The first and last New Journalist

Gay Talese , 93 , has a new book out, a collection of his journalism.

But another, bigger book looms over his marriage, one he has been putting together for 20 years .

Talese began on his portrait of a marriage in the mid-2000s , wanting to figure out why she stayed with him.

Talese had written only what he’d either witnessed or been told, but he didn’t use a tape recorder, or even at times a pen.

Talese ’s ability as a writer never faded: he was still turning out exquisite profiles (of Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett ) in the New Yorker in the 1970s .

But journalistic mores have changed: too much journalism, as Talese once put it, now reads like “talk radio on paper”.

Talese has kept an assiduous record of their relationship, although he fears that the letters they wrote to each other elide deeper truths.

Talese thinks Donald Trump is “ one of the most remarkable men alive” Nominally a Democrat , Talese despises the modern iteration of the party for its “duplicity [and] hypocrisy”.