featured in the NY Post’s scandal ridden Page Six: DAPPER journalism giant Gay Talese paints a fickle picture of media czarina Tina Brown in his new memoir, “A Writer’s Life.”
In 1993, Talese was asked by then-New Yorker editor Brown to become the magazine’s writer-at-large. As his first piece, the “Honor Thy Father” author pitched her an in-depth article on John Bobbitt, whose wife, Lorena, had cut off two-thirds of the ex-Marine’s penis and tossed the remains out a car window. “This is making me sick,” said Brown. But then she gave Talese the nod, writing, “Okay, you’re on for the penis chopper.
I took a penis poll in the office and you were absolutely right – men groaned and writhed and mumbled about their atavistic fears.” After Talese spent months reporting and handed in a long manuscript, Brown wrote back, “I have come to feel that we should really kiss off this penile saga.” She called the Bobbitts “these dreary and incoherent people” and doubted Talese could “turn up some psychological rosebud that will justify our voyeuristic involvement . . . Hell, Gay, it’s just too hard.” Talese’s vindication? He devotes 60-odd pages of arousing prose to the over-the-top Bobbitt scandal in his memoir.