The Silent Season of a Hero: The Sports Writing of Gay Talese

Talese has covered a number of topics, but his career's most constant thread is sports, and this collection show what makes his writing so strong: Talese finds the poignant in the everyday. In "Portrait of a Young Prize Fighter," for instance, Talese withholds his subject's name until the end: "This young prize fighter's name happens to be Jose Torres. But he actually thinks, talks and dreams like dozens of other inexperienced professionals who train each day in Stillman's... [who] seem to agree that despite all the punching, boxing still beats working for a living." It's a deft way to show the near-impossibility of becoming a household name in a crowded field. Even a simple piece about college ball has the kind of descriptive prose hardly seen in this genre today. Whether recounting a workaday game or taking on the monolithic topic of Muhammad Ali—which he did so well in his 1996 Esquire piece, "Ali in Havana," (included here)—Talese's writing possesses so much color and clear description of the world beyond the stadium that even non-sports fans will cheer. Photos. (Oct.)