Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - A Life in Stories with Gay Talese

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

In this very special episode, Anthony talks with legendary journalist and author Gay Talese. Talese takes us on a journey through his life, storytelling, and the art of observing the world. From his early days as a curious kid in Ocean City, New Jersey, to redefining narrative journalism with works like Frank Sinatra Has a Cold, Thy Neighbor’s Wife, and his most recent book, A Town Without Time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is Open. and book where I talk to some of the brightest minds about everything surrounding the written word. That's everything. That's from authors and historians to figures in entertainment, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Before we dive in, make sure to follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And don't forget to leave a review. Good or bad, I want to hear from you. I want to hear whether you're enjoying it or where we can improve. And I can take the hits.

So let me know. If you don't like something, say it straight. Now let's get into it. It's a great honor today to host our first in-person episode of Open Book. I usually do this over Zoom, Gay. I'm glad because I don't look so good over Zoom. You're looking good in person, by the way. It's a true honor to be with a literary New York legend.

Joining us today on Open Book is Mr. Gay Talese, who I have been reading your writing for 50 years, by the way. I consider the magazine story. Frank Sinatra has a call to be the greatest magazine piece that's ever been published. You also wrote The Kingdom and the Power and Honor, My Father. Gaye has spent decades chronicling the lives of everyone from mobsters, media giants, and everyday New Yorkers. And the latest book, which is here with us, is a town without time, which is effectively a love story about this wonderful city. that I think you've lived in for at least the last 60 years. I know you came from New Jersey.

We'll talk a little bit about that. You have a meticulous writing process. You're incredibly insightful. And the best thing I can say about your writing is something that Maya Angelou once said about words. We can never remember how we hear things or we can never remember what somebody says, but we can remember the way they make us feel.

And your writing has got this very powerful impact on the way we feel, sir. It'll be with us forever. Thanks so much. Very grateful, very honor to have you. So let's start with you, if you don't mind. It's my first in-person interview. So big honor for me.

Let's talk a little bit about you. You were raised in New Jersey. Give us a little bit of your origin story. My father was a custom tailor who was born in Colombia, a little town called Maya, the Katanzaro region. He came at 17, he left the village and followed in the path of his famous cousin, Antonio Cristiani, who was a tailor in Paris. The Christianity family is on my mother's side, my father, Joseph Talese, followed in 1921 after the war, World War I. My father went to Paris for it to be an apprentice for one year with Antonio Cristiani who had a shop in four routes.

Lepe. The older Christiani had gone to Paris for 1911. This is more than you want to know. But my father came by Paris and went back to Philadelphia after one year in Paris. Philadelphia then didn't like the town, but liked the resort town called Ocean City, which is about 60 miles in Philadelphia. And I liked the fresh air of the ocean. And nine, two years, he was alone at a tailor shop. He bought a tailor shop. There's a town of Christians, Protestants, very, no Italian. around there. No black people, no Jewish people, was really a Christian town found of a method that's ministers. Those are the city in Jersey is somewhat south

in Atlantic City about 10 or 12 miles. In 1925, he went to Brooklyn because his cousin, Nicholas Pellegi, was getting married. Nicholas Pellegi, of course, from my young viewers. One of the great writers of all time. But there's the father. Oh, the father, Nicholas Palletka. My father and Nicholas Pellegi, of course.

and Nicholas Pilegi Sr. Okay. Were cousins from Calabia. They both came to America more at the same time. The Pilegi Sr. was a saxophone player at a couple of bands. They also worked in movie theaters, a solemn movie who provided the...

But when he got married, Nicholas Pellegi, Sr., the wife, his wife to be, was a sister of my mother, because Joseph's police, my father, met his bride to be at the wedding of

Nichols Pledge and Sue Pledgee. That the son, Nick, Nick McDonorffin is the son of that marriage. In fact, to me, I was born in 1932. My Mussolini was on the rise in Italy. As the war came upon us in 1941, 42, 43, my father's three brothers were drafted in Mussolini's army.

