Gay and Nan Talese Presentation Introduction by Alex Kotlowitz November 10. 1997 AK: When David Abrahamson asked me to introduce Nan and Gay, I figured he did so because I've probably been as fully affected by the work of both Taleses as anybody. Let me explain. Gay Talese is one of the pioneers of what in the 1960s and early 1970s was known as the "new journalism" -- in which he applied the techniques of fiction to non-fiction writing. It's not that he made anything up. To the contrary. As I'm sure Gay will tell you himself, nothing is more important than accuracy. His stories are true. But they are written with flair, with originality, with a mind to story, to narrative. Gay, when he left The New York Times in 1965 to write for magazines, most notably Esquire, and then to write a series of books, understood the fierce power of narrative - and of the importance of character and dramatic tension - and so utilized all that in writing on real events, real people, real institutions. It's no longer called "new journalism." Today, we call it literary non-fiction, or creative non-fiction, or narrative non-fiction. Whatever the nomenclature, it's all one and the same. And Gay's work certainly informed my generation of writers; it prodded us to take risks; it made us mindful of the reader; it pushed us to think imaginatively in both our reporting and writing. Over the years, I've read and reread one particular article Gay wrote for Esquire in the mid-60s entitled "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold." The article's instructive; it's a testament not only to the power of story, but also to the place of creativity in writing and reporting non- fiction. Gay had set out to interview Sinatra, but Sinatra, who was suffering from a cold and who had been tied to the Mafia, had declined Gay's overtures. That didn't stop Gay. He went ahead anyway with the story, writing a piece about Sinatra's entourage, including the lady who follows Sinatra everywhere with one of his 60 black toupees in a little satchel. It is, in the end, a probably more intimate and revealing portrait of Sinatra than it might have been had Sinatra actually sat down with Gay. More important, if there's any testament to the importance of Gay's work, its their staying power; his books are still read today -- particularly by aspiring journalists. In fact, in the course I'm teaching on creative non-fiction, we as a matter of course at the beginning of each class, we read the beginning of some works non- fiction...it happened to be The Kingdom and The Power, Gay's book about The New York Times. Gay's work along with others like Truman Capote, David Halberstam, Tony Lukas and Tom Wolfe poked and prodded and pushed the bounds of journalism, certainly made it easier for people like myself to pursue careers writing narrative non-fiction. And so that is one way I've been affected by the Taleses. The other way is perhaps a bit more personal. Nan is my editor. She was my editor on There Are No Children Here, and my editor on my forthcoming book, The Other Side of the River. And I hope she will continue to be my editor until she tires of editing or I tire of writing, whichever comes first. The publishing business has changed much over the past twenty-five years. It has become more commercial. We see many more celebrity autobiographies -- the most recent examples of which are books by Whoopi Goldberg and Paul Reiser. It's also become big business. Huge conglomerates now run the industry. But in the midst of all this change, Nan is a calm eddy in an otherwise surging current. She is of the old school. She nurtures her writers and their books. She is a hands-on editor - as I well know- helping restructure scenes, or clarifying plot or strengthening character. I know that in my case, Nan always made my work better and what more can a writer ask of their editor? Nan still very much cares about literature and she still cares very much about writers. Nan has her own imprint at Doubleday: Nan A. Talese Books, a kind of publishing house within a publishing house. With her name on the spine, it means that book critics, booksellers and book buyers will pay more attention to the work. Her list of writers includes Pat Conroy, Margaret Atwood, Barry Unsworth, Ian McEwan and Thomas Keneally. All this may sound impressive, but what's most impressive about Nan is her faith in her writers. In my mind, and I know I've told Nan this before, it's unbending. And for that faith I am forever grateful. When There Are No Children Here was shopped around to 20 publishers, 13 of them turned it down outright. Some didn't like my voice. Some felt the story too familiar. Some didn't feel I could pull it off. Not Nan. She had faith. When I struggled with my forthcoming book, Nan suggested, then nudged me to write some of it in the first-person which I did and she had faith that I could pull it off and had my character in the book ...be the kind of thread that holds the book together. I wrote in the acknowledgments to There Are No Children Here that ...Nan is patient, critical and wise. Indeed, I can remember when There Are No Children Here was to be published, in my foolishness, suggested that we change the title of the book and in fact, if anybody ever got their hands on a catalog of Doubleday...and Nan to her credit said ŒEnough already' and we changed the name back to There Are No Children - something I'm very grateful for. So this is of course the other way I've been affected by the Taleses. I've been inspired by Gay's work and nourished by Nan's editorial guidance and by her friendship. So with that, I'm going to step aside so that we can hear from Gay and Nan, so that we can all be privy to some of their insights after over a combined half century