but also i am the kind of journalist who wants to let you know that i am not isolated as an observer. When i did this book the king of the power, thy neighbors wife that was published in 1982, i was in california. Two daughters at the time when i wrote via neighbors wife they were teenagers. I felt if i want to write a story, if i want to write about sexual immorality and obscenity, which i did, i want to write about obscene people and the priest and the nuns taught me about the sexual thoughts, dont read this book and dont have these arabic thoughts and of course the. They sometimes wind up in jail because they are declared by this justice of the court to be obscene, so ive become very involved as a reporter and im not always eager but unavoidably must declare where i get my information because i dont want to keep secrets with my readers. I cant do that, i cant hide either so if im writing about group sex have some place in california which i wrote about frequently, im not sitting at the press box typing from a distance. Im in the middle living about hanging out with these people. When they are fighting there at the same table. Some sort of exchanges many kinds of people and im in the middle of it. Im also always aware that i am a chronicle story teller, storyteller and artist interested in different kinds of view. What is it like to be a student. The. They tell you this lady is my people or is he. Maybe, i dont know. But its that kind of confusion and duplicity you see things like prismatic vision. But as a writer im able to indulge my curiosity. I am able to give voice to my thoughts. Its not a part of mainstream conditioning. Right now i am not writing about international affairs. But i certainly am reacting as a part of the audience of Television News coverage and pondering why they are the ene enemy. But its a little bit of thinking and it gives you something of what i am like today always wondering why is it true or is it true or fair russians should be the enemy. The egyptians are not led by, but saudi arabia as i speak to you now approaching the summer of 2017, just some weeks ago President Trump visited saudi arabia. Women cant even drive cars but i didnt see any women in the streets of Washington Holding placards protesting that our president isnt going to a country and giving big deals with this kingdom saudi arabia where women subjected to a kind of subservience. Protesting in washington they march against the class. They didnt pick up on saudi arabia and they didnt write anything about that. So, they write about trump coming out of an airplane and didnt hold the hanitdidnt hole were they wrote about trump pushing ahead in line for some european country snarky small minded and very onesided. But i wouldnt find a large audiences viper to the weather such a comment in front of the gathering of ten writers, they are quick to condemn other censorship or people who are speakers saying the wrong thing whereas in the berkeley or middlebury vermont the colleges in the recent past have been expressing censorship and nobody from the Group Freedom to read our protesting about how we dont see things in a different point of view. Honor thy father unto the son. A lot of biblical references. I was a product of a post world war ii rightwing catholic education. Even though im from the city of ministers in the late 18 hundreds, the church in those days was poor. People that are not very old dont know that she was vulnerable as a political guy that catholics are poor and our minds were defined by good and evil and there is a distinct rule and the catholic teaching was very cleansing of any. But i grew up with that and have this idea of the bible in a biblical mentality they govern a private thought. He wrote and told me, i spent some time with him and he was in one that i spoke to the go spend some time in ireland and he told me once he drew a horse as a boy in school he was drawing a horse and he put a penis on the horse and a nun beat him up with a ruler and he said i only draw what i saw. I think sometimes you find reflections of herself in the most amazing people in here he was talking to me after the International Movie star. Are you still a practicing catholic . Never was a practicing catholic. Once i told you when i got out of high school i couldnt get into a college, but my father the taylor had a doctor in our town from alabama so i went to alabama and i left catholicism completely. When they married after a i got ougotout of the army in 1956. The she would go around if kerry a whistle but when she carried me, she dwindled into the religious control of our life and body diminished. Those days in the 1950s most of what you did was premarital sex is sinful its not that we have cards from the cardinal who was breaking our door down but still the rules of the church, it was all sinful so they made us into criminals. I remember we had two daughters and neither of the two daughters were baptized. Does that mean they were cursed . May be so but they were not baptized. We just exercise a restraint and tolerance, honor and obedience does not the rules of the Church Although it may have been more flexible because both francis certainly had much more than some of the previous. How long have you been working on a book about your personal life . I have been thinking for a long time about how far a nonfiction writer can go in revealing privacy and using real names. I dont want to write fiction, because much more challenging is nonfiction