Bartleby and Me: Reflections of an Old Scrivener

by Gay Talese Narrated by Mike Ortego

Overview

“Literary Legend” (New York) Gay Talese retraces his pioneering career, marked by his fascination with the world's hidden characters.

In the concluding act of this ""incomparable"" (Air Mail) capstone book, Talese introduces readers to one final unforgettable story: the strange and riveting all new tale of Dr. Nicholas Bartha, who blew up his Manhattan brownstone-and himself-rather than relinquish his claim to the American dream.

“New York is a city of things unnoticed,” a young reporter named Gay Talese wrote sixty years ago. He would spend the rest of his legendary career defying that statement by celebrating the people most reporters overlooked, understanding that it was through these minor characters that the epic story of New York and America unfolded. Inspired by Herman Melville's great short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” Talese now revisits the unforgettable “nobodies” he has profiled in his celebrated career-from the New York Times's anonymous obituary writer to Frank Sinatra's entourage. In the book's final act, a remarkable piece of original reporting titled “Dr. Bartha's Brownstone,” Talese presents a new “Bartleby,” an unknown doctor who made his mark on the city one summer day in 2006.*

Rising within the city of New York are about one million buildings. These include skyscrapers, apartment buildings, bodegas, schools, churches, and homeless shelters. Also spread through the city are more than 19,000 vacant lots, one of which suddenly appeared some years ago-at 34 East 62nd Street, between Madison and Park Avenues-when the unhappy owner of a brownstone at that address blew it up (with himself in it) rather than sell his cherished nineteenth-century high-stoop Neo-Grecian residence in order to pay the court-ordered sum of $4 million to the woman who had divorced him three years earlier. This man was a physician of sixty-six named Nicholas Bartha. On the morning of July 10, 2006, Dr. Bartha filled his building with gas that he had diverted from a pipe in the basement, and then he set off an explosion that reduced the fivestory premises into a fiery heap that would injure ten firefighters and five passersby and damage the interiors of thirteen apartments that stood to the west of the crumbled brownstone.

Talese has been obsessed with Dr. Bartha's story and*spent the last seventeen years examining this single 20 x*100 foot New York City building lot, its serpentine past,*and the unexpected triumphs and disasters encountered by its residents and owners-an unlikely cast featuring*society wannabes, striving immigrants, Gilded Age*powerbrokers, Russian financiers, and even a turncoat*during the War of Independence-just as he has been*obsessed with similar “nobodies” throughout his career.*Concise, elegant, tragic, and whimsical, Bartleby and Me*is the valedictory work of a master journalist.

Editorial Reviews

OCTOBER 2023 - AudioFile

Mike Ortego gets Talese. Ortego artfully performs Talese's polished sentences and captures the flavor of his urbane worldview with a writerly tone. For this is an audiobook of enhanced remembrances. Talese returns to the sights and sounds of his most famous and influential piece of creative nonfiction, the New Journalism classic "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," and entertains the listener with its backstory and context. There is a fine new piece on the bizarre death of Dr. Nicholas Bartha, who blew up his Upper East Side townhouse in Manhattan. And an insightful profile of the famous NEW YORK TIMES obituary writer Aldon Whitman. Indeed, there is much about the TIMES in the 1960s, the paper where the now 91-year-old Talese got his start. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

07/24/2023

“When I joined the Times in the mid-1950s, I wanted to specialize in writing about nobodies,” explains Talese (The Voyeur’s Motel) in this nostalgic jaunt through his career. Hired as a copy boy, Talese made a name for himself by covering “the nobodies” who worked at the Times itself, such as electrician James Torpey, whose job for over 30 years was to operate the paper’s famous “electromechanical moving-letter news sign.” Throughout his tenure at the Times, Talese reported on the goings-on of “non-newsworthy people: doormen, bootblacks, dog walkers, scissor grinders.” He explains that “as a reader, I was always drawn to fiction writers who could make ordinary people seem extraordinary,” and cites Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener,” about a contrarian Manhattan law clerk, as an influence. In the book’s star-studded second part, Talese reminisces about the three months he spent within Frank Sinatra’s inner circle on assignment for Esquire, while part three recounts the strange tale of Nicholas Bartha, who in 2006 blew up his beloved 62nd Street brownstone to prevent it from being seized in a divorce settlement. A smooth and enchanting wordsmith, Talese delivers a lovely testament to the “unobtrusive if not kindred Bartleby personalities” of New York City. It’s a delight. (Sept.)

From the Publisher

Talese has been acclaimed as a virtuoso of the novelistic New Journalism. Now 91, he has published a short and charming second memoir. … meticulously reported. … fascinating. …Talese has lost none of his artistry.” — Wall Street Journal

"Talese’s conversational style —openhanded, easygoing, characterized by fact-rich yet perfectly balanced sentences — invites the reader to sit back and relax. His book proved just the right tonic for my downcast spirits." — Washington Post

"A smooth and enchanting wordsmith, Talese delivers a lovely testament to the 'unobtrusive if not kindred Bartleby personalities' of New York City. It’s a delight." — Publishers Weekly

“New readers will discover an astute observer. . . . Candid testimony from a new-journalism icon.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Bartleby and Me is an ambler, in which [Talese] appears to give his finger to the form by filigreeing a couple of his ironclad hits and then tacking on a new gargoyle of a tale….It’s a plot for the ages.” — New York Times Book Review

“Sixty years ago, Talese wrote in Esquire that ‘New York is a city of things unnoticed.’ He spent the next six decades doing quite a bit of noticing, chronicling the people (and places and moments) that make the city what it is. In his latest, he remembers the ‘nobodies’ that he’s profiled over the course of his career, the cast of characters perhaps who are not as recognizable as, say, Sinatra or Ali, but nevertheless essential threads in our cultural fabric.” — The Millions

“[An] incomparable memoir.” — Air Mail

“All three pieces are written with painterly precision.” — Shelf Awareness (starred review)

Kirkus Reviews

2023-07-06
More revelations from the celebrated writer’s life.

In 1953, Talese, then 21, began working as a copy boy at the New York Times, earning $38 per week, a job that launched his successful career as a journalist for the Times and other outlets. As the author recounts in his latest memoir, he was interested from the start in writing about characters he likens to Herman Melville’s taciturn Bartleby, people who work largely unnoticed: those “on the sidelines of stadiums, individuals who are part of the game but rarely written about.” His first published piece—unsigned—was an interview with the electrician in charge of the illuminated sign that flashed news in Times Square. His first byline was for an article about the rolling chairs that transported visitors on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. With the encouragement of editors at the Times, where he spent seven years as a reporter in the news department, and, later, at Esquire, where he contributed features, Talese was most satisfied writing about the “lives of non-newsworthy people,” such as Times chief obituary writer Alden Whitman and retired silent-screen star Nita Naldi. But Talese also reprises at length an episode he included in High Notes (2017), detailing his frustrating, convoluted efforts to interview Frank Sinatra for a profile in Esquire. The interview never happened, but the article did: “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” appeared in April 1966. More in line with Talese’s interests was his research for Thy Neighbor’s Wife, which immersed him in the world of massage parlors and nudist colonies; The Voyeur’s Motel, about a motel owner who spied on his guests; and the life of Nicholas Bartha, a physician who burned down his Upper East Side brownstone rather than sell it to remunerate his ex-wife in a divorce settlement. Fans of Talese may already be familiar with many recollections; new readers will discover an astute observer.

Candid testimony from a new-journalism icon.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940178268308
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	09/19/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged

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