A Writer's Life

Author Gay Talese rambles through his impressions of World Cup soccer, immigrants from Italy, a doomed restaurant building in New York, and back to soccer, with detours through the Lorena Bobbitt case and spot-on criticisms of his high school English teacher. Arthur Morey takes great care in navigating Talese's wandering and complex sentence structure, making the best of endless constructions that would benefit from a liberal dose of periods. Morey treats the work with a journalistic sense of detachment, appropriate for an author who writes for the NEW YORK TIMES. His unhurried approach supports the listener's efforts to keep track of the interesting stories buried under the plethora of words. R.L.L. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

March 6, 2006
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.

March 1, 2007
Despite the title, this is not an autobiography, nor does it reveal much about writing. For the most part, "A Writer's Life" is merely an opportunity for a famous nonfiction writer to cobble together uncompleted manuscripts about such subjects as a Chinese soccer star, the John Wayne Bobbit and Lorena Bobbit case, and the changing racial climate in Selma, AL. While these topics, especially Selma, are fascinating to varying degrees, Talese's method of jumping from one to another and back again indicates his book's lack of a clear focus. The author can be quite compelling when writing about something having a more personal connection, as with the tribulations of New York restaurants. The tidbits of autobiography are also interesting, like his surprise (to him) wedding in Rome in 1959. Talese also excels when describing the moral hypocrisy at the "New York Times" in the 1950s. But too much of this book resembles a long-out-of-date collection of magazine pieces. Despite referring to one or both Bobbits as Babbit, Arthur Morey reads capably but not well enough. Not recommended.Michael Adams, CUNY Graduate Ctr.

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