if you write about privacy, it is hard to do. Writing about sexuality is a hard thing to do. You will get a lot of public reaction to the. Even before that i could see kind of account from my High School Days i failed i file t and my life as a soldier and first printer of an apartment in 1955 minute meeting after i got out of the army in a meeting with this person her father was a lawyer and went to Columbia Law School where we had lunch and dinner where we first argu argued, and i have records of this stuff. When we got married in 59, ran away to rome, got married outside of the church. The great writer, friend of ours got married and fixed things up because he was connected socially and wellknown as a bestselling writer. And i kept records of my marriage. And what i was doing when i received a letter or we had an argument she might leave a note on my bedside table. Im going to be going to bed alone tonight. Dont wake me up i just feel we have a couple days of not talking. I would take that note and write the background and staple it. In 1977 i have all of 1977, the good and the bad times. All of that they have a large postage stamp and i keep records and files and every day of every year, every year of every decade from 1947 to 2017 i have a record. Is it obsession, it could be all of the above. What it is is a sense of being in observer of your self meaning as i tried to explain earlier to you a sense of being different and who i appear to be to be somewhat a part having an extra pair of eyes and observatory tower that sees me as a filmmaker making a film. But i have in my hand a kind of camera that sees a visual sense of the. Through this almost 60 years of marriage i have a written record of the ups and downs. Its the ongoing persevering good time bad time routine of the persevering marriage in six decades. One thing as a reporter as i read what was written what she writes on october 11 of 1981 is and what she believes on october the 18th 1981 there is a change. If you are going to be beholden for the written word and believe that is the final word, you are wrong which is not a story that we are doing but when they go back and read the life of general grant or lincoln or margaret atwood, what was written is the final word or by Queen Elizabeth ii doesnt mean that it is the final word. It means that is what people put on paper some things in the ink. But when you have the material i do that is worthy if youre writing about the games that we are writing about marriage that goes for decades and i hate to use the word challenges but survived the uncertainty in the day by day and week by week wife of two people who chose not to get a divorce not that we havent discussed it on numerous occasions but have chosen for whatever reason smart for not so smart its marked as a punishment or maybe even laziness. I dont know what it means that i abut iam trying to find out, e a history of two people in one house and one city from the period of 1957 to 2017, everything i told you today, all of that i know where i was 20 years ago, 30 years ago in 40 years ago. It is unmitigated curiosity, that fly on the wall looking upon beginning the odyssey on the bus to walking the New York Times in 1953. Through a chronicler of larger subjects that became where he is now an older statesman in the world of journalism with certain feelings towards how it has become so singularly slanted. But it is a story that only i could tell because i am dealing with the source, not unnamed sources. At least it is one valid source. My wife would write the same book if she would do it with very different points of view. Host will publicly edited and published . I dont think so. No, no. I do have a little bit of help. A look unemployment arrangemen arrangements. I have all of the letters he had access to the photographs and a statement as a result of the tape interviews with the woman. I know that whatever she said on tape i probably have a version of that in her own handwriting because theres been a lot of handwriting. Its everything on email and fortunately im not affected by email. It is primarily 25 to 35yearsold that means they dont have a clue who i am or full understanding of the writers of my generation as you mentioned a lot of them when you mentioned tom wolfe and William Styron. I do know this though. When we started working magazines in those days we both wrote for esquire and it was a very important magazine. The great new yorker i still revere as the 1960s under an editor that was not thinking much beyond his little office, he was very insular. But the editors that none of your cspan people have ever heard of a. They hired tom wolfe and Norman Mailer and william f. Buckley junior to cover the politics or social events and the magazine through the 60s and into the 70s made writers famous. They were writing about the steps of the pentagon and writing about gary gilmore or the Nonfiction Book on the canvas in cold blood. A wonderful novelist as well on and on. I dont see anybody who because of the arch of the magazine article. The. I dont see in journalism today any of the reporters. I know there was a flash in the 1970s that started a whole spirit of Investigative Journalism as rivals primarily moving through the most damage today. But who are the writers of daily journalism. It is a diminishing and i see the bylines that i sometimes see the story with no names at the top and what there is this collective journalism in the area of technology. David