Art & Creativity Quote by Gay Talese

Thirteen years lands like both a brag and a bruise. Gay Talese isn’t just telling you how long he worked; he’s insisting on a disappearing standard of attention. In an era that treats speed as virtue and output as identity, the line reframes time itself as a credential. It’s the quiet flex of a reporter who came up when access had to be earned in person, when facts were gathered by shoe leather and patience, and when prose got the kind of revision that looks, from today’s churn, almost monastic.

The syntax matters. “I took on this last book” makes the project sound less like a product than a burden you shoulder. “Took on” carries the muscle memory of Talese’s generation of narrative journalists: immersion, obsessive detail, the willingness to follow a story past the point where it’s profitable or even sane. “Last book” adds a valedictory edge, hinting at mortality and finality. At 80-something, the phrase functions as a boundary line: this is the culmination, the closing argument, the one that cost him years he can’t replace.

Subtext: a defense against the suspicion that long gestation equals self-indulgence. Talese is preemptively justifying the scope, the delays, the obsession. He’s also staking a claim in the ongoing fight over what journalism should be. Not hot takes, not content, but crafted narrative built from time-intensive reporting. The sentence is a small manifesto: if it took 13 years, it’s because some truths won’t show up on deadline.