So for the period of World War II, from 1942, I was 10, right through the next four years of the war. I was, I didn't know if I was on Italy or America's side, but the town was a very waspy town. So I never expressed anything. I was really interior, but I had a split personality. My father kept his mouth shut.

He was a tailor. And his wife, my mother, Catherine, had a dress shop in the town. And most of her women that she dressed were middle-aged women, a little overweight, but her choice of clothes made. and that's very important for me because as a kid in school

after I would help my mother in the dress shop I would listen to the stories of these women during the war these stories were fascinating they were ordinary women not the women would get an obituary they were not newsworthy women but they were worthy in their

consciousness of the history of the time of World War II and how it affected them nylon stockies that couldn't go anywhere the ocean cities on the ocean so there's a lot of security along the beach and I was hearing as a boy after school with her mother's dress shop

and my father's tailor shop next door the voices of people that were not necessarily national figures at all not even newsworthy even on town weekly but that's where my training as a journal's began because one, being a son of shopkeepers you learn manners

how to treat the customer the customers are your sources your source of income but you would have to cultivate them you never know you never ask too many questions you listen and you don't intrude. You learn to dress well. My father's a tailor.

As a kid, I always had tailor-made clothes. Appearances matter as a journalist always said, if you're knocking on someone's door to get interest to get access to their story, you have to make a good first impression. Clothes matter. Journalists today dressed like to go to a tailgate party, but this was not true with my mentality, my training and sensibility.

I worked in high school, I was not good in anything really, except I worked on the school paper. Then I worked for the town weekly writing a high school column. In 1949, I graduated my high school. My grades were so bad I couldn't get into college. I tried to get Penn, Penn Stage, Rutgers, was zero. One of my father's customers was a tale,

was a doctor from Alabama, who was in our town in Ocean City. He said, I can get gay in Alabama. We didn't know where Alabama was, but it was at college anyway. So in 19449, my father drove me in, Philadelphia. I'm by there. I sent me to Alabama on an all-night train to the Southerner.

I wind up in a place called Tuscaloosa in 1949. I spent the next four years at the University, Alabama. I worked out a college newspaper and the Stringer for the Birmingham, the Birmingham newspaper, a Hirsch newspaper called the, I forget the name. In 1953, I graduated. And one guy I met as a student was a businessman. Yeah, named Jimmy Pinkston. And he said, Gay, you want to be a journalist.

When you get out of here, when I graduated, go to New York and look my cousin up, he's managing the New York Times. He'll give you a job. Really? Yeah. So when I got out of Alabama, the first thing I did after a week for my... I get out of a bus and I go from Lexington to New York

before I get off of 43rd Street, the bus there. And I walk in the New York Times building. It was like 11 o'clock in the morning. I got on 8th. I was worried by suit and pocket street and the hat. I go in the New York Times building, third floor newsroom, the receptionist on the big reception room there on the walls where the photographs are paintings of the Salzberger family, the owners of the paper.

And I would go in there and say, good afternoon, good afternoon, young man. And those receptions are, oh, hello, I'm here to see Mr. Kallage. Do you have an appointment? No. But I know his cousin, in Alabama, I know his cousin. Guy looked at me. This is an elderly man, but a very distinguished man. He said, look at me.

I knew his cousin. He was a little frightening. He was this theater. He picks up the phone and he calls someone in the newsroom. This was the reception room. Sooner, but sooner and then a younger man comes out and said, good afternoon. My name is Herbert Andre. I'm Mr. Cowledge's executive secretary.