in the world of letters. -------------------------- Gay Talese: We're so grateful for introductions of any kind but something that eloquent puts us on the spot and I know you don't want either Nan or myself to be on the spot so we're going to say a few words about ourselves but what I think we would most like to do is to draw you in today, a bit more than possibly...take because as a husband, as a writer, a roommate to Nan for 38 years, as a friend of Alex in both our intimate relationships with him, and also as newcomers to your life today, it something that I think we will both be most appreciative of is to draw something of you to us. We'd like to have an interactive with you. You might be more into book writing, you might be more into magazine writing, you might not even be into writing at all. I don't know, Nan doesn't know and Alex doesn't know though he might hear more than we will ever hear. What I'd like to do is to tell you a little bit about what I'm working on. We all know what Alex is working on, and maybe something that Nan is working on besides Alex's new work. And then you can tell us what we can say to you that would be relevant to your lives. Something about publishing perhaps if you want to ask Nan or something about the struggles between books. Somehow it's always depressing (?)...of yourself with a completed work. Alex has a completed work. When you watch television, people have just finished a book and are sitting on Larry King or Oprah and they're out there doing the tour. No one's ever written about, nor have they discussed what it's like between books. There's a period in a writer's life when you don't have a finished work, when you're not on tour. It is a very, very precious time. I can tell you because I'm in it much of the time. That is a period when you're not sure, you're in between books and you're not even sure of where you are with what you've done-- whether you're going in the right direction. This is where an...I would think, would be most ...but sometimes no one can really tell what's in your mind and sometimes you yourself do not know what's in your mind as you are struggling with a subject that t hasn't quite come to life. I want to tell you about something...I've been struggling for a year and a half on something that I am not sure where I'm going with. I'd like to share it with you. It's a diversion from the book I'd prefer to be doing. The book I'm under contract to Knopf is a follow-up to the last book, the last book being Unto the Sons. I had a difficult time going where I wanted to with that and I thought well, let me try something easy and just get some energy from this new light and easy work and let me go back to the others. So a year and a half ago, I proceeded to take upon myself a simple task, writing about a restaurant. I wanted to write about a restaurant that was not a famous restaurant but was a failed restaurant rather, a restaurant that has always had difficulty keeping the kitchen going, it's always had difficulty drawing patrons, ...supporting. A badly-run restaurant with an inferior cook and a restaurant where the reviewers never would eat. It is a story about effort, about perseverance in its own improbable way and I wanted to write about it. As I did write about it, I came to discover some interesting characters in the kitchen. The kitchen of this restaurant was all Latin-American; by that I mean no one speaks English and half of them are illegally in New York and are working in this restaurant. The waiter and waitresses in the front do speak English but they're from Poland in one case, in one case from Russia, and the other case from Bulgaria. It's an American-owned restaurant but the help in the front represents really what's happened to the Soviet system: the Soviet system collapsed, many people who were part of the satellite system...looked for work and this Russian who's only 28 years old, he was with the Soviet army four years ago, thinking he was part of the superpower and here he's not part of the superpower. He lost his job in the army, they've moved him out and he's looking for work...to New York City, get a job in the kitchen of this restaurant...he's got a job as a waiter and now he's maitre-d' of this failed...restaurant....especially when you think the failed restaurant has ...from a failed system. Communism...so it's a good ...And I was pursuing this path, of this Russian working in an American restaurant that isn't doing well. I'm doing well with this story but there's a process of looking for, as you write or as you think, as you research more, something about the restaurant business. What I'd done is looked at some of the restaurants that are successful-- I'd go to four-star restaurants, Le Cirque 2000, Jean George's, a fabulous place in Columbus Circle-- I'm trying to look at success and I'm confessing it was...and while the spirit of successful restaurants is rather nurtured by the four stars they get and they expect to ...people who never have enough of it. It is more interesting to me to see if I never come to or write about this failed restaurant when it's does better and I'm hanging out, I'm hanging out in the restaurant...and I've done this with all my work. When Alex referred to ŒFrank Sinatra' - I didn't - but I did hang out and it's really called the "art of hanging out." Someone could really do a course, a feature course, in the literary non-fiction that just hanging out -- when you're not doing anything but lingering - claiming to know people. That's what I'm doing. Now, Nan, if she had me as one of her clients, she'd be in real trouble. She would be in real trouble because you can't help that person. Maybe we want to ask Nan what it's like for her other authors who are between books. You