Read Online A Writer's Life by Gay Talese - Free Book Online Page B

nearly 6:45 p.m. I had been watching television for about five and a half hours. I was restive. My wife was still upstairs reading. Her door was closed. She had called down earlier, requesting that I lower the sound coming from the television. She also suggested that we dine out in a restaurant that night, but not before 8:30. I was about to turn off the program, but hesitated. Usually after a major sporting event—a World Series game, a championship prizefight, tennis from Wimbledon, the Super Bowl—the losing competitors were invited to the microphones to offer their views and explanations concerning the outcome. I was hoping to hear something from the Chinese, especially from Liu Ying. But the network terminated its World Cup broadcast shortly after 6:45 without a word from her and without any information about how she was bearing up.
    Why did I care? Why did I quietly think about her throughout dinner while I listened listlessly to my wife and a few of our friends who had joined our table at Elaine’s? Why was I so disappointed and displeased the following morning after I had perused several newspaper articles about the game and learned nothing that I wanted to know about Liu Ying? Later in the week when the newsmagazine cover stories that featured the World Cup also failed to include even a brief interview with her, or any information that would satisfy my curiosity about her, I telephoned an important editor I knew named Norman Pearlstine, who oversaw the publication of Time Warner’s many periodicals—among them
Sports Illustrated, Time
, and
People
—and I asked if he might consider ordering a story in one of his magazines that would describe how the Chinese people had responded to Liu Ying’s return, and how she herself had reacted and was reacting to her Rose Bowl experience, and, finally, what if anything this had to say about contempory attitudes and expectations with regard to young women in a changing China.
    If I was sounding a bit lofty on the phone as I impersonated being an editor to one of the most savvy and successful editors in New York, it did not greatly concern me. I was sixty-seven. He was maybe fifty. At my advanced age, I have become accustomed to being indulged by younger people, many of them no doubt encouraged by the fact that they will not have to indulge me much longer. And so I let Norman Pearlstine indulge me. I elaborated and digressed without any interruption on his part, and while at no point did he commit himself or even pass judgment on my idea, he also voiced no objection when I volunteered to send him a memo expressing my thoughts in writing.
    I faxed him at once.
    Dear Norman:
    As I was saying on the phone, I believe that last week’s single blocked kick of the Chinese World Cup soccer player, Liu Ying, might provide us with a story angle by which we may measure China and the United States in ways well beyond the realm of sports competition.
    There’s a photo in today’s
New York Times
showing President Clinton greeting the triumphant American women in the White House. How did China’s officials greet the Chinese women after their return to their homeland? Who was at the airport?… the story should be told through this one woman, Liu Ying, a step-by-step account of how her life has gone since her foot failed her in the Rose Bowl.
    Back in the 1950s I began my
Times
career as a sportswriter, and I’ve always found losers’ locker rooms as learning experiences; and I think that the losing effort by the Chinese women last week in California might tell us a lot about our comparative societies.
    I’d be happy to assist if you and your other colleagues think I can. I could assist your China-based correspondents with an interview, or sidebar writing, or whatever.
    I’d surely be interested in visiting the mainland if you think I’ll be a help … so after you have had time to think it through, let me