And did you say, you want to see Mr. Callage? I said, yes, yes, I do. Thank you. well he's a very busy man I always I assume so and he has a but do you have an appointment no but I know his cousin I was just to be the minister mr. Kalich has a meeting with his editors at four o'clock if you come back this is like 11 noon

come back at 10 of 4 I'll try to get you for five minutes but that's all I can't do more than that he's very but he sees his letters before come before thank you mr. Andre I want I hadn't been in New York before none I wander around Times Square come back around 10 of four four four same many committee and mr. Andre is a waste city takes me into the city room big city room hundreds of typewriters desks been smoking drinking women all over the place it was really like a movie the whole plot from 43rd or 44 sheets big room and then

mr. Andrene followed him down the aisle and he goes to the big room with Turner College's room the bad as she enters room off big office and at the back of the Elvis, Callage himself, a great pinstripe, suit, beautiful silver hair, with a foreign complexion, and one just polished the foot on the desk, and the knee back in a big chair. And I could walk in, oh, a good afternoon, young man,

Mr. Callage, said, hello, Mr. College, thank you for seeing me. Sit down, young man, thank you, Mr. College. I was, I just graduated the University of Alabama and the Charlottes of Degree. I have a friend named Jimmy Pinkson, cousin. He said, I should come and see you and maybe get a job. And kind of said, well, you know, people work for the York Times.

I had a lot of experience. You're a college student. That's very good. But we have people who work here and work for big newspapers for a couple years. And you said, my cousin? Who's my cousin? Oh, Jimmy Pinkston. Is your, is my cousin? Yes, sir. No expression. No, no recognition at all. And I'm in, the, the secretary is behind me. And I'm saying the desk, here's the college. And there's silence. I said, I'm sorry, Michigan. I thought there was a, here I have bad sources.

I'm supposed to be a fucking journalist. Bad sources. I said, well, maybe I could get a job as a copy boy or something. And a college looked at Andre. No, Mr. I'm sorry, there's no opening. Kind of said, look, Mr. Andre will take your phone number. And if anything opens up, we'll let you know. Thank you so much.

I got up and I was taken out in the city room. that put on the bus and went back to Ocean City, called that stupid cousin. He said, what did you do that for? He's my cousin. Oh, he doesn't know it. Two weeks later, in the tailor shop, my father picks up the phone rings.

Mr. Tiles, please. This is Mr. Tiles, please. This is Mr. Tiles. If I get on the phone, it happened to me in the store. Andre, Mrs. Andre, we have a coffee boy job open. Are you still interested? Oh, yes, sir. When can you come to New York? Oh, I can come today?

No, no, you don't have to come today. Come two weeks from now. That's how I saw. I went back to New York and got a job as a copy boy. That was in 1953. Copyboy job is a medial task. I went to get sandwiches from people and rents. But I had, I, for the, New York was this great city,

and I had not seen it. So everything I saw was a sense of wonderment, a sense of aspiration, of the graduate and multi-ethnic, right? Everything. Melting pot.

So, one time I saw on 42nd Street that three-sided building where they dropped the ball during D.E.E. Yep. Back in 1903, that was the New York Times building before the paper got too big

and they moved to block away 229 was the 43rd Street. But I happened to notice that building and had a sign to people that are not my age but there used to be a headline sign and a big seven-foot sign letters rotating around the three-sided building the zipper the zipper i don't know who knows that was a big this big deal in those days it was 1928 it started with announcing the election of al-smith over over jimmy al-smith lost to the hoover hoover 28 the lindberg babies, it was a big feature, scoops of that.

I wandered into that building one day, and I saw the steps, nobody was there. I walked the steps to the fourth floor, walked in, I saw a man on the ladder. The man on the ladder had looked like an accordion, and he was pushing buttons, and that ones were causing the outside the building, the lights to form letters.

I watched him, who was this guy? When it came down from the ladders, it says, excuse me, Mr. I'm a copyboy, but I'm wondering, What you're doing explained it all. I said, this might be a story. He gave me his name, he gave me his facts on the side of work.

I went back, and during my off hours as a copybook, I started writing on somebody's borrow typewriter. I wrote this story. I showed it to the one of the star, we had a star reporter there's a name. Byrberger, he went to, Meyer Burger was a big name on the stamp. Mr. Berger, would you look at this?

