Though she now runs her own highly successful imprint at Random House, Nan A. Talese was once a multitasking young New York working mother and striving midlevel editor, as documented in an Aug. 26, 1969, WWD profile titled “The Other Talese.” That headline winkingly referred to Talese’s more famous husband, Gay, to whom she had been married for 10 years at that point. Thirty-five at the time of the interview, Talese addressed her husband’s influence on her ambitions head-on: “I was working at Vogue, and it was fun until it wore out,” she explained to WWD. “After eight months, fashion had begun to repeat itself, and I decided it wