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1999

Gay Talese

February 3, 1999

Bio

Gay Talese is one of the most emiment and successful of living American writers. Talese is the author of many books in a category of nonfiction writing that has sometimes been called "the literature of reality," sometimes "the New Journalism," sometimes "fact fiction." Among these works are Thy Neighbor's Wife (1980), Unto the Sons (1992), The Kingdom and the Power (1969), Honor Thy Father (1971), and The Overreachers (1965). The following articles about Talese and the "new journalism" are available in the Writers House living room for you to take a look at: David Eason, "The New Journalism and the Image-World," in Literary Journalism in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 1990); Ronald Weber, "Subjective Reality and Saturation Reporting," in The Literature of Fact: Literary Nonfiction in American Writing (1980). These and other articles and essays about Talese are available for reading at the Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk. For the Spring 1999 semester, Gay Talese will be the first Kelly Writers House Fellow, a project made possible by a generous grant from Paul Kelly.

Pertinent materials and links

Unto the Sons briefly described:

"An Italian Roots."--The Washington Post Book World. At long last, Gay Talese, one of America's greatest living authors, employs his prodigious storytelling gifts to tell the saga of his own family's emigration to America from Italy in the years preceding World War II. Ultimately it is the story of all immigrant families and the hope and sacrifice that took them from the familiarity of the old world into the mysteries and challenges of the new. A brief synopsis: The acclaimed author of such modern classics as Honor Thy Father and The Kingdom and the Power salutes the American dream. In the years preceding World War II, the Talese family emigrated from Italy to America--a place that tested their loyalties, love, and links with the past.