do not have a valid paper to show and what does she do with these authors whose contracts are signed, they were supposed to deliver, they don't deliver. One of them I know who took a long time is Pat Conroy. Still...took eight or nine years to write and maybe Nan can tell us what it's like during the non-productive months or years of writing. NT: In terms of Pat Conroy, even though he is a novelist and not in the area of non-fiction. Conroy does every bit as much research as a non- fiction writer-- ...parts of his novels, most particularly in Beach Music, where he wrote of survivors, the children of survivors of the Holocaust. He had met a woman, while watching a parade, who had survived the Holocaust and he began talking to her, she began telling him her story and then he met a... I think. So it's a comprehensive Judaic...He went to Holocaust survivors' groups, to families of Holocaust survivors, he videotaped the people. So he did the same kind of research but when in actually the beginning...First of all, I think everyone thinks that ...of writers then the way is paved and you're on your way. What people don't realize is that when you have had a success...you lose the next year of your life. Because your publisher wants you to be on the road promoting your book and then the paperback publisher and if your book is published in Europe, they want you to come and be interviewed there. So, I remember after The Prince of Tides, which was the first ...success that Conroy had, I guess it was after about six months and I wrote him a letter because I wanted to have it in the letter and that is when he was beginning to be requested, ŒCan he come to Northwestern?' And he is ...what he did what makes him who he is, is a writer. And a writer only writes in an empty room alone and what began to happen to him and I must say that I ...today but in no time at all five years could go by and what you are, you cease to be -- it is a horrifying place to be for any writer because in fact you've lost the one gift that has given you what you are. And so I wrote this to Pat and said you have to put a limit - and you must... So, two years went by, he won a contract for another book. Conroy, by that time, in hard-cover had sold over 200,000... Prince of Tides and five million copies in paperback. The owner of Doubleday, for whom I work was really on my case so Pat had just lived in this role of I'm waiting and he was very comfortable writing a description then I said just ... he was under an obligation. And he did...and what an editor has to do, not...encouraging to go on and then you say... and it's depressing but it's always, you have to know...so the writers know how to respond. You just can't ...the problem was we were writing in the first person and I finally had to say, "Pat, it's still Tom Weever writing this diary and we need another voice. ...So I said maybe you're tied to that first person and he has always... That's when he wouldn't back...I am the specter of guilt so it's a constant letting your mind run out and kind of intuiting what to do...Now, in publishing they never do what they did ...and that's where Pat was. What I didn't know until he was sending me 200,300,400, 600 pages but I was perfectly clear - I remember writing in the margins -- I was ...I didn't ...what's going on ..It was a very...but he came up to talk and I was saying "Right" and there was on part where the brother of the mother in this is a priest and Pat went on this...he had been a seminarian...and I read aloud ...the clock's ticking that maybe that didn't have to be in the book and ...six months later and I said -- after ripping on me -- and I said ...This went on for a year and a half. The last five months of that year and a half, every single Monday, the president of the company would come in and say, ŒHow is the Conroy going? What's going on?' and my job is, as an editor, is to encourage a writer and to keep their...and so I wasn't...Anyway, at the end of the time, they said, ŒPat, what is the book about?' and he said, ŒIf I knew what the book was about I wouldn't have to write it.'...Well, 1800 pages ...we'll have it all, well what I had done...a third of the pages of that book, he diminished it -- I was on page 785 -- I was sitting there saying, "All right, I'll see what ..." and those in front of me - and I pulled... and I said, "Oh my God, I don't know how it lives up to the other in my work." And it's so... I think I walked around with it in my mind ...I said, "I've gone through it and what I will do is let him change it to the first 300 pages and I said, "How much do you have to go and he said, "I have about three pages to end." And I said, ...and changed them...we spent seven hours...I had the privilege of staying home and everyday...and going to my desk and working on ...and Sunday I watched ...not only did it work...it was over a period of five years...it's so important for an editor to be aligned to the writer during those times, there are other people that are going to want that writer to do other things and in writing, you never know. I mean you can't honestly say, I interrupt myself to say, ...the only person that might want it is the editor, who is waiting for it. I'm more involved in Conroy and...trying to get him to...fast -- and usually the writers have their own friends look at a book...When I had worked on The Prince of Tides, he had 15 friends read through his draft before I read it...But other writers...he's alone for a long time with that ...but there are these pressures in publishing houses for writers to get the book in time, get the book published-- ...and I have to say John Grishom is a real sport. I mean, he will deliver a book a year and it will get shorter and shorter -- the time between