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I Have An Ascot And Sweaters

gay talese interview

In Paris Review:

INTERVIEWER: Your piece “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” is often singled out as the classic work of New Journalism. How did that assignment come about?

TALESE: Harold Hayes, my editor at Esquire, said, I have your next piece: Sinatra. I told him I didn’t want to do it. Sinatra had been done to death. I mean, Christ, another piece on Sinatra? But Hayes is a strong person with a polite manner who got his way. So I go to the Beverly Wilshire in Los Angeles and I call Sinatra’s press agent, Jim Mahoney. He says Frank’s not feeling well. He has a cold. Mahoney is also not happy about other things. He’s unhappy about this rumor that Sinatra is friends with organized crime figures. Mahoney says, We may want you to sign an agreement saying we can see the piece first. I say, I can’t do that. He says, Then we might not have a deal. At the end of the week, I’m still in the hotel room, and Mahoney calls to ask me what I’m doing. I say, I’m waiting for you to call me. How’s Frank feeling? Well, he’s not very good. I say, He still has a cold? He says, Yes, he still has a cold. He brings up the agreement issue again, and again I say that’s a problem. He says, I understand you’ve been seeing people. Yes, I’ve been seeing people. You’ve been seeing some of Frank’s friends? I say, I don’t know if they’re Frank’s friends, but I’ve been seeing people. He asks me, How long are you going to be doing this? I don’t know, I say, and then he hangs up.

That night I’m sitting at a bar around ten o’clock, watching people, and sure enough I notice Frank Sinatra sitting down the corner of the bar with two blondes. Sinatra goes to play pool and I witness a scene between Sinatra and a guy named Harlan Ellison, and I write it down on a shirt board. But I don’t get it all, so I go up to Ellison and ask him if I can talk to him the next day. He gives me his phone number and address. When we speak in person I ask him not just what everyone said, but what he was thinking. I always ask people what was on their mind. Were you surprised by Sinatra? Had you met him before? Did you think he was going to hit you, or did you want to pop him? Then someone I knew had a secretary who had gone to school with Sinatra’s daughter Nancy. She told me this great story about how she went to this party at the Sinatras’ house. At the party she accidentally knocks off from the mantle an alabaster bird. And little Nancy says, Oh no, that’s my mother’s favorite. Then Frank Sinatra knocks the other one off.

I called Floyd Patterson, whom I’d written a piece about in Esquire, because I knew Sinatra was going to see him in a fight in Las Vegas. He got me tickets to the fight and I just followed Sinatra around. I was in touch with Floyd because when I finish a story, I don’t finish a story. I keep in touch with the people I write about. I did that even as a young sports writer just starting out, twenty-five years old. I keep in touch because I always think that there might be more. The stories go on.

So I was getting little things like that. I called Harold Hayes, my editor, almost every day. He asked me how it was going. I said, I’m out here getting things. Harold never asked me if I wanted to come home and I never thought of asking him if I could leave.

Comments

Re: I Have An Ascot And Sweaters

Justin: How sad. Your story reminded me of others. One of the most disappointing things in life is seeing that your intellectual heroes aren't so wonderful as human beings. I'm a huge fan of the South African novelist J.M. Coetzee. I've read 11 of his novels. But when I read one of the few interviews he has ever granted it was just awful. He was so standoff-ish and arrogant that he would have been better off not doing the interview. A much rare experience is coming across a wonderful writer who is humble, decent and thoroughly likeable in person. I can think of a few: Frank McCourt (of Angela's Ashes); Wil Haygood; Rick Bragg. I'd love to hear of others.

Re: I Have An Ascot And Sweaters

Justin: How sad. Your story reminded me of others. One of the most disappointing things in life is seeing that your intellectual heroes aren't so wonderful as human beings. I'm a huge fan of the South African novelist J.M. Coetzee. I've read 11 of his novels. But when I read one of the few interviews he has ever granted it was just awful. He was so standoff-ish and arrogant that he would have been better off not doing the interview. A much rare experience is coming across a wonderful writer who is humble, decent and thoroughly likeable in person. I can think of a few: Frank McCourt (of Angela's Ashes); Wil Haygood; Rick Bragg. I'd love to hear of others.

Re: I Have An Ascot And Sweaters

Lane DeGregory

Hank Stuever

Re: I Have An Ascot And Sweaters

Tom Junod and Gary Smith. They both came to hang out at my bachelor party and are just terrific guys. It was historic, really; they'd never been in the same room to pick each other's brains before. We all just sort of listened in awe as they talked to each other (and us) about writing, for hours, over the course of two days. My friends Wright and Seth made this happen as a gift to me, and it was the coolest thing anyone ever did in the world. I wish I had a transcript of it.

Re: I Have An Ascot And Sweaters

Tom Junod is an all timer, in every sense. He has easily been one of the most kind, genuine, and supportive colleagues I have ever had the pleasure of sharing paper with. Such a good writer, and such a good guy.

Re: I Have An Ascot And Sweaters

Bragg is kind and generous and so is Junod. I was stunned by how far out of his way Gary Smith went to help me.

Re: I Have An Ascot And Sweaters

Dreamland in Tuscaloosa with Bragg was one of the best evenings of my life. And nobody died, which was a big plus.

Re: I Have An Ascot And Sweaters

A piece of me died in the aftermath of that night in Alabama. Maybe that was good. Maybe that was bad.

Re: I Have An Ascot And Sweaters

Well, to everyone who hasn't taken body shots off strippers with Esquire writers, check out Talese's outline of the story:

http://www.theparisreview.org/images/manuscripts/talesems.jpg

Look closely, and you'll find this gem in the top right corner:

"I did not want to fly out here. But the magazine had for years wanted a cover story on Sinatra – and I was unable to talk Harold Hayes out of it. I did not fully trust – but if I failed, he would not be interested in my foolish excuse about F.S.'s cold – Fuck Hayes..."

Re: I Have An Ascot And Sweaters

I met Gay Talese when I was a student at the Mayborn in Dallas a few years ago. Like anyone in this industry, I'd been a very big fan of his for a long time--especially for those Esquire stories. When I was introduced to him, I asked (awkwardly) if he would be offended if, at some point during the weekend, I asked about how he went about some of those old stories. It was hot (Dallas, summer, three-piece suit) and he was tired, but he insisted we walk to a quieter part of the hotel and I ask anything I wanted. He told me this story (the one above), told me about tailing Joe DiMaggio, about how he wanted his magazine-story scenes to look like Shaw's fiction, and about how he searched for stories in his early days at the NYT.

When I told him I'd read his most recent book, he asked me what part he should read aloud. I told him the scene of him, John Bobbit, and a urologist in a hotel room. He laughed. And said no. (He read the story of his father looking for restaurants.)

Later in the conference, when I won an award for something I wrote, he took me aside and personally congratulated me. For a student to hear a compliment from a hero on the scale of Gay Talese...

It certainly isn't Tom Junod and Gary Smith at a bachelor party (Holy shit! What friends!), and it's certainly no judgment on what kind of human being he is, but that weekend was certainly pretty amazing cool for me. And the kindness of Gay Talese was a large part of that.

Re: I Have An Ascot And Sweaters

I'm happy to hear he was a kind man. When you say "Shaw's fiction", are you talking about Irwin Shaw? I beseech anyone out there to read "The Eighty-Yard Run", which I really believe is one of the best two or three stories about sports ever written, or the best story that sort of has to do with sports ever written. If you're not talking about Irwin Shaw, then--oops.

http://books.google.com/books?id=cCRb7IJA-14C&pg=PA1&dq=the+eighty-yard+run

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