He looked at it. That's still pretty good. Now, you guys talked to the guy. Burger gave it to the city, and they published the damn thing, and they had an editorial page. a byline. In those days you didn't have bylines editorial by the time. My first thing.

So after that, my free time, I just kept looking at the city and finding that I read a column by Walter Winchell, one of the tabloids, and the column said, Broadway next year, this is 54. It's going to feature Carol Shatting

in a big musical called The Vamp. It is inspired by a silent movie screen actors named Need Analdi, who played opposite Valentino and many silent screen for pictures of 1920s, the 30s, and she lives in obscurity in a hotel off Broadway. Nealonaldi lives off Broadway as an obscurity. And Jesus, that's a story, that's a story.

She's finding this Broadway play. But she didn't tell you the name of the hotel. But in the copyboy, they had a hotel, and we had a black of the telephone book in the back of the city room, all the yellow pages, all hotels, and from A to Z. So I saw her calling every hotel right down for A to Z. There's Miss Nolley there. It's Miss Nolley there. No, no, no, nobody knows she was.

I finally got to Wettworth Hotel, Wetworth Hotel. There's Miss Nolley there. She's out. I think she's taking a walk. What must she be up? I don't know. Thank you so much. Hung up.

I don't, I go right to the Hotel Wentworth. I don't go to the desk. I don't want them, because I don't want to have questions to answer. I go to the cell, the house phone in the corner. Ms. Nolty picks up the phone. I called his Ms. Donny that they picked up the phone. Hello, this is, I'm a copyboy in the York Times, Ms. Nolte, but I read, I hope I could write a story about you.

I read in the column the other day that you inspired the play that Carol Shannick is sawing in and brought her called the Vamp. I actually played that part, not Carol Shatton. I said, well, maybe I can write about, can I interview? Where are you? in the lobby.

Well, this place is a mess. Give me five minutes to fix up. So I wait five minutes. I go up the elevator. I don't wait at the lobby. I don't want to be in the answer. What are you doing here? I go up the fifth floor,

wait in the hall for ten minutes. I'd knock on the door. It's tall woman with black hair and black dress. Daggerly earrings. Looked like a little silent screen movie actor's for sure. It's like Sunset Boulevard, the whole story. That's right. The parrots were hanging for the ceiling.

The decor was always in 1920s. It looked like a movie set. Come in, young man, sit down. You say you want to write a story about me? Yes, I do, Ms. Nolty, because I think it was a fascinating story. She starts out of her story. She sits down. The next two hours she talks about her story.

I was making notes. Make notes on little cardboard. This is a shirtboard. Your name there. I write these things. I don't want to record. There's no recording those days. And I did.

And I wrote, I took notes. And I went back to my house, I lived in McDougall Street then, and I wrote a story. And I wrote a story, and I went back to the, after finish it, I went back to the paper, and I gave it to the receptions of the Sunday department, the magazine, and says, you can't give it to the drama editor? They did, and I got a call a couple days later that they liked the story, and they're going to use it.

They want to see me and check the facts. I was a copy boy, right? So I did very well as a coffee boy, and I was later on out of the Army for a couple years. I was the lieutenant in the tank corps in Fort Knox, Kentucky. Then I got to work under the general there. Creighton Abens. There's a tank called the Abrams.

Creighton W. Abis was the guy that inspired the tag. And he was, I would work for him after a year of the Tank Corps. And I later went to Germany with him, to Frankfurt, Germany, the Third Army Division, which later on had Elvis Presley as a private in that Third Army Division, and a good soldier, I'm told. And then I came back to the Times in 1956, and they gave me a job at a sports department.

I was the only reported. Then I worked there for a year, and then I worked out of a lot of stories. I worked in general news, and I went, that's essentially it. Then I went after, I was quit in 65. I loved the paper, but 65, I was 32 years old, and I had a one-year-old daughter. And I felt I had to, I don't want to go old, I don't want to be an old journalist. I saw old journalists.