the time he turns in the manuscript and when the book is published but he's willing to do that. The very good thing about writing and about people who care about writing and people who care about literary non-fiction ...is that if they're good writers... GT: Maybe you'd like to hear Nan tell you about her most recent relationship with Alex and how did this book come about. Why don't you stay here and talk about it? He had this one best-seller -- how did they decide that his next book would be this book and what were some of the situations? What don't you talk about that? NT: What I remember first of all is having talked about...he's writing about these two children -- you clearly could not do the same thing again. So how did you feel? AK: Well, the ideal -- well, I worried very much about how could I ever possibly match, let along match or top There Are No Children Here and the other thing is being my first book, I went with a certain naiveté which I'll never have again, which I wish I did have. But I had really no expectations going into that and of course, now I ad all the expectations in the world and I went through a fairly rough period, of roughly three years where I was searching for another book to write. I had spend some of that time finishing up my work at The Wall Street Journal, I did some free-lancing, I spent six months with the MacArthur Foundation...looking for another subject matter to write about.. It was a very difficult time and when I finally hit upon the subject, it had been something that had been with me for a year and a half and I was very excited about it because I had seen some internal debate within Doubleday about whether they wanted to actually commit themselves to this book and Nan had faith that somehow I would be able to pull off a book of history that didn't have a revolution to it. And once I began, once I had that commitment and once I had that faith, it was a...years were easier. Though writing a book, as Gay will tell you, is never an easy...in and of itself. GT: Pat Conroy, as Nan will tell you, writes long hand and faxes and faxes and faxes chapters and she had to say, ŒWhat is this about?' and then he goes back and he finds it. Do you write the first draft all the way through or do you do chapter by chapter in finished form? AK: I write the whole draft and go back and re-work it myself and I hope that by the time I get it to Nan, it's the best I can do. GT: Do you work on computer? AK: I work on computer -- I'm off that generation of Conroy- and there might be still other people that write long-hand. Does Margaret Atwood write long-hand or by computer? NT: ...One other thing...write what you deliver but I am an editor and that's what I am but Gay has avoided doing the book that he's under contract to do and he could have two other projects that he's doing...It's very interesting- if there's a path that you're doing ...you cannot expect a writer, an experienced writer, to write something he's just not ready to write. It's something that I have discovered...it's pure nonsense. It just is not the way the creative process works. You need that time away-- GT: Any questions? Student question: How do you become an editor? NT: Well, when I began, Gay had noticed that I read a great deal and I was complaining about how ...and he knew someone at Random House and I was interviewed for a job and what they wanted was someone who was a copy editor -- who knew grammar and spelling and they gave me a test and I didn't know until a year later that in fact they give you a whole test and say, ŒExpress whatever it is not right there' and I actually got it all right except I missed a little paragraph...But I think how you really need to be an editor is: read, read, read and you love it. And you can go a publishing company and get an entry-level job but from then it's ...o being aware of the marketplace, book fairs, reading --- I think that's how you become a writer too. It's always...foot in the door and then you learn how publishing work and then you see how do you thank you could get into it. And I didn't know it but I think I simply had an awe of writing and I had a natural talent for editing -- I can't write a sentence....When writer had started something. I mean, sometimes I've suggested to writers where something slows down and I've heard this often, I thought I'd get away with it where...I don't have a sense...But often, it really depends...sometimes... GT: You mean a writer hasn't believed what he's written? NT: But there are things that you have at the beginning -- when Alex and I remember when I read that, how much I loved that book and he ...the final manuscript...Every writer is different but you know when you read books... GT: Any questions for us? AK: I have a question for both of you actually. I'm kind of curious how in the past 30 years of the publishing business, particularly with regards to non-fiction writing from both your vantages? GT: How non-fiction writing changed let's say 30 years, it's a hard question because I've always read more fiction than non-fiction, that's always been true, and that is because the writing of the fiction writers has always been more lyrical, more of what I aim to achieve in non- fiction. I think that the writers of non-fiction when I started are far less creative than they are today. I think that the non-fiction writers existed in the 1950s and 60s were writing about traditional histories but there wasn't anything....they weren't writing books about current issues in a way that was in story form. I think there are now more interesting stories and I think Alex is one of them and I am one of the old school -- telling a story through people, as a fiction writer does. I don't know if Alex remembers who influenced