Origins of A Writer
His entry into writing was entirely happenstance and the unintended consequence of the then high school sophomore's attempt to gain more playing time on the baseball team. The assistant coach had the duty of calling in the chronicle of each game to the local newspaper and when he complained he was too busy to take care of it, the head coach turned to Talese to take over the duties. As he recalls in Origins,
"On the mistaken assumption that relieving the athletic department of its press duties would gain me the gratitude of the coach and get me more playing time, I took the job and even embellished it by using my typing skills to compose my own account of the games rather than merely relaying the information to the newspapers by telephone."
Talese was soon (after only seven sports articles) given the job of covering not only the goings-on at the school, but also given his own column for the weekly Ocean City Sentinel-Ledger. By the time he left for college in September 1949, Talese had written some 311 stories and columns for the Sentinel-Ledger.
Talese credits his mother as the role model he followed in developing the interviewing techniques that would serve him so well later in life interviewing such varied subjects as mafia members and middle-class Americans on their sexual habits. He relates in A Writer's Life:
"I learned ... to listen with patience and care, and never to interrupt even when people were having great difficulty in explaining themselves, for during such halting and imprecise moments ... people are very revealing—what they hesitate to talk about can tell much about them. Their pauses, their evasions, their sudden shifts in subject matter are likely indicators of what embarrasses them, or irritates them, or what they regard as too private or imprudent to be disclosed to another person at that particular time. However, I have also overheard many people discussing candidly with my mother what they had earlier avoided—a reaction that I think had less to do with her inquiring nature or sensitively posed questions than with their gradual acceptance of her as a trustworthy individual in whom they could confide."
Read more about this topic: Gay Talese
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“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
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“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
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