It's a young man's game, and I was okay at 32, but I had, this is it. So I knew an editor at Esquire. I had written a lot of pieces for Esquire, one on Joe Lewis, one on the director named Joshua Logan, a big famous Broadway director. And now there's, you're doing it. And they gave me a contract at Escobar in 1965 for one year. Like the same amount of money I made at the Times, but I only had to do six pieces and long. I could write 10,000 words. Times Magazine, 2,500 is tops.

10,000 words, I could take a month or two to do it. So I learned, and they want me to do, I said, I want to write about some people in the New York Times. Well, yeah, but I want you to do the letters. I want you to do Sinatra. I don't want to do Sinatra. Everybody's done Sanandre, and I don't want to do them. Well, listen, you do, you want me to write about the United States people. You have to help me with the newsstand sales.

The editor Harold Hayes said, that's easy. We're all set up. I check, check with the press agent, for not just press agent, Jim Mahoney. It's all. They go out there and stay in the Beverly Wiltshire. It takes it maybe a week. And then you can write about the Times Managing Editor,

Clifton Daniel, which I wanted to do. He replaced Callage, that guy. So I went out there and took up, they gave me first class ticket. TWA. On that damn airplane, I read it in another news column that Sanato was going to sue Walter Karakite and CBS. Because there was a CBS interview that Don Hewitt had set up an interview with Santer's people. But then with Walter Crackardt flying out the Palm Springs where Sinatra was living. They're going to do it.

But then the Don, the Hewitt wanted to know with the mafia. And now, even though Kronkai was not supposed to talk about the mafia, He would encourage, he asked one about those guys in the organized crime. Sinatra was really, that would be betrayed. He quit the interview. I mean, he stopped the interview. I was in the paper going to be lost, loss.

I said, Jesus, I'm not going to be greeted very well as a reporter. So I went out there, California. But fortunately, I had a couple friends that owned a nightclub or a supper club called the Daisy. and Jack Hanson and Sally Hansen. There was also, she was the designer clothes called Jack's, J.A.X. In those 1960s, Jack's pants for women

were a tremendously successful item. And they invited me to have dinner with them at their club. That night I saw Sonata at the bar. I didn't talk to them yet, but I just saw him. There were two blondes. And I asked Sally Hanson, who were those blondes that they didn't know?

Then Santer got up. up, walked to the pool room. I follow him. 50, 60, 70 people in that room playing pool. And Zanja sat in a chair with a drinking hand and looked at the guy who's playing pool. His name is Holland Ellison and later found out. It's not like I'm maddy. What kind of boots you're wearing, young man? The Italian boots? No. Spanish boots? No. What are they? Why are you talking to me to say, hold on him? I don't like the way you're dressed.

I dress I'm dressed as a suit myself. Well, I don't like the way you're dressed. It's put on. I'm watching and I'm thinking, Jesus, this is crazy. That was a scene. I don't want to go out and tell you the whole story because you read the story.

But those two scenes, they're not at the bar, the blondes, that's not the board were the opening scenes of that article, which is how I really work. I don't want to interview, question, answer, question, answer.

No, you're ethereal. You pull the character into the story. feel when I read that for the first time, I was in high school. Really? Yeah, I'll tell you what happened. Esquire had an anniversary special. I think you wrote that article. It had to be 1965, I believe, they were about.

And it was the 15th anniversary of the article. And so they republished it in 1980 in Esquire. And I read the article because I think I mentioned this too before we started the interview, my uncle, New Sinatra. and we used to go down to Vincent's Clambore in Little Italy and, you know, Ferraris of that whole area. And one night I went down there with him and Sinatra was there. It wasn't with him, but he was eating with somebody else.

We went over to the table to say hello. And he couldn't have been nice. It was very charming. So when I saw his name in the article, I read the article and the article made me laugh because it was, you captured the essence of who he was. You know, there was a charming, to him. There was also a little bit of a volatile nature to him. And of course, James Kaplan,

who I think you know, wrote a biography of Sinatra, and he tried to also capture the essence of what you wrote in that and that story about Sinatra. Yeah, I... Okay. When I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my out of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth Advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IGPrivatewealth.com.

