"The Silent Season of a Hero", Sportsman Talese

The Silent Season of a Hero- Gay Talese

Back to Gay Talese. Fourth book reviewed and so happy to recover the new journalist maestro (although I don't believe he would agree) in full form after the disappointing "A Writer's Life".

At least in Spain, if there's a sub-genre of journalism that really needs to be transformed is sports-writing. Here is simply pathetic, a bunch of lies and silliness, just for the sake of filling pages and pages in order to complete the length of the newspaper, sadly, the ones who get more readers (way more) than the "regular" ones. It's extremely hard for me to think on a sport journalist that I could qualify of attractive in his/her writings. Don't even get me started on interviews or press conferences: there's nothing pointless or boring enough to compare with...

Then reading "The Silent Season of a Hero" should be mandatory for any sports writer. Gay Talese has the extremely rare ability of making coaches and players interesting. He is even capable of making golf intriguing, which, to my view, is something extraordinary and before reading him, absolutely impossible. In some way, he has the talent to downsize the heroics surrounding sports and let the person behind show up. There's a story behind each one of us. You just have to be patient and be ready for when it appears. He call it "the art of hanging out". I would correct him and say: the art of writing absorbing human journalism. Whether it is the mafia, Frank Sinatra, Selma racial tensions or Joe Di Maggio, Talese is always there, putting into paper real flesh and bone emotions.

Of course, the collection, with almost 40 pieces, is uneven, but it is something that can be really forgotten considering the book is structured on a chronological order. First pieces start dating from 1948, so despite being quite far from the masterpieces you'll read afterwards, you can see a young Talese already showing his range: care for detail, for the glimpse you might miss out if you're not looking properly, and an unparalleled ability to create a bond, an empathy with the character of his piece. In particular with losers.

Defeated boxing champ Floyd Patterson, the troubled Yankees on a forgettable season, the referee Ruby Goldstein, the unknown Jose Torres or the fading myth of Muhammad Ali in the memorable "Ali in Havana". Talese can find a story anywhere. My only complaint about the book is that some of the most memorable pieces were already known, as they were included on the unmissable, absolute MUST-HAVE "Portraits and Encounters", so if you already have that book, the impact will be way lower. If not, go for sportsman's Talese as soon as you can.

SCORE: 7.5/10 (6,25 if you already have "Portraits and Encounters")

"A Writer's Life", a journalistic mess

A Writer's Life- Gay Talese

As much as I believe Gay Talese's prose is masterful and his ability to find and chronicle a story is unparalelled, I'm afraid to say that with "A Writer's Life" this amazing journalist has descended to Earth, revealing us the worst of his art, offering us a book that, contrary to "Honor Thy Father" or "Portraits and Encounters", amazingly absorbing reads, is quite mundane, even tedious to follow at times.

And that's a shame, because it could have worked. "A Writer's Life" aims to be a memoir of a veteran journalist looking back to some of his "adventures". But there’s very little of his personal life, and the book quickly evolves into something else, an unexpected account of Talese's failures, his shortcomings to find a story that his bosses would die to put in paper, or his inability to close his latest book. That could have been challenging and exciting, such a gifted writer showing us how hard it is to "wait for the click", as The National would say on personal favouite "City Middle".

But with few exceptions, this book is not capable of transmitting that doubt, weakness, lack of luck, bad timing or writer's block when facing a potentially good story. And it's because -and that's tough for me to say, as I admire Talese so much- of the author's ego and his self-indulgence. Instead Talese offers a monumental digression of 600 pages where he recapitulates and reworks pieces and bits of previous, unfinished or left behind stories, adding personal notes or wikipedia-like-facts. It's arbitrary, and despite at the end everything seems to connect, it's incoherent as a whole. As a book, it's simply weak. Again sorry to put my thoughts in words, but I believe this is just a packed compilation of material to fulfill a contract.

There are horrible passages. In particular I couldn't go on with the whole story of the restaurants, so pointless even Talese is incapable of not much more of accumulating notes for almost three decades -just a bunch of pages finished by 1999-. Others are much interesting, like the one in Selma regarding civil rights and liberties of the Afro-American people, the Lorena Bobbit trial or the one about the Chinese player Liu Ying. But this latest story is a clear example of the serious problem this book has with its structure. Talese clearly didn't think much about order his account of failed stories, so the trip to China appears quite early on the book, then vanishes for hundreds and hundreds of pages just to reappear at the very end. The effect is quite strange, to say the least.

Even masters can fail.

SCORE: 4,75/10

"Honor Thy Father", the real life of the Mafia

Honor Thy Father- Gay Talese

Last April I had my "initiation" into the prose of Gay Talese. "The Gay Talese Reader. Portraits and Encounters" was a blast for me. A magnificent collection of his articles, stunning pieces of "fiction with real names", as he refers to them, that dignify the profession of journalism, nowadays so deservedly discredited. Mesmerized for what I read, I wanted more urgently. But the topics of the two other books recently published in Spain, made my have some reservations and postpone my next reading. Early 1950s sexuality in America ("Thy Neighbor's Wife")? The Mafia? But I finally got my hands on "Honor Thy Father". Lucky me.

