A half century after completing a magazine piece on Frank Sinatra, Gay Talese was honored at the 21 Club for his story on November 30, 2015. (AP)
A half century after completing a magazine piece that had frustrated and disappointed him, Gay Talese was honored at the 21 Club for his landmark Esquire story on Frank Sinatra.
Tom Wolfe, Robert Caro and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg were among those seated at the banquet table Monday night as toasts were offered to Talese, whose "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" has been reissued by Taschen as an illustrated coffee table book.
Running some 15,000 words, Talese's stylish epic is widely regarded as a model for the "New Journalism" of the 1960s and '70s and as a classic celebrity profile, even though Talese never spoke to Sinatra.
The Taschen book, released upon the centennial of Sinatra's birth, is a limited edition with a list price of $200.