Share <Embed>

Buy New

$13.00

List Price: $26.00
Save: $13.00 (50%)

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

Sold by PRIME-BOOKS and Fulfilled by Amazon.

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

This item ships to France. Want it Tuesday, Sept. 11? Order within and choose AmazonGlobal Priority Shipping at checkout. Learn more

Deliver to

Buy Used

$9.96

FREE Shipping on orders over $25.

Deliver to

Used: Good | Details

Sold by Murfbooks

Fulfilled by Amazon

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Added to

Unable to add item to List. Please try again.

Other Sellers on Amazon

Add to Cart

$6.89

Sold by: Bokonon Books

Add to Cart

$17.56
+ $35.50 shipping

Sold by: allnewbooks

Add to Cart

$22.45
& FREE Shipping on eligible orders. Details

Sold by: Amazon.com

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 2 images

A Writer's Life Hardcover – Deckle Edge, April 25, 2006

by Gay Talese (Author)

18 customer reviews

See all 13 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$15.92

—

Hardcover, Deckle Edge

"Please retry"

$13.00

$5.51

$2.58

Paperback

"Please retry"

$15.25

$6.98

$3.00

Audible Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

Audio CD

"Please retry"

$52.22

$31.96

The inner workings of a writer’s life, the interplay between experience and writing, are brilliantly recounted by a master of the art. Gay Talese now focuses on his own life—the zeal for the truth, the narrative edge, the sometimes startling precision, that won accolades for his journalism and best-sellerdom and acclaim for his revelatory books about The New York Times (The Kingdom and the Power), the Mafia (Honor Thy Father), the sex industry (Thy Neighbor’s Wife), and, focusing on his own family, the American immigrant experience (Unto the Sons).

How has Talese found his subjects? What has stimulated, blocked, or inspired his writing? Here are his amateur beginnings on his college newspaper; his professional climb at The New York Times; his desire to write on a larger canvas, which led him to magazine writing at Esquire and then to books. We see his involvement with issues of race from his student days in the Deep South to a recent interracial wedding in Selma, Alabama, where he once covered the fierce struggle for civil rights. Here are his reflections on the changing American sexual mores he has written about over the last fifty years, and a striking look at the lives—and their meaning—of Lorena and John Bobbitt. He takes us behind the scenes of his legendary profile of Frank Sinatra, his writings about Joe DiMaggio and heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson, and his interview with the head of a Mafia family.

But he is at his most poignant in talking about the ordinary men and women whose stories led to his most memorable work. In remarkable fashion, he traces the history of a single restaurant location in New York, creating an ethnic mosaic of one restaurateur after the other whose dreams were dashed while a successor’s were born. And as he delves into the life of a young female Chinese soccer player, we see his consuming interest in the world in its latest manifestation.

In these and other recollections and stories, Talese gives us a fascinating picture of both the serendipity and meticulousness involved in getting a story. He makes clear that every one of us represents a good one, if a writer has the curiosity to know it, the diligence to pursue it, and the desire to get it right.

Candid, humorous, deeply impassioned—a dazzling book about the nature of writing in one man’s life, and of writing itself.

Frequently bought together

Total price: $39.52

These items are shipped from and sold by different sellers. Show details

Buy the selected items together

This item:A Writer's Life by Gay Talese Hardcover $13.00
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Sold by PRIME-BOOKS and ships from Amazon Fulfillment.
FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details
The Gay Talese Reader: Portraits and Encounters by Gay Talese Paperback $12.93
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Sold by CE_BOOKHOUSE and ships from Amazon Fulfillment.
FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details
High Notes: Selected Writings of Gay Talese by Gay Talese Paperback $13.59
Only 2 left in stock (more on the way).
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Gay Talese