My prejudices were easy to resume. The Mob, on a heavyweight volume wrote too many years ago? And the Mafia, again? I'm pretty sure we will all agree if I say gangsters has been used and abused by American art/entertainment, to me being exploited to satiety, and memorable exceptions aside, creating a glamorous, mythical and unrealistic image of this "traditional" organized crime, that has little to do with the Mafia today. So what could "Honor Thy Father" offer me? In a sentence: a mind-blowing insight to a time in America, a surprisingly human story, and an absorbing and monumental, brilliantly written, work by Talese.

This is a superb job of reporting, a task so detailed (almost seven years of patient and passionate work, from 1965 to 1971 where the book was published to become an immediate success) and intense that today seems completely impossible. The amount of many little things, facts, structure, behaviours, secrets and attitudes conform an intricate puzzle that, once completed, portrays the vivid and realistic complete picture of a way of life that was approaching to its end, vanishing from a previous time of splendour, and above all, an intimate approach to a unique family: the Bonanno family.

Because "Honor Thy Father" is probably the culmination of what has been called "literary journalism". Talese achieves an unbelievable depth and richness in the real-life account of the Bonanno family, in particular from Salvatore "Bill" Bonnano, the son of Don Joseph Bonanno, who "inherits" his father's business, an inheritance that is full of the traditions of a determined ethnic group that clashes with a time and a family that is also very American and is changing alongside with its times, once he mysteriously disappears in 1964, to reappear after, causing the start of the Banana War, the Mafia open conflict that took place in New York in the late 60s.

Talese is capable not only of detailing us every side of the Mafiosi family and starting from them, the whole universe of the Mob during those years, but he also is able to get into the mind of Bill Bonanno, and make us  understand that probably he didn't want to follow the steps of his father, but that he couldn't do anything else.  It was his fate. Through his eyes we see (read) a story that goes in various directions (the war, the family roots, the trial), something that at first can be a bit confusing (the minor and only complaint I have) but that makes sense in order to provide us with the most accurate document you can imagine.  

"Honor Thy Father" is masterful book that stands out as a gangster story, from uprising to decadence, but also as a document of assimilation, social and cultural evolution, and family ties. It is so rich and deep that no matter for how long I could kept writing this review, I wouldn't do justice to it. So please, forget The Sopranos (the Bonanno family didn't like it anyway), forget all Martin Scorsese films and their imitators and read Gay Talese. And if you allow me one last apostilization, after reading Talese, if you still need a film about the Mafia, choose James Gray works. 

SCORE: 8,5/10 

"Portraits and Encounters", when journalism was art

The Gay Talese Reader. Portraits and Encounters- Gay Talese

Long long time ago, becoming a journalist was an admirable purpose. Before transforming in a corrupted and vile beast (quoting Norman Mailer, "the press is like a donkey you can feed with garbage") journalism was a noble profession, full of responsibilities and values towards society. Now that that's ancient history, regrettably, this anthology of magazine articles from Gay Talese reminds us how delightful and absorbing an article could be. This collection is his masterful lesson:

• A lesson of style. Talese writing is one of the most striking beautiful I ever read. His elegant prose never gets pedantic (sorry Tom Wolfe) and is always precise. His dialogues and ability to construct the article "scene-by-scene", like on the best short fiction, is unparalleled.
• A lesson of, in his own words, "hanging out". To be a good journalist you had to be a good listener and a good observer. Talese is simply superb, with an unerring eye for capturing the detail.
• A lesson of commitment for the story. Exhaustive research, zero ego. Wether the writing is about a city  ("New York City Is a City of Things Unnoticed"), a period in time ("Looking for Hemingway"), a celebrity (Joe DiMaggio, Frank Sinatra, Muhammad Ali, etc.) or a "common" person ("Mr. Bad News"), what matters is capturing something, a place, a human being, and the story behind the story. Take "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold", for instance, and you'll have not only a wonderful piece about one of the greatest American heroes in modern history, but also the best insight on popular culture, fame, family, gender relations, politics of the country. Take "The Loser" and behind the boxer, you will find a tremendous dissection on fear, guilt, isolation...a terrific essay on human condition.
• A lesson of passion towards a profession. He affirms "I was always proud to tell the stories as they were, without exaggerating them". With that premise, the sum of the previous factors, creativity and an enormous talent, Talese is capable of making something way more interesting and profound than the material he initially had, creating not just articles, but brilliant pieces of "fiction with real names".

An absolute must. He should be a compulsory read in every single faculty of journalism. And it should have a reserved place in every library that wants to include one of the best North-American writers.

SCORE: 9,25/10