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.
Jim McDermott, SJ