halberstam was a great war reporter. I dont think that there had been a war that would expose the Defense Department rumsfeld would have been vilified back in the 60s. There is no great correspondence we have so many wars. I dont want to sound insulting but im talking about whats happened in journalism to no fault necessarily of the journalists, that the fault of 9 11 in a way to destroy his journalism and freethinking because after 9 11, the shock of our lack of security and that we have bombing in our own country, world war ii in downtown in manhattan, are you kidding. After that, the nations security minded people in government and in the media became so influenced by not using anything against national interest. It became embedded. They were going off to the war and i saw the New York Times on the 92nd street y. On the stage with arthur and i said as a graduate of your institution i am embarrassed you would have reporters in baghdad. We dont have them anymore because they cant exist it is rooted by saying weapons of mass destruction. Going with it we are still in that stupid war and its so sad we cant get out of iraq. The weapons of mass destruction story should never have gone unchallenged but it went unchallenged. They helped to ferment that story as the a4 mentioned. When you ask me these questions, i would like to be responsive and also express admiration and my lack of capacity to do that will bring disappointment. But i simply do not recognize today the prideful feelings of journalism that i had when i was younger. Maybe i am just too old to be interviewed about this subject. I have a memory of glory. I remember i knew and admired and he went in 1966 he doesnt have credentials. He just got in there and wrote about the American Bombing of the hospital industry and private dwellings within the state department and the government was denying it and as he worked his way in and they called him a communist because hed previously been a war correspondent in moscow. Hes a great figure in my mind and in the mind of old journalists like me i look around and maybe its just lost my capacity to see what is there but i feel saddened by the fact that the courage and the way we are fighting the government i dont care if it is obama or bush or trump or two but is worrying about first lady doesnt have her handle the president coming out of a plane or he pushed a diplomat out of line in a visit any Foreign Ministers meeting, that is small stuff. Two final questions how differing so much into thy neighbors wife affect you and change your life . It almost destroyed my marriage and i also lost what little reputation i had as a serious writer of nonfiction because before they wrote via neighbors wife which was published in 1982 i had done a book on the New York Times that was well received and when the mafia that was well received and i got good reviews but owned by neighbors wifi got nothing but bad reviews but also my personal life was reviewed negatively and i became vilified and regarded as a very unserious person and by the fact i need to being a serious journalist suggested i went to some orgies in california and rebelling and eight revolt and disgusting world in great length in the book. My daughters were both teenagers and their parents would talk. The students of their parents would talk about me. So i was disgusted. While my wife did not leave me, she was upset by the publicity she was getting and she got great publicity because she was an editor. She got a lot of publicity about who was the wife. Shes a wonderful editor in a distinguished career. Her husband was just a disgusting perverted person. At the time i was an active Vice President up for president and there was such an outcry in the feminist element. It was a freedom of expression. They didnt want me around so i redesigned. That was a bad time for me. Before that i had good times. So much was written in 66 but i did not imagine that in 2017 i would be talking to you about an article in 66 because when i wrote some not sure i didnt think it was anything better or worse. I told you as a boy in the store i could talk to ordinary people and i thought ordinary people have stories to tell so all those ordinary people around him, they were my sources and im comfortable with those people. Maybe a barber that he knew. They all have stories to tell and they were told in a way they told the stories i saw as singular vignettes and these were satellite stories all around. So i wrote from that point of view but i see my first book written before thanks s frankston notch road. Frank sent off. They could be my kind of people, that i see not entirely as one way to. I see them both without judgment but a kind of acceptance. Im not a priest that taught me that things are evil or good. I am not a radical person or someone that is going to blow the building up. I am not a man of the left or the right. I am not anything. I go to sometimes not happily. Bernie sanders was my guy. So why not effective, but im active. If i wanted to write which i eventually did. It wasnt easy and he wouldnt even talk to me. Then i wrote the book, but they were all the same. When i die which might be next week, in the third paragraph my whole life will be defined by what took six weeks. I worked for six weeks somewhere in 1966. I didnt know that it would be defining my life. I wish it were that if it were not that it might be nothing so i guess i should be happy with what i have. Gay talese, thank you for your