People like Gay Talese

Gaetano "Gay" Talese (; born February 7, 1932) is an American writer. As a journalist for The New York Times and Esquire magazine during the 1960s, Talese helped to define contemporary literary journalism and is considered, along with Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion and Hunter S. Thompson, one of the pioneers of New Journalism. Talese's most famous articles are about Joe DiMaggio and Frank Sinatra.

Born in Ocean City, New Jersey, the son of Italian immigrant parents, Talese graduated from Ocean City High School in 1949.

Talese's entry into writing was entirely happenstance, and the unintended consequence of the then high school sophomore's attempt to gain more playing time for the baseball team. The assistant coach had the duty of telephoning in the chronicle of each game to the local newspaper and when he complained he was too busy to do it properly, the head coach gave Talese the duty. As Talese recalls in his 1996 memoir Origins of a Nonfiction Writer: