GAY TALESE'S LOVE/HATE LIST
20 Things Gay Talese Loves and Hates
asked Gay Talese for a list of 10 things he loves and 10 things he hates.
Gay Talese is one of the most storied figures in American journalism. He is credited as a pioneer of The New Journalism movement and is the author of fourteen books including “Thy Neighbor’s Wife,” “Honor Thy Father” and “The Kingdom and The Power.”
He is a former reporter for The New York Times. His new collection of city writing, "A Town Without Time," is out now.
It is such an honor to be able to share this one with you guys. Gay is a legend.
Hope you enjoy it and have a great holiday weekend!
And here’s a photo of me meeting Gay for the first time at his talk with New York Time’s journalist Alex Vadukul last month. Thank you Alex for helping make this happen! Basta!
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THINGS GAY TALESE LOVES:
Nan, my wife of 67 years, and our daughters, Pamela and Catherine.
My two old English sports cars, which I still drive: my 1957 TR-3 white convertible, and my 1971 Triumph Stag. I bought the TR-3 when I though of myself as a rakish bachelor; I bought the Stag after I sought respectability and married Nan and our daughters had outgrown the tiny space in the back of the TR-3 that was only adequate for two cats.
I love my IBM Wheelwriter 3 typewriter, on which I do all my books and articles, and have been using for decades, ever since my fingers got too fat for the Olivetti portable I bought during the 1970s. (I hate using a computer).
I love my collection of hand-made suits (five dozen), many made by my Italian relatives who had been tailors in Paris beginning before World War I. (As a kid, I was a fashion model for my tailor father.)
I love the Yankees, which I began watching in 1944 when the team—due to wartime gas rationing that nixed the team’s spring training in Florida, and shifted it to Atlantic City, N.J., a few miles from where I was born and reared, in Ocean City. My first job as a reporter for The New York Times (1956) was in the sports department, and one of my thrills was having a drink and chatting with Joe DiMaggio at an Old Timers’ Day.
Dry Gin Martinis. I have had one before dinner (and sometimes two) even since the l960s, with no ill effects until 2024, when my balance problems forced me to walk with a cane. Fearing I’d fall on my head if I kept drinking, I sadly submitted to sobriety, and every night since I’ve felt deprived and punished for my earlier lifetime of indulgences.
Donohue’s restaurant, an Irish steak house in Manhattan’s East Sixties, became my favorite restaurant after Elaine’s (on 2Av between 88th and 89th) closed in 2011, after a 46 year run. I like Donohue’s because of predictably good food (better than Elaine’s) and charming Irish waitresses, although I still miss Elaine’s because it stayed open until 2 am and always had a card game going on at the back tables.
Ice Cream. For as long as I can remember, just as Martinis preceded dinner for me, two scoops of chocolate and vanilla Ice cream always ended it, sometimes accompanied by a piece of pie and a brandy. But sadly, once again due to my antiquity, I have foregone the brandy in accord with my current submission to sobriety.
The 6:30 ABC nightly news featuring David Muir, whom I consider the best broadcaster on TV: intelligent, articulate, fair minded, very polite and complimentary to the correspondents who report to him on the air. I also am impressed with ABC’s weather man, Lee Goldberg, the best-dressed figure on tv today.
New York City. I have loved living here since I first moved here in 1953, during these past decades renting apartments in various neighborhoods—uptown, downtown; the West Side, the East Side—and while most of the old people I knew have been replaced by younger people, and fashion and trends have come and gone, New York remains a magical, eternal, international mecca. When eavesdropping on the subway, I often hear four or five foreign languages being spoken on a single car. The greatest city in the world.
THINGS GAY TALESE HATES:
Zoom interviews.
Cell phones. I never owed one. I consider them a nuisance. If I want to talk to people, I seek them out in person.
Saddest sight in NY: couples seated across from one another at a restaurant table while both are busy conversing with somebody else on their portable phones.
Speaking of restaurants, I hate the way most men dress while dining in restaurants: no ties, often not even wearing jackets. I assume they’re emulating the rich bastard CEOs around the nation who feel no obligation to make a presentable appearance to anyone.
Word I hate: “challenging.” It embraces everything and nothing.
I hate the fact that the corner postal box in my neighborhood is broken into so often, and that the envelopes containing my checks to pay for bills are regularly stolen and rewritten by fraudsters who double or triple the sums and assign them to themselves. The only safe way to pay bills by check now is deliver my mail directly to the distant Post Office building. I resist paying bills online because I consider it another risky venture.
I hate the fact that my favorite paper, The New York Times, which is delivered every day to my door, has such an early deadline that it fails to report the scores and details of nightly sports events. If the Super Bowl was on tonight, The Times would not have the details in the print edition until two days from now. The Times used to report on the Yanks’ and Mets’ outcomes daily, but does no longer. It does a better job reporting on overseas soccer than it does the local sports scene. For this reason each day I buy The New York Post, which covers nighttime sports and does it brilliantly.
I hate the high cost of prescription drugs.
I hate the fact that homelessness continues for decades to be an unsolved problem in New York and nationwide.
Oh, I could go on and on, but I won’t—or I can’t. I hate so many other things but, due to my old age at 93 and my faulty memory, I have forgotten a lot. Maybe it is for the best. Those hateful subjects and terrible people are not worth remembering. Basta.
- Gay Talese
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- BRONTEZ PURNELL, Author of 100 Boyfriends
A legend. I worked with his daughter Catherine years ago at a fine, now-defunct music magazine. Whipsmart, a class act, NYC to the bone.
This may be my favorite listicle yet.