Longform legend Gay Talese was speaking about his career at a Boston University conference, “The Power of Narrative,” to an audience that was packed with female reporters. Defying conventional wisdom about audience Q&As — that is: the audience will be far more embarrassing than the speaker — the 84-year-old Talese stunned the crowd when, in response to a question about which female journalists inspired him, he came up empty.
“I didn’t know any women writers that I loved,” Talese said. NBC reported Andrea Swalec tweeted his comments from the conference:
"I didn't know any women writers that I loved" -Gay Talese. Asked abt Joan Didion and said no, didn't report on antisocial ppl #narrativeBU
— Andrea Swalec (@andreaswalec) April 2, 2016
According to writer Janelle Lawrence, who spoke with The New York Daily News, Talese “considered naming critic Mary McCarthy as an influence, he later said that he admired the novelist and poet George Eliot, the 19th century author of Middlemarch.” (Does Talese know George Eliot was a woman? Will he change his answer once he finds out?)
Other conference attendees reported that Talese doubled-down on his comments by saying that “educated women” don’t like “being around anti-social types, not comfortable telling those stories,” New York Times Magazine reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones tweeted. She was also a speaker at the three-day conference, which was attended by about 550 people; she discussed race, segregation, housing and education.
Gay Talese was all good until he started talking about how women writers don't like to hang around under-educated, seedier types. Um, whut.
— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) April 2, 2016
Gay Talese said women writers don't like being around anti-social types, not comfortable telling those stories. Again, whut. #narrativeBU
— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) April 2, 2016
Swalec told the Washington Post that she replied to Talese’s comments by saying “scrappy women reporters of all ages want to report on murderers and scumbags.” Talese said “that in his experience, educated writers want to interview educated people.”
A few women reportedly left the conference because of Talese’s remarks. But conference co-moderator, Mitchell Zuckoff, Redstone Professor of Narrative Studies at BU, told the Daily News that Talese interpreted the question in a different way from how the audience did. Talese wasn’t saying that he’d never been inspired by women, Zuckoff explained, but that Talese had no female role models in the 1950s, when his career was just beginning.
“The world he inherited in the 1950’s and 1960’s didn’t have a lot of women doing non-fiction narrative. That was his world,” said Zuckoff. “I truly believe he was talking about the era. That the women he knew in that era weren’t drawn to the stories he was drawn to… I don’t believe he was characterizing women journalists as not being interested in those. I know he wasn’t talking about the women at the conference. I feel like he’s not getting a fair shake here.”
While Zuckoff’s defense is a plausible one, it is worth noting here that Talese does not have a spotless track record re: His consideration of female journalists. Consider this anecdote from Gloria Steinem’s My Life on the Road:
How Gay Talese once spoke to about a female writer of his generation, in her presence https://t.co/9vdhJOeePr pic.twitter.com/otwQqJ6V3D
— Irin Carmon (@irin) April 3, 2016
Meanwhile on Twitter, the hashtag #womengaytaleseshouldread started to make the rounds, as users helpfully pointed Talese to the Everests of excellent journalism women have produced, of which there is literally so much that if he started reading it today and never stopped until the day he died, he wouldn’t even make a dent in the “to read” pile, wouldn’t have time to loosen his tie.