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Plans start at just $12 a month. Learn more at talus.com slash online security. No one can prevent all cybercrime or identity theft. Conditions apply. He never, I don't know if you read it. I said you read it, but I don't know if it's about to read it. And I, even though I didn't. You don't think you ever read that story?

It's most famous story ever read it? written about him. Well, he never told me, I never got a letter. But I didn't get a lawsuit either. I said this as well. But I didn't want to write it. And I don't know. I think I know why.

I didn't want to write anything to offend him because I loved him. Because he, I have to back up a minute. I told you my father's of Italy and told you my father, World War II, my father's brothers are fighting in the Italian army. I'm in a waspeed little town in Ocean City. town and Ocean City. The war in Mussolini, Dago, Wap, I was called everything by the people. I went to a broker school, a little church school. There were a couple Irish people that hated me. And I felt an outsider. I felt I'm Italian, I'm a Dago, I'm Mussolini and all that stuff.

But at the same time, Anthony, Sinatra's on the radio, singing the Lucky's like, Lucky Strike, cigarettes, their hip parade. And also, the girls in my high school class and the women who bought dresses for my mother all like Sinatra. I didn't know anything about whether they're like me or not, but I know that the people, even though I felt stigmat, I felt marked as an alien, as a minority member,

as an interloper in a way, Sonatra was accepted. He was the first Italian-American, accepted, assimilated the mainstream. Well, he made it easier for DiMaggio. He made it easier for me. He made it easier for me. DiMaggio didn't do anything.

Dodger was a great, you know, long luck. Damaggio was not a social activist. John was referred to Madgeo. He didn't even take his teammates. He didn't even have it with his teammates. Tommy Hendrick, they didn't bother with them. But Sinopto reached down. Yeah, Billy Holiday.

Oh, they shot him. Yes, and he was a anti-Semitism. racism. We armed son on. So I felt when I was a kid listening to the radio on Saturday night, and Sonantra singing when I was 12 and 13, 14. Sonata was really the guy that made me feel American. But I was saying, I don't want to write about it, but it tastes too,

it's too much a part of me to write about it. I felt uncomfortable. Well, you wrote a beautiful story about it, and I don't know if you remember. Maybe it was right to write that story. Maybe I didn't want to do it, but maybe I was born to do it. Yeah, it could be. Well, here we're still talking about it's 60 years. years later, we're still talking about it. You may even remember this in the 40s. Sanatra

did a movie. It was a 15-minute movie about racism and accepting each other. That's right. I saw that. And it was a beautiful movie, and he was trying to make the point that we're all here now as Americans. It doesn't matter what our color is. Our ethnic background, we have to learn to love each other. It's true. And it was a breakthrough movie in that time. It's true. And of course, you know, Sinatra very famously, he told the band, that Nat King Cole had to stay in the hotel with him. That's right. And it didn't matter that they weren't letting blacks into the hotel.

Matt King Cole was staying in a hotel with him, and he forced the situation. It's a great man. You know, and Quincy Jones used to tell me that story. Of course, Quincy's now passed as well. But I'm sitting in a very beautiful house here in the middle of New York, in one of the nicest areas in New York, and you got to this house, and I think you bought this house in 1958. Do I have that right?

Well, I saw it. I lived in this house as a rent. At first, as a renter. This is 1871 Brownstone. This area was developed in Central Park, was built in 1860s. In 1860s, with the park, the hold of the Upper East Side came as a result of Central Park's opening

of being, in 1970, in 1957, I rented a one-room apartment in this building. And then in 1958, I met, I started dating a girl who worked for a random house named a Nana Hearn. And in 1959, I had an assignment for the Times to go to write about the V Veneto for the New York Times Magazine. That was the summer when Felini was making Laudetteaucevita.

and Anouca Mae, Marcella Mastriani, all the stars of that show. And I'm over there writing this article, and I met a writer, a famous writer I knew, named Erwin Shaw. No one knows what they. He was a wonderful great. Rich man, poor man. Yes.

