As soon as the maid opens the door and he hears that the guests have arrived, from the second floor of his home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, he exclaims: “You have arrived early”!
Let no one think that Gay Talese, 92, is caught offside. The house is in perfect magazine condition, the books organized on the shelves, not a speck of dust, the carpets shiny and the brown leather sofa shines as if it were just bought this afternoon.
The host looks splendid in his three-piece suit, something that, along with his literary art, has also made him illustrious. He doesn’t dress like that for the occasion. He does it daily, even to be at his home and needless to say when he leaves his home even if it is only to go to the next corner, “now with a cane,” he warns.
His phrase was one of admiration. He is a devotee of punctuality, as he explains in Bartleby and I (Alfaguara), a kind of memoir or journalism manual (the real kind) that he published in English last September and now appears in the Spanish translation.
He says that he reads a lot, that he watches sports and movies on TV. You have just enjoyed The Good Patron, the film by Fernando León de Aranoa. “I love this actor, Javier Bardem, he is one of the best in the world.”
As a good journalist, and therefore curious, he is the one who starts by asking. “Are you still married?” Yes. “And you?” he addresses Enrique, the photojournalist colleague. Yes, but for the second time. “My God! That’s a lot of money, lawyers, alimony… It’s cheaper not to get divorced,” he laughs wryly.
He repeatedly speaks in this interview about his wife Nan, to whom he dedicates the book. “We have been married for 66 years. She is upstairs, she is 90, there are some people who take care of her.”
You keep writing.
I have published since I was 15, in my high school newspaper, under my name, and now, at 92, I will publish again in November, a compilation.
Something to take back?
People ask me, is there anything you would do differently? No. I tell myself that if I go to the grave tomorrow, I won’t regret anything. I honestly can’t remember anything I would change. I worried about finishing my stories and giving the best I could give of myself.
But he still thinks about the future.
I have to live to be 94. I am writing another book about my marriage. I keep the letters my wife and I wrote, the notes we exchanged, whether she is angry, whether she is happy, and my responses over the years. All this exists, although you can’t always believe everything you write.
How is that?
We write what we feel. In one she says that she wants a divorce and in the other that she is happy. Maybe you can’t believe everything you write. I’m not talking about ‘fake news’ and Donald Trump’s nonsense. What I’m saying is that I have letters that were written, but do they reflect the truth?
He is famous for collecting data from his interviewees.
Yes, I have notes about the people I have interviewed and also about myself. Since I was young I have kept a diary of my activities.
Why this tenacity?
I have a double personality. He was aware that he was not fully American. My father, by day, was an American citizen in his tailor shop and at night he talked to my mother about the war, he had two brothers with Mussolini. They lived a double life. I began to record what he did so I could understand who he was. I see things from a different point of view, that’s why I don’t like US foreign policy (war in Afghanistan, invasion of Iraq,…), I can’t vote for Biden and the other guy is even worse. I’m kind of a fractured person.
He turns to Bartleby, the clerk created by Herman Melville, a guy about whom nothing is known, not even his last name, who responds to orders with “I would prefer not to.” What attracted you to the character?
I identify with the nobodies because I am one of them. I have always felt like an outsider, a stranger looking through the window panes, trying to see what is inside. Journalists are voyeurs who look at other people’s lives.
How did you transfer it to the reports, to your books?
I always wanted to write about ordinary people. I thought these are the stories that needed to be explained because they had never been explained. The news focuses on the important people and I focused on those who die and do not deserve an obituary since their lives mean nothing. I wanted to give them an obituary. I talked to people who had never been interviewed before. I wanted to be his clerk. I am that Bartleby.
Leave a record of stocks that are not listed.
Exact. I wanted to give a voice to voiceless people.
For that you have to listen…
I learned from my mother in the clothing store she owned. She was kind, polite, good-mannered with clients. The people I interview are also my clients, I don’t sell them suits, but I write their story.
Does elegance open doors?
Of course. And I dress well because I’m proud to be alive. You go to a funeral and they put a jacket and tie on the dead person. Why don’t you wear a tie when you’re alive?
When this book came out in the US, a review praised him as “the old man of the new journalism.”
I consider myself lucky. I met them all, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote. But they died.
What is your secret?
Maybe it’s because I didn’t get divorced. I’ve had the same house for seventy years, I don’t have a cell phone, the same car. I don’t have anything new. I haven’t been stressed because I haven’t changed anything, except my age. And I’m lucky to have a 90-year-old wife. You have no idea how wonderful she is.
