Gay Talese & Shirt Boards

Esquire Magazine's Best of 40 Years

Talese and Thomas Wolfe

The Talese Gate
The Shirt Boards

Five minutes early so I walk past the gate to his four story townhouse and stand on a corner. A cab pulls up for a fare but I shake my head. I pull out my phone and pretend to read an email. I feel like I'm staring at my navel. Put the phone away and walk past the house again. Two more minutes to go. I've never met Gay Talese but have seen him in the neighborhood more than once. First you see the hat and then the swagger. He's hard to miss.

Talese asks if I want something to drink. "Water? Maybe a Scotch?" "I'll have whatever you're having." I say. "I don't drink in the afternoon." he smiles and his eyes crinkle. It's 5PM on a Saturday that feels more like late November than late March. "Water is fine." I tell him. Talese leaves and I stand by two leather tufted sofas that could stand some saddle soap. A formal dining room is to my left and the fireplace surrounded by books reminds me of the other writer who lives here.

Talese returns with a cold bottle of Pellegrino and two white wine glasses. We sit down at opposing sofas and he crosses his legs. He's in amazing shape and I later learn, at 79, he still works out. More for me to feel bad about.

Highly polished black loafers are, I'm guessing, Bally. Dark gray trousers with a cuff not quite two inches but almost. A waistcoat and jacket of the same wool plaid in dark blood red. Purple and blue stripes on a white shirt frame his face and an Hermes-green tie of some early vintage and narrow width blossoms from his neck. A small, almost feminine, gold watch on his left wrist reminds me that Italians are almost always too studied. But it suits him to the ground. I think of the camera in my jacket pocket but don't have the guts to ask for a picture.

Gay Talese talks in a voice that is fast-slow metered and dry like dead Summer pine needles. We're 20 minutes into the interview before I realize the tape recorder isn't on. He's like a skilled salesman who overcomes objections before you ask them - For every one question I ask - Talese answers nine more on my list. His right profile suggests John Slattery, the silver haired Roger Sterling from Mad Men.

Near the end of the interview, I ask him about the shirt boards he cuts up for note taking. Gay pulls a couple from inside his jacket and hands them to me. "Here. Keep a couple." Talese smiles when I see the one with my name on it.

The Gay Talese interview will appear in a magazine due for release this Fall.

The Death Of Tom Wolfe

I can't help but think of Tom padding around his room at the Chelsea Hotel in slippers and a proper dressing gown of the period. His affair with Aline Bernstein ended badly but they kept in touch and you can read their letters here.

Wolfe didn't know he had 18 weeks to live when he wrote this check. He left for a tour of the West and 11 national parks on June 19th. During the two week trip, "Wolfe pounded through two pairs of good pants; his beloved new brown gabardines wore through on the eighth day, and another pair, into which he hastily changed, gave out on the next to last day of the trip." The Death of Tom Wolfe by Elizabeth Nowell, Esquire Magazine, April 1961.

Wolfe died September 15th, 1938 just 18 days before his 38th birthday. His last letter was to Maxwell Perkins, his editor at Scribner's whom he had fought with and left for Harper and Row.

"...I had this 'hunch' and wanted to write you and tell you, no matter what happens or has happened, I shall always think of you and feel about you the way it was that fourth of July day three years ago when you meet me at the boat, and we went out on the cafe on the river and had a drink and later went on top of the tall building, and all the strangeness and the glory and the power of life and the city was below. Yours always, Tom"

Scribner's & Wolfe

597 5th Avenue - Home to Wolfe, Fitzgerald, Hemmingway & Vonnegut


Most recently home to Benneton and Sephora


Books were displayed either side of the doors


There's still history -- and make up

The Doors


My love for Scribner's comes from an obsession with Thomas Wolfe during my first job here in 1984. Bored and unable to finish 'Look Homeward Angel' I read 'The Web and the Rock' over and over while living on 18th Street between 8th and 9th.

Pages were devoted to a moment lasting a second or two, and even with the attention span of a Wire Fox Terrier on a triple Americano, I was sucked in to the exclusion of everything around me. Never read this book on the subway or train.

Wolfe recalled stepping out the Scribner doors with his first check for Look Homeward. I think it was $20,0o00 although I'm not sure. He headed north in a trance until 125 Street...unaware of the distance he'd covered. I think of that when I look at the doors. I've reenacted the journey. Hard to do in a trance. The 20 k probably helps.

I bought an autographed copy of 'Chelsea Hotel' by Claudio Edinger in Scribner's. Wolfe had lived there and so I had to as well. In 2001, I had my chance and met Chelsea manager, Stanley Bard who showed me a couple apartments. One was Bob Dylan's. Not the greatest for entertaining.