In a homecoming on behalf of the homeless, celebrated writer Gay Talese made a return this week to The New York Times.
Talese, 77, who worked for the paper in the 1950s and 1960s, contributed a post to the City Room on the Times’ website Tuesday.
The item, headlined “Even Panhandlers Can Use an Editor,” appeared in the print edition Wednesday.
In the first-person essay, Talese writes of his efforts to help homeless men in his Upper East Side neighborhood adapt their pleas to today’s economic climate.
Gay Talese
There’s a surreal quality to the post as the urbane and dapper Talese - once called “the best-dressed writer in New York City” - uses his way with words to assist people down on their luck.
But, as Talese suggests, these men don’t have “lobbyists and public relations companies doing their bidding,” as do the merchant bankers seeking handouts from Congress. Why not take a pro bono marketing suggestion from a writer?
Talese unwinds his tale in a leisurely fashion, recalling how he meets men asking for money one day as he walks to and from his bank on the Upper East Side. He answers their pleas, but he wonders about one man’s sign, a three-word request, “Homeless. Please Help.”
“I dropped a dollar into his container,” Talese writes, “but at the same time thought that the sign might benefit from updating - it needed a touch of stimulus, that word that dominates the headlines.”
On the spot, Talese writes out a new message for the man to use: “Please Support Pres. Obama’s Stimulus Plan, and begin right here … at the bottom … Thank you.”
Talese then goes home and prints out creates large-print versions of his message on paper that he pastes onto the sheets of cardboard that come home inside his laundered shirts.
For the next couple of days, Talese gives the small posters to men who ask him for money, suggesting that the signs might help their cause.
He checks back with them afterwards. In most cases, the signs haven’t helped, though one man reports an increase in revenue of between $10 and $20.
The Times does not explain how Talese came to file the item. Nor does it make any fuss about the fact he was recently named one of 14 winners of this year’s George Polk Awards in Journalism.
The author of many books, Talese was honored for “career achievement.”
He is now working on a memoir of his 50-year marriage to Nan Talese. She’s a senior vice president of Doubleday and the publisher and editorial director of Nan Talese/Doubleday, a trade book publishing imprint.
Click here to sign up for the Muckety Newsletter
0 Comments
There are no comments yet, be the first by filling in the form below.
Leave a Comment