reading Gay Talese’s NYer froth on Tony Bennett I enjoyed it mostly as an echo of “the first piece of New Journalism,” and/or “the greatest magazine article of all time,” “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” out some 45 years ago.
and so I reread that too. I adore the opening scene, the atmosphere of the club with the lighter and the girls of a certain age, but also paragraphs three and four with Talese pushing his long sentence luck. that’s the picture of Sinatra I have in my head when I get a bit weepy listening to “Everything Happens to Me.”
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as a postscript, I looked up the Talese-edited anthology I used in my first undergrad nonfiction class. what a great book. I’m still keen on Mitchell’s rats, Capote’s murderers, McKelway’s FBI, Wolfe’s Vegas, McPhee on oranges, Didion on Orange Fucking County and on and on.
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