him and why he stayed with non-fiction -- maybe you can tell us, present company excepted, who influenced you, what you are? And his father, you know, is a novelist but his father, Bob Kotlowitz, also spent alot of time working public television as an executive. Now was your father a factor in this life? AK: Well, I think my father more than anything taught me the world of thought and as I think...gave me a real love for fiction and literature but when I think of non-fiction writers, many of them of your generation, Common Ground was seminal for me and so was Truman Capote's In Cold Blood which was written 30 years ago I guess. GT: Well, Capote was certainly a lyrical writer. I remember, many of you interested in magazine writing go back and read Truman Capote's profiles in the New Yorker on Marlon Brando. Not many people mention that. How he begins, he begins in the first person using Tokyo and Brando's Tokyo. Capote describes knocking on the door and a Japanese woman who was the housekeeper of this house that Brando was apparently renting for a period of time answers the door. Then he starts the dialogue between the Capote character and this Japanese woman who thinks the Capote character is a rather hideous person. She doesn't like him, she doesn't want to let him enter the door but she can't understand him well enough. Her dialogue in the beginning of this Brando profile is a wonderful, creative way of starting a piece and Capote, maybe few people could pull it off as Capote did-- so well so you can see that this is anything like In Cold Blood, but the creative writers, a fiction writer can shift to non-fiction and make it creative in the way it began. Alex is right - there was this whole generation of reporters -- he mentioned Halberstam and Tony Lukas , Tom Wolfe. We were about the same age working on newspapers. Three of us on the Times and Tom Wolfe on the Tribune but I think in the case of Tom Wolfe, he was probably more into fiction. I think in the case of Tony Lukas or David Halberstam, they were more interested in the political reporting done by Theodore Weiss -- I don't know if you remember this name but he wrote most particularly well about political life during the Kennedy era but he would cover presidential campaigns. Theodore Weiss making...it was very much influenced by a political reporter who worked on newspapers like David Halberstam and Teddy Weiss was also a foreign correspondent, I believe with Time magazine at one time in China. But I don't know. NT: I think it's more literary... GT: What I hate about that though is you mention categories. If you do into Barnes and Noble, or you go into Borders in a town, any town and you look at the categories, you have the fiction in one place: new fiction, old fiction, it's fiction. And then you have all the rest of it -- and they try to categorize -- current events or biology. I mean what are you? AK: African-American studies. GT: Yes, African-American studies, gay literature. I'm Gay literature, that would be fine. I would be better off because then I could have a category. NT: The Kingdom and the Power would be media and Honor Thy Father, all of your ...would be in different places. GT: But it'd be very, very helpful for us in terms of having more shelf space with non-fiction writers of literary ambition if we were in a category. You don't have to break it down to subject matter because sometimes the subject matter isn't really what we're writing about. NT: Borders has had some non-fiction writers -- it's not all that. GT: It doesn't require a Borders clerk to read the book . NT:...I'm just trying to think of just on our 100th anniversary and there were books that have really changed...publishes non-fiction...I really believe ...I felt it could change the way you look at the shelf...and it has. There are a number of paths, it broke down a whole wall...and empowered non-fiction... I think we're a much more intelligent reading public than we used to be and I still believe that books can change lives and the thing about writers is they generally know what's happening before the rest of us do. I find I get alot of proposals for books that haven't been written about...and I think with fiction and non-fiction...It's not just ...fiction it's ... GT: Yes, the research -- Nan was telling you about the research. I read two novels with in the last six months that involved great research. One of them is Philip Roth's book, American Pastoral and the other is Don DeLillo's book, Underworld. And in Don DeLillo's book the research is staggering ...take my word for it. But what's interesting is in one of the scenes, on Don DeLillo's novel about parts of a ...there is a scene between a headmaster and a student and the student is sitting there across the desk and the headmaster is just talking about how this young man didn't have a powerful observer or didn't have the curiosity to look even at his own...And then he goes into all the parts of a shoe and there are 55 parts of a shoe, all of them have names. He shows him go into this, and jumping to the Roth book, one of Roth's characters is a glove-maker, a maker of women's gloves and you read that character's life in that glove factory, you know how to make a glove, you feel you can make a glove and you know the parts of a glove - - as if it was important we know about the shoes, about the gloves. It probably isn't. But the fact that the authors in both cases did such research -- I talked to the agent of Philip Roth. Where did he learn all that? Was his grandfather a glovemaker? No, no, no. Philip Roth went over there ad did all this great research like a great reporter did. But I was very impressed with that. Copyright 1997 Gay Talese, Nan Tales and Alex Kotlowitz. All rights reserved.