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Jim McDermottMay 07, 2009

Last week New York Magazine published a great profile of well-known author Gay Talese, who is writing a new book about his 50-year marriage to Nan A. Talese, a long-time publisher at Random House.  Talese gained particular notoriety after publishing Thy Neighbor's Wife, a provocative expose on the changing sexual mores of Americans in the 1970s.  As research for the book Talese involved himself in many different sorts of sexual liasons, which put great strain on his marriage and also did tremendous damage to his reputation as a writer.  Decades later, Talese is revisiting this terrain, trying perhaps to put it finally to rest. And visiting with him, Nan and their children makes for an interesting, well-drawn journey in New York writer Jonathan van Meter's hands.

I highly recommend it.

Jim McDermott, SJ

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
16 years 2 months ago
It is amazing the amount of noteriety the "changing sexual mores" of the 1970s received when they were in reality a passing fad for all but a few, who were as likely to be as  promiscuous in the 40s as they were in the 70s.  The only real change was more openess about nonmarital cohabitation (which is not really a new thing) and acceptance of homosexuality, which was salutory given that it allowed people to stop entering heterosexual marriages in order to conform while still practicing homosexuality on the side.

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