About Gay Talese
Gaetano "Gay" Talese is an American writer. As a journalist for The New York Times and Esquire magazine during the 1960s, he helped to define contemporary literary journalism and is considered, along with Joan Didion, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe, one of the pioneers of New Journalism. Talese's most famous articles are about Joe DiMaggio and Frank Sinatra. Talese signed a $1.2 million contract with Doubleday in 1972 to write two books, with the first, Thy Neighbor's Wife, due in 1973. In 1979 United Artists paid Talese a record $2.5 million for the film rights. It was there that Talese would begin to employ literary devices more well known for fiction, such as establishing the "scene" with minute details and beginning articles in medias res. Talese's first piece for the magazine Esquire – a series of scenes in New York City – appeared in a special New York issue in July 1960.
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