Bartleby and Me: A Reporter’s Life Among the Characters of New York City

“When I joined the Times in the mid-1950s, I wanted to specialize in writing about nobodies,” explains Talese (The Voyeur’s Motel) in this nostalgic jaunt through his career. Hired as a copy boy, Talese made a name for himself by covering “the nobodies” who worked at the Times itself, such as electrician James Torpey, whose job for over 30 years was to operate the paper’s famous “electromechanical moving-letter news sign.” Throughout his tenure at the Times, Talese reported on the goings-on of “non-newsworthy people: doormen, bootblacks, dog walkers, [and] scissor grinders.” He explains that “as a reader, I was always drawn to fiction writers who could make ordinary people seem extraordinary,” and cites Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener,” about a contrarian Manhattan law clerk, as an influence. In the book’s star-studded second part, Talese reminisces about the three months he spent within Frank Sinatra’s inner circle on assignment for Esquire, while part three recounts the strange tale of Nicholas Bartha, who in 2006 blew up his beloved 62nd Street brownstone to prevent it from being seized in a divorce settlement. A smooth and enchanting wordsmith, Talese delivers a lovely testament to the “unobtrusive if not kindred Bartleby personalities” of New York City. It’s a delight. (Sept.)