Men admitted to being endlessly fascinated with the naked female form; they appreciated women in a detached, impersonal way that women, even those women who were flattered by such attention, rarely understood.

The assistant coach had the duty of calling in the chronicle of each game to the local newspaper and when he complained he was too busy to take care of it the head coach turned to Talese to take over the duties. "
In 1964 Talese publiGay Talesed The Bridge: The Building of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (1964) a reporter-style non-fiction depiction of the construction of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York City. As Carol Polsgrove points out in her history of Esquire in the Sixties it was the kind of reporting he liked to do best: "just being there observing waiting for the climactic moment when the mask would drop and true character would reveal itself.

As a writer for The New York Times and Esquire magazine in the 1960s he helped to define literary journalism. Talese is a visiting writer at the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California each spring.