If Gay Talese wrote a New Wave pop song, its name would be “Tape Recorder Killed the Magazine Writer.” It may not be as catchy as the Buggles’ hit, but the same sentiment applies.
Talese started writing in a time before tape recorders, cell phones and the Internet. Instead of researching on Google, he found his facts the old-fashioned way ““ by talking to people. He calls his research method “the art of hanging out,” and the writing that he produces, all of it true stories about real people, is as descriptive and animated as fiction.
Like any good prose, it is also timeless. “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” his iconic Esquire article written in 1966, is still heralded as one of the best magazine pieces of all time. In the profile, Talese paints a picture of the famous crooner without ever speaking to him ““ a tribute to his skills as an observer and reporter.
His books, which tell the stories of mob men and bridge builders, newspaper editors and Italian immigrants, read like novels while simultaneously introducing a slice of history.
Talese believes good writing should be written to last; he doesn’t understand the infatuation with reading what he considers ephemeral interviews with celebrities.
The droll tape recorder-dependent Q&A, he says, represents everything wrong with journalism today. And while I did conduct my interview sans tape recorder (thanks to it spontaneously breaking moments before I placed the phone call), I also see no reason to rewrite a master storyteller. So for the man who detests Q&As, I offer … a Q&A. Because, as in his writing, no one says it better than Talese.
Daily Bruin: This will be your 11th appearance (at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books). What keeps you coming back to the festival?
Gay Talese: It’s the best book festival in the whole United States. And at a time when what we are to believe with technology hoisted upon us is that fewer people are reading except what they see on a screen, it’s a celebration of the printed word and a tribute to the timelessness of print on paper.
DB: Many people think print ““ at least in journalism ““ is being replaced with the Internet. What do you see for the future of journalism?
GT: I don’t think there would be an Internet if there weren’t newspapers to rip off. To survive, journalism has to provide what otherwise would not exist ““ not just a recycling or regurgitation.
DB: What kind of information is it that can’t be found elsewhere?
GT: Anything you’d see in a film. What the public wants is storytelling; writers have to go out and find stories. They have to tell the story in a way that will draw you into reading it. It has to be written in a way that has the highest qualities of prose.
DB: Are there still writers who practice the type of “literary journalism” that you helped pioneer?
GT: There’s something different about when Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, David Halberstam and I, were writing in the ’60s and ’70s. When we were writing for magazines and newspapers, in those days we had space, we were given room. We were also given an expense account. When I was doing magazine pieces on Frank Sinatra, Joe DiMaggio and Peter O’Toole, I had editors who were willing to let you leave home and travel. And that required an expense account.
DB: What changed?
GT: It was the era before the tape recorder, the era before technology took over. I never in my life use a tape recorder. I never use the Internet. I don’t have a cell phone. I don’t want to talk on the phone. I want to hang out and see people. Eventually we all left the magazine business, but the magazine business left us also. The tape recorder started it all. It turned the art of the magazine piece into a Q&A format. The tape recorder made it possible for writers to do less work. All you needed was a recorder to interview a famous person.
That was the beginning of the indoor era of writing. When I wrote “Frank Sinatra Has A Cold” I was out moving around in nightclubs, in Las Vegas, in a big studio in NBC. I was hanging out.
The tape recorder causes you to be confined to a small place. People became captive to the commentary of the person being interviewed. They became more of a recorder than a reporter. What people say is not all that interesting. What I like to do is rarely quote people but hang around with them and get a sense of what they are about. I didn’t want a word-for-word-for-word quote. Even articulate people do not speak in sentences. What the recorder did was take away the art of listening. People stopped listening and missed the nuances.
DB: But with a tape recorder, don’t you listen more carefully because you aren’t worried about remembering everything they say or writing it down?
GT: But you’re relying on the verbosity of people, not on how they move or how they interact with people. Most of what I’ve written was scene-setting ““ real scenes that are not made up or imagined; they are observed. The tape recorder is one of the enemies.
DB: As someone who has built a career on telling the stories of everyday people, what do you think about the influx of celebrity gossip sources?
GT: Well, the most famous piece I did was about Frank Sinatra, who was a big celebrity. The important thing is how you do it, not about whom you are doing it. You have to do it as a writer who’s interested in being a writer rather than a pursuer or chronicler of celebrity. You must write in a way that can be read now, and 40 years after, it can still be read. It’s too easy to pick celebrities, go in with a tape recorder, and listen as they push their latest product. A good story has to be done in a way that does not depend on topicality or newsworthiness.
DB: Can stories about ordinary people can be equally compelling as those about celebrities?
GT: Absolutely. You can write about anybody, anything ““ nothing is beyond the purview of a curious, energetic writer. You have to leave home, leave the laptop and go out. It takes more time this way, and time is money. That’s one of the problems. For people today who are 26 years old, it’s hard to make a living writing for magazines. Magazines aren’t open to the idea of writing for writing’s sake. They’re into presold celebrity subjects. It’s hard to write about what we used to write about.
DB: How can young writers overcome this difficulty?
GT: They have to care greatly about writing well. They have to have a strong sense of self and take pride in what they’re doing. I’m 76, and I feel the same way now that I did when I was 26, which is to think that what I’m doing is important. You need not an exalted sense of yourself, but you do need to have pride in what you’re doing. That’s a lot right there.