And I know me, he says, what do you do? I also have a girlfriend. She wants to come over, but she wants to get married. I don't want, have her come over, and I'll give you a party. Erwin Shaw will give me a party. Yeah. So I called Nan at Random House, and everyone's Shaw over here.

He wants, we want to come over? Come over. My wife says, I'm going to get your birthday. I want to, I want to get married. I'm not coming over. I was going to come over. So we came over, and he got us married. Everybody should have a picture.

I said, up there, right over here. Everyone's Shaw over there. With Campi Doyle. We were both fallen Catholics. My wife went to a, she went to Manhattanville, was a Sacred Heart Convent school in Purchase, New York.

She dropped. When she met me, her religion was over. because I was a falling to Catholic and I didn't want to. I was committing too many sins to sexual sins. You can always confess your sexual sins, gays, no problem. No idea. We got married and Erwin Shaw was wonderful. It gave us a big party.

I came back here and I got a second department and third apartment. In 1971, I met a gangster, Bill Bonanno. I met him when I was a reporter in the New Times. I wanted to write about him, but he didn't. to write about him, but he didn't mean, I couldn't talk to me. All the long marriage, I was crazy. No, what idea to write about. But in 1971, he was about to go to jail

to Terminal Island in California. And he said, this is the time to talk. So I went to, he had six months left. I spent six months with him. And I got to meet Joe Bann, his father, and a lot of the gangsters. So I wrote a story called Honor Thy Father, became a best seller.

I had money, 71 had money. And this house was up for sale. I bought it. Then I had, that was cheap, $175,000. But everything was cheap. It was really, that's one of the wisest things ever did. I had two daughters that lived here. There's still in New York.

And my wife doesn't walk. very well, but she's not been married since 66 years, 67 years. God bless you. And I'm 93 and she's 92. I want you to describe to us your writing style, and I'm going to say a few things about it, because I find that you're able to capture the every man. There's a quality about your writing style, where, whether it's the bartender, it's the doorman, it's the person on the street.

there's a German word called Sonder, S-O-N-D-R, and it means that everybody has their life. Everybody has their center and their narrative around them. And sometimes we walk by them on the street, we just see them as objects in our field of vision, but not you. You are able to get into their personalities, and you're able to think with great empathy about their lives. Why is that, sir? Well, because that's really where I dwell mentally. my mother and father had a store. I was always in the store after school.

I'm a store boy. The people that came in the customers all had stories. They're ordinary stories, but they were, the stories and fiction. There are stories, though, yeah. But I read fiction as a kid. I read John O'Hara, Erwin Shaw, my friend,

Hemingway, Fitzgerald, John Dos Pados. There was story-tellers. There was storytellers. Barry McCarthy was a good writer, I'd like. Storytellers, and people that had stories to tell in the shop, the dress shop or the tailor shop, were characters. Arthur Miller wrote about a failed salesman named Willie Lohman,

an international figure, but he's a full-flop of a nobody, was a nobody. I wonder about nobody to make them somebody. There's nobody's that I thought, The customers were nobody's in the sense of news, but there was somebody in the sense of storytelling. And I as a kid wanted to tell their stories. When I became a journalist and had a jaw at an outlet,

I wrote about the ordinary people, dormant. The woman who worked in the subway, maybe people who sweep the streets. They're beautiful, they're beautiful stories. What they make you feel about your own life is your humanity. They make you feel about your own life, all of that vulnerability. and all that substance.

Do you remember how we met? I see you. And where I see you was always crowds. Yeah. I don't ever see you one-on-one. That's the first time. It's the first time.

I met you. You came to a Bocconi event and we were at the racket club. And you came in, you were impeccably dressed. And I was there with the woman that's now on the Daily Beast, Joanne, you know who I'm talking about? Joanna Coles.

And I was making a presentation about the American political system. And you were impeccably dressed. She came up to me. You shook my hand. I said, sir, I'm a huge fan of yours. I've read so much of your work.