28

Paperback
$12.93
Gay Talese

17

Paperback
$13.59
Gay Talese

51

Paperback
$13.89
Gay Talese

105

Paperback
$16.13
Gay Talese

12

Paperback
$9.62
Gay Talese

24

Paperback
$14.40

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

According to Talese, "Writing is often like driving a truck at night without headlights, losing your way along the road, and spending a decade in a ditch." Reading his first substantially new publication since 1992's Unto the Sons is like being in the passenger seat of that truck while it's in motion. Talese begins with a World Cup women's match between China and the United States; the game gives him a story idea, which he then abandons for roughly 300 pages for elegant digressions on, among other things, the civil rights demonstrations in Selma, the Lorena Bobbitt controversy and a string of flopped restaurants in an Upper East Side building. Somehow, he also works in a memoir of his early life, including perfectly etched memories of the New York Times newsroom (without directly reflecting on his prominence as one of the first New Journalists). This sort of thing can drag for long stretches unless you're willing to simply follow along as Talese pursues his impulses wherever they lead him. No matter how frustrating it is as memoir, though, this is a near-perfect expression of Talese's inquisitive personality, an inquisitiveness that has led to some of the outstanding journalism of the past few decades. 150,000 first printing. (Apr. 25)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker

In a culture of success and celebrity, Gay Talese has always found his best subjects in failure and decline: Joe DiMaggio in his lonely eclipse; Joshua Logan in the midst of terrible depressions; Floyd Patterson struggling to express what it is to be knocked flat in front of a filled stadium. Talese's lapidary style and impeccable reporting standards have endured far better than the work of some of his more histrionic New Journalism contemporaries, but he has also known failures: long periods of struggle and silence, abandoned stories and books. Much of his memoir is about frustration and dead ends. When the U.S. women's soccer team defeated the Chinese in a shootout at the Rose Bowl, in 1999, Talese was interested in the young woman who had given up the deciding goal. A natural story for Talese, but he couldn't complete it. This book is a less polished construction than Talese's early profiles or "The Kingdom and the Power," but there is something distinctly moving about his decision to think through the workand the yearsthat did not quite cohere.
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

See all Editorial Reviews

Product details

Hardcover: 448 pages
Publisher: Knopf; First Edition edition (April 25, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0679410961
ISBN-13: 978-0679410966
Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 1.4 x 9.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 18 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,113,997 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3471 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Journalists
- #11964 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Authors
- #22887 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Historical > United States

Would you like to tell us about a lower price?
If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support?

Be the first video

Your name here

Customer reviews

Write a customer review

See all 18 customer reviews

Top customer reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Phil Jacobs

Book Review.

February 11, 2013

Verified Purchase

After I read "Unto The Sons, by Gay Telese, I was hooked. Telese is a gifted writer and who has a lot to say about the writing life and the dedication and perseverance a good article takes. He sometimes writes a long piece for the New Yorker Magazine which might take him a year. The Writer's Life is a great book by a skilled writer.
Phil Jacobs
Pana, Illinois

2 people found this helpful3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

Emilio J. López

Five Stars

January 20, 2017

Verified Purchase

Excellent bio of one of the greatest journalist of US!

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

Don L.

I couldn't finish it.

November 26, 2007

Verified Purchase

I had trouble reading this book. I didn't finish it. It seems plodding and takes forever to get to the point. Lots of long long run-on sentences. There were entire paragraphs that were one sentence long! My attention span is not that long. I admit I'm no intellectual, maybe that's the problem. I read his Brooklyn Bridge book and enjoyed that very much.

2 people found this helpful3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

anamocampo

One of the best books I've read

February 10, 2013

Verified Purchase

One of the best writers of the last years writing his life for us, readers, to learn abput him and how every single moment in life can be crossed by history. It's a jewel for journalists and anyone interested in learning about the process of writing.

2 people found this helpful3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

arthur razor

A good read if you like Gay Talese

January 20, 2014

Verified Purchase

I would recommend this book to any one who likes the author Gay Talese or is interested is what it is like to be a reporter.

One person found this helpful2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

John Fitzpatrick

Trivia masquerading as a memoir

October 18, 2010

The title of this book gave me the idea that it was some kind of memoir or autobiography and it looked interesting. However, it quickly became apparent that Talese had decided to rummage through his old notebooks and files and inflict bits that he may not have used in his earlier books on the reader.

