A WRITER'S LIFE

Talese recounts bits--usually unconnected or episodic--of his life and work habits in complex, wandering sentences, laden with subordinate clauses and long words; read in a tone relatively lacking in variation, they give the impression of tedious garrulity. He drones on, Grandpa-Simpson-like, about trivialities, tiresomely sure of his own self-importance, in love with the sound of his own voice. Moreover, he swallows words and pronounces them lazily and sloppily--the "nineteen" of dates, for instance, becoming "nineen" or "niyeen"--a nearly constant irritation. Perhaps a precise, careful reader could have disguised the fact that Talese's prose is uninspired, his observations uninteresting, his concerns and insights shallow. But perhaps not. W.M. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/ NOV 06]