On Gay Talese’s address book and love of collage and paper
Legendary American literary journalist Gay Talese has been keeping an address book since the 1950s and has never erased a single name or detail. In this film, Talese gives us a tour of his address book, which contains the names, addresses, and phone numbers of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Tony Bennett, Francis Ford Coppola, and many more.
Holy lord, so many people sent me this video. (For good reason: it’s amazing.) The address book is great, but I really love seeing Talese’s office/bunker:
In case you are, like I was, wondering what those crazy collages are behind Talese as he’s reading, here’s a description from The Paris Review:
There are shelves running up to the ceiling filled with boxes and boxes of files. Each box is elaborately festooned with a collage: photographs from newspapers and magazines, excised words, drawings, cartoons. The files contain notes for all of Talese’s books and articles, clippings, outlines, letters. The collages make the cardboard boxes look whimsical, childlike, flamboyant; there is a joy here that most of us can’t muster for file keeping.
I knew about Talese’s shirtboards, but I had no idea that he actually composes his works using collage: “He initially composes his articles and books on long strips of paper that he strings above his desk, making a constellation of words.”
As he says in the video, “There’s something decorative and interesting about how to put things you want to remember on pieces of paper.”
Talese has a really interesting routine, too: dresses up every day, walks the outside stairs of his apartment down to an old wine cellar where he works, saves everything in boxes and file folders, and looks damned good for 80.
Here’s another tour of “the bunker”:
I save everything. I think that I’m a person of record… Some people collect a lot of stuff and then they don’t know where it is. I know where it is — it’s all on file… It’s a whole process of giving worth to every moment of your day. I’ve seen things. I’ve interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people over many years. By saving it, I’m not just being a collector of stuff — I’m a documentarian of what it is that I do. Who I know. What I see. This stuff is never dead because stories never die. Stories are never over.
I actually stole the line “I’m a documentarian of what it is that I do” for a chapter in Show Your Work!
Filed under: Gay Talese
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