Would it be okay if I get your email? That's how we met. I'm just as you did. But you leave a very big impression on people. You need to know about your life that all of us, the way you talked about Sinatra, we talk about you. That's whatever. You made it easier for all of us.

And so I'm very grateful to you for sharing your debut. Before I let you go, if you don't mind, sir, I want you to tell me at least a paragraph, possibly more about New York. work and your love affair with New York and some of the things you wrote into town without time. Well, it is an international city. If you're going to a subway, and I'm always often in a subway, you can eavesdrop and hear three or four languages in one subway car.

My being the son of an immigrant and my mother, while she was born in Brooklyn, she was an immigrant from the same village as my father, Nick Pilegi. So I'm always, I'm always an outsider. I'm born in America. For 93 years, I've been an American. But I don't always feel it. I always feel I'm a little bit Puerto Rican. I'm a little bit big,

I got kicked out of America, that's California. I always look at the other side. What does it like to be them? How are they different from me? I'm a split personality. I'm not schizophrenic, but I always feel that when I'm someplace, I'm also over there looking,

me being someplace. I have a double vision. Two sides or three sides of your story. I always look at the other side. I always wondering if I talk to somebody and interview them, I'd like to be the first person to interview them. I want to be the first person to put their story in print. I want to be the first person to give them grounds for having an obituary. Because if I make them well known, they'll become part of history and maybe you'll get an obituary. Otherwise, they'll die in obscurity. no obituary. You know, obituaries is a very arbitrary thing.

Who gets published and who doesn't get published in the obituary page matters much to the management of the newspaper and it's also a determination of how important you are, what kind of life you live,

how much of achievements you've made. You'll get an obituary for sure. Don't worry about it. Yeah, I think so. A lot of people aren't sure. I just want that to be a long time from now, so I don't want to have it come too quickly. And significantly, one of the person

was a biturator writing named Alder Whitman was in this book. He's got so famous He won the Johnny Carson show and later wrote a book after I wrote about him in Esquire. Mr. Bad News was an obiturator

in the New York Times. So, obiturators are, you ought to know them. What do you imagine is going to be in your obituary sir, which will be many years some now, but what do you imagine? Might be next week.

What's going to happen, no doubt. It's going to be this third paragraph or the second paragraph. I've written 18 books unto the sons about my honor and their father. Thy neighbor's wife is a great controversial book.

The King of the Power you mentioned about the airtime. A bridge building of the whole book of the building of our son of Bridge. I wrote about a voyeur. I read about a lot of stories. Sinatra's, I'm known for a magazine piece. Granted, a

wonderful magazine piece, but a magazine piece. But what's it better than nothing? I'm not complaining about. But you said something about being an outsider, and so I'm an Italian-American. I wasn't even born in the city. I was born on Long Island, and my father was a labor, who was a union man,

is a crane operator, and I got lucky enough to go to Harvard and other places and built a business here in the city, but I've always been an outsider, but your writing allows us outsiders to be comfortable outsiders. This is really,

well, Sanctra did it for me, and he probably did it for all of us. But you should listen to what I'm saying, so it's very important for me to say this to you. You make us comfortable in our own skin when we read your writing. So you make it, I make it real for us. I'm very grateful.

And it makes us feel grounded and in touch with the, you're a warm guy. Thank you so much. You're somebody that has a love. Anthony, that's the nicest thing I've heard. And he would say about me. So thank you so much. But it's important for you to hear it because. Well, you're telling me and I'm listening.

This is how we create our aspiration in life. We read people like you and we say, hey, we're going to grow up. We're going to do big things in the world. So I'm very blessed to know you, sir. I want to thank you for coming on Open Book with me today. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.

I am Anthony Scaramucci, and that was Open Book. Thank you so much for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends, and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. While you're there, please leave us a rating or review. If you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions, it's at Scaramucci on X or Instagram. I'd love to hear from you. I'll see you back here next week.

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