time. One thing that is clear is that this utterly boring to the aspects of your behavior. Your brain tells your spine and your muscles to do something. What is incredibly complicated misunderstanding the meaning of the behavior because in the one setting, firing a gun is some appalling act in and of another and it is a selfsacrifice and putting your hand on top of someone elses is deeply compassionate and in another it is a deep betrayal. The challenge for us is to understand the biology of the context of our behaviors and that is really challenging. You are never going to understand what is going on if you get it into your head you tt you will be able to explain everything that this is the part of the brain or the gene or the hormone or the childhood experience or the evolutionary mechanism that explains everything because it doesnt work that way. Instead any behavior that occurs is the outcome that occurred a second before and an hour befo before. To give you a sense of this, you are in a situation there is a crisis, there is rioting going on and you cant be quite sure what their expression is. Maybe they are angry or frightening. Theyve got something in your hand that seems like a handgun and you are standing there and they come running at you and you shoot. Then it turns out what they had was a cell phone instead. And the bus we ask a biological question of why did that behavior occur and what is the Central Point is that is a whole hierarchy of questions what went on one second before that affected your brain behavior. The part of your brain that is at the top of the list of usual suspects is called the amygdala. If you stimulate the amygdala in Experimental Lab you get an outburst of aggression. Humans that have rare types of seizures that start, rare types of tumors, uncontrollable violence on if you damage the amygdala and that you hurt the ability for an organism to be aggressive. So the amygdala is about violence. Except if you sit down your typical biologist and ask what it is about as i and the first word that will come out of their mouth because what it is about is fear. Fear and anxiety and learning to be afraid. In other words we learned something very interesting which is you cannot understand the first thing about biology of science without understanding the biology of fear. It would be more between lions and lambs. What makes sense is the part of the brain that talks to and which regions it talks to. One that is incredibly interesting is called the insular cortex that is in fact incredibly boring if you are a lab rat or any other animal on earth because it does something very straightforward. You bite into a piece of fruit and it is spoiled him rotten and rancid and all that and what happens is as a result, your insular cortex activates and it triggers reflexes. Your stomach, you gag and spit it out and have a gag reflex. They are convinced to bite into this food was rancid and disgusting. All we have to do is think about eating something disgusting and the insular cortex activates but then something more subtle. Have them tell you about a time they did something miserable and rotten or tell them about some other occurrence of something visceral and rotten to somebody else into the insular cortex will activate. Every other mammal on earth is in disgust but with us it also has a moral disgust and what that tells you is why it is this sufficiently and morally appalling we feel it leaves a bad taste in our mouth. We feel nauseous and because our brain invented the symbolic thing in the standards of some 50,000 years ago and didnt affect a new part of the brain of the time and instead it was a Committee Meeting and they said okay, moral disgust, there is the insular discussed its in their portfolio now and it has trouble telling the difference and no surprise the main part of the cortex that talks to is the amygdala because once it is defined as being disgusting it is menacing and something you need to go against. In lots of ways it is cool but ithatit does this because suppoe that you see some that need to be cured and some of the time that could take enormous selfsacrifice it could take the ultimate sacrifice in some cases and if the moral outrage and abstraction it would be hard to pick up a head of steam to act against it with your stomach churning that is where the force comes to to make the moral imperative. Thats great but then there is a downside because as the insular cortex that isnt very good at remembering it is only a metaphor that you were feeling disgusted. Suddenly you have the whole problem of the world as just a normal loving lifestyle is a moving target in time and space and it is being disgusted by something that is a pretty good litmus test for deciding between right and wrong. That could get you into trouble and probably every audio blog in history as having to the feeling for how the insular cortex works which is if you can get to the point you talk about them living in the next valley and who think differentldifferently than you y differently and love differently, if you can get them to the point that if you invoke them in the insular cortex activates theres somethin therg just to disgusting about them, you are 90 pulling off your genocide and achieve every genocidal movement taking them and turning them into the infestations and malignancies and whatever they currently encounter any more. You can watch this and other programs on booktv. Org. I really appreciate all of you coming out today it