Frank Deford
'a first-ballot hall of famer'
Roy Clark: I learned that Deford likes to work on paper of different colors. All writers struggle with imagining and constructing the big parts of the story, an architecture often hard to see in advance. To help him organize his material, Deford uses the colored paper trick. Notes and quotes for his opening scene might go on robin blue; the historical background on marigold; the conclusion on hot pink. Deford perked up when I told him that Esquire magazine had published not only the text of Gay Talese's famous story "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," but also the blueprints Talese had created to divide the story into scenes. "He saved that stuff?" Deford asked with a laugh.
