He began with discussions with his parents; wound up shuffling through volumes tucked away in the private collections of Italian aristocrats. For a time, he was convinced he’d lost his way. Then, one day in 1987, looking in despair at a house his grandfather had helped build in Pennsylvania, Talese had a new feeling: “I felt connected with my grandfather. I was touching the same stone. And I could see that I could write a book that would make sense of all this.”
And now he’s at work on the next chapter of what he calls his “epic family drama.” This volume will start in Ocean City, N.J., and follow Talese through his college years in the pre-civil-rights South, and into the Army in Germany. Rest assured it will have plenty of digressions. “It’s the same thing,” Talese says, “only the characters get older.
