An individual with genital character, according to Reich, was fully in contact with with his body, his drives, his environment- he possessed “orgastic potency,” the capacity to “surrender to the flow of energy in the orgasm without any inhibition…free of anxiety and unpleasure and unaccompanied by fantasies”; and while genital character alone would not assure enduring contentment, the individual at least would not be blocked or diverted by destructive or irrational emotion or by exaggerated respect for institutions that were not life-enhancing.

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.