Comment on Gay Talese honored at 21 Club for classic Sinatra profile

NEW YORK (AP) — A half century after completing a magazine piece that had frustrated and disappointed him, Gay Talese was honored at the 21 Club for his landmark Esquire story on Frank Sinatra.Tom Wolfe, Robert Caro and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg were among those seated at the banquet table Monday night as toasts were offered to Talese, whose "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" has been reissued by Taschen as an illustrated coffee table book."That is a classic," Wolfe said of Talese's story, joking that his longtime friend included such rich and intimate detail in his work he would say to himself, "He's making this stuff up."Talese's stylish, 15,000-word epic was published in Esquire's April 1966 issue and is widely regarded as a model for the expansive and self-consciously literary "New Journalism" of the '60s and '70s and as one of the greatest and most revealing celebrity profiles, even though Talese never spoke to Sinatra.Before Monday's dinner, the 83-year-old Talese told The Associated Press that Esquire had asked him to write about Sinatra, nearing his 50th birthday at the time.