Annotated version of Gay Talese’s Joe DiMaggio profile: Grantland

Grantland has published an annotated version of Gay Talese’s much-loved Esquire profile of Joe DiMaggio.

Grantland has published an annotated version of Gay Talese’s much-loved Esquire profile of Joe DiMaggio. The version, written by Michael MacCambridge, contains some great insights into the story, Talese’s approach, and even DiMaggio.

If you’ve read the story you will likely remember this passage:

His gray hair was thinning at the crown, but just barely, and his face was lined in the right places, and his expression, once as sad and haunted as a matador's, was more in repose these days, though, as now, tension had returned and he chain-smoked and occasionally paced the floor and looked out the window at the people below. In the crowd was a man he did not wish to see.

Here’s the annotation:

The man was Gay Talese himself. "I didn't want to inject myself into the story," Talese says. "I didn't want the tone of the piece to be first-person. He's a distant man and I wanted a distant voice. I wanted it to be afar, a little bit away from the central scene I'm trying to describe."

For more, check out the story over at Grantland.

Lauren McKeon