The inner workings of a writer's life, the interplay between experience and writing, are recounted by a master of the art. Gay Talese now focuses on his own life--the zeal for truth, the narrative edge, the sometimes startling precision, that won accolades for his journalism, and best-sellerdom and acclaim for his revelatory books about The New York Times, the Mafia, the sex industry, and the American immigrant experience. Here are his amateur beginnings on his college newspaper; his professional climb at the Times; his desire to write on a larger canvas, which led him to magazine writing and then to books. We see his involvement with issues of race, changing American sexual mores, and the ordinary men and women whose stories led to his most memorable work, and he gives us a picture of both the serendipity and meticulousness involved in getting a story.--From publisher description.