Debra Pickett

"If you're a president, you can write a memoir," he tells me, after ordering a Reuben-sandwich-and-a-Heineken lunch. "Otherwise, you'd better go out and report on something."

The clothes make the man

So Talese, at an age when many would retire and live the good life, has assembled a collection of observation, reportage and memory that, when put together in just the right way, offers a statement of philosophy and a distillation of his lifelong interests. He has always written about America and about that most American of virtues, perseverance. So his book revisits several stories Talese pursued, but was never able to fully finish writing, as a journalist. He has taken his incomplete work and turned it into something with meaning.

We're sharing a booth in South Water Kitchen, the bustling restaurant in the lobby of the Hotel Monaco, where Talese has been staying for the Chicago duration of his tour. My small digital recorder sits on the table between us, and my notebook sits, mostly untouched, off to the side. Talese is a hero of mine -- among many other talents, he is spectacularly good at interviewing people -- and I've studied his work enough to know that he does not believe in making tapes or taking extensive notes. I've always imagined that this is because he has a brilliant, steel-trap mind.

"I could never carry that," he says, nodding at the recorder. "It wouldn't fit in my pocket. Not without ruining the line."

As always, Talese is elegantly dressed -- his father was a tailor and his mother ran a high-end dress shop -- and he is not entirely kidding about his concern for the line of his jacket. His clothes reflect a near-obsessive attention to detail. Striking coral-colored cuff links clasp the French cuffs of his white-striped-with-red shirt and a silk pocket square sets off his gray suit. His black shoes, trimmed in maroon suede, were custom made for him by a bootmaker who, Talese says, he is pretty much single-handedly keeping in business. And Talese's signature hat is never out of reach.

Talese has no patience for the slovenliness of modern menswear. He has spent a fortune, over the years, buying custom-made suits for his two grown daughters' boyfriends, just so they could be appropriately wardrobed for the time they might spend with him. He's recently told one daughter -- a never-married serial monogamist -- that he refuses to meet any more of her boyfriends. It's too much of an investment.

But this is not the sort of thing he means to be talking about while on book tour.

At 74 -- "Now I'm 25 years older than the 'old man' [a post-retirement Joe DiMaggio, whom Talese famously profiled in Esquire magazine] I wrote about," he says, sounding as if he might have just realized it now -- Talese knows he is expected to offer some sort of insight on The State of The Culture.

'Stadiums are filled with savages'

I ask him what he'd be working on right now, were he not on the road doing this. He says he has been thinking a lot about Barry Bonds.

"If I were 40 years younger," he says, "I'd be writing about the anger [at Barry Bonds] in the stadiums. There's a lot of anger expressed in stadiums . . . all the anger in America."

The idea is almost visibly turning over in his mind. He muses out loud, "The fans are savage -- many of the fans are savages -- the stadiums are filled with savages."

He's thinking hard about it now, how maybe there's something of racism in it, and how there are so few places left where people are really free to express themselves.

When Talese wants to make note of something, he writes it down on a small, thin piece of cardboard -- from the boards that come packed in boxed shirts -- that he has cut down to the size of large tongue depressors so that they fit, perfectly invisibly, in the breast pocket of his jacket.

Who's watching the CEOs?

Talese has a real empathy, an admiration, really, for athletes -- he thinks of them "like gladiators in the coliseum" -- and has little patience for the view of them as lazy and overpaid. With professional sports figures, he says, "Everything they do, there's a record. But when these CEOs are making millions and their companies are losing money, there's nowhere near the same level of accountability."

It's clear that Talese has hit on an idea that interests him. And if I were writing a brilliant, insightful profile of him, I would make it my business to follow him around as he develops this idea and turns it into something. I'd sneak a peek at those cardboard notecards.

But, after lunch and his next book tour stop, in the studios of WGN radio, I have to head back to the office. I leave him, shaking his hand and promising that I will actually finish reading his book.