If we had had a daughter, I would have been ruthless in insisting that her beaux were well turned out!

He looks better than any foto I've seen on the fora.

I was in the VIP reception area one time at the L.A. Times Festival of Books at UCLA a few years ago, and Gay Talese was there. He was indeed very elegantly turned out. "Dapper as an Italian tailor," as my brother-in-law, one of the organizers of the event, remarked. Who the best-dressed man there was would have been a close-run thing between Gay Talese and the then-editor of the LA Times Book Review Section, Steve Wasserman, a very elegant chap in his own right. I would have placed a distant third, but I had dressed fairly casually to mollify my wife.

Talese is a writer, a "pop" one at that, like Wolfe, and can dress like this. In fact, it might even be expected. I know it's a bit of chicken and egg but certain walks of life beg for certain looks and indeed attract certain types of people. Talese is a nonconformist allowed more latitude than a similar nonconformist would be allowed in a more conservative occupation. Would you think it odder if he dressed like a Fortune 500 CEO?

I remember 35 years ago The Godfather being a very readable book. I actually picked up the Last Don from the library for a vacation read this summer. I lasted a dozen pages. It was really, really, really, bad.