He bombards us with trivia about his office, the kind of paper he writes on, the computers he owns and even where he used to park his car in New York. He goes off on long verbal rambles describing people and incidents but failing to explain their significance. Reading this collection is like being buttonholed by a stranger who has no idea that he is boring you stiff and feels you are interested in anything and everything he says.

At times, he comes over as almost weird. The book starts with him watching the women's world cup soccer final in 1999 between China and the US which was settled by a penalty shoot out. The US won when a Chinese player missed her shot and Talese wanted to write a story about her. No magazine was interested but he made a number of trips to China to track her down and get her side of the story. Since she did not speak English and he could not get a proper interpreter you can't help but wonder what was going on. He devotes chapters to this baffling episode.

He also devoted years to trying to write something on the famous case of John Bobbit whose wife cut off his penis as he slept after an argument. He is obsessed about a building in New York and describes how it has developed over the last century including a case-by-case account of 10 restaurants which opened and closed over a 20-year period. Again we have reams of material going nowhere.

There actually are some interesting parts amidst this ragbag and Talese comes over as quite an agreeable character who does not try to hide his faults and failures but the book should have been slashed in half and the material presented in a more organized way.

Take my advice and give it a miss.

4 people found this helpful5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

Thomas Moody

Elegant synthesis of many broad topics...

August 4, 2010

Admittedly, a newcomer to the writings of Gay Talese, I engaged his most contemporary work to judge his great literary reputation for myself and I was not disappointed. I found that the former New York Times columnist is indeed a formidable writer, one that seamlessly and lucidly describes and observes diverse and far reaching topics while enjoying a huge talent for chronicling these observations. This work, written in 2006, encompassed a period where he had reached a literary creative block...on the hook for a new book, Talese instead decided to use the vast amount of unpublished research on varying topics that he'd accrued over time to write a book integrating these subjects all the while extolling the writer's need for motivation and challenge. A Writer's Life was the result and it puts a simple but elegant slant on the demands of a top author that has, as I've discovered, been Talese's demon for all his literary life.

The trick for any writer, and one in which he/she is ultimately measured, is his ability to take virtually any topic and write it in such a way as to be interesting and literary. I'm not sure that many authors can tackle topics such as New York City architecture, restaurants, civil rights and a horrendous crime that becomes nationally scrutinized (John and Lorena Bobbitt) and deliver them in as smooth a narrative flow as well as Talese. His writing is explanatory and well researched while having a fluidity and attention to nuance that expands these topics while making the transition from one to the next seem effortless. On top of all this, Talese, in this work, writes damn good history...his coverage, now and then, of the civil rights movement from the crucible of turmoil (Selma, Alabama), portrays this saga from a unique perspective and, in my opinion, offers a fresh look at an oft covered topic.

Judged by others to be a sub-par effort, "A Writer's Life", to me, exposes the mastering of the written word that Gay Talese has learned over time. I certainly plan to read his other acknowledged "masterpiece" works (The Kingdom and the Power, The Bridge, Thy Neighbor's Wife...etc) and some of his more famous magazine essays (Frank Sinatra, Joe DiMaggio...) but I'll wager that the literary experience will be the same...marveling at a significant writer at the top of his game.

2 people found this helpful3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway

This item: A Writer's Life

Set up a giveaway

Buy New

$13.00

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Buy Used

$9.96

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Other Sellers on Amazon

A Writer's Life Hardcover – Deckle Edge, April 25, 2006

Frequently bought together

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Sponsored products related to this item (What's this?)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From The New Yorker

Product details

Related Video Shorts (0)

Be the first video

Customer reviews

Read reviews that mention

Top customer reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Most recent customer reviews

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

What other items do customers buy after viewing this item?

Buy New $13.00

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Buy Used $9.96

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Sorry, there was a problem.

Sorry, there was a problem.

Other Sellers on Amazon

A Writer's Life Hardcover – Deckle Edge, April 25, 2006

Frequently bought together

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Sponsored products related to this item (What's this?)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From The New Yorker

Product details

Related Video Shorts (0)

Be the first video

Customer reviews

Read reviews that mention

Top customer reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Most recent customer reviews

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

What other items do customers buy after viewing this item?

Buy New

$13.00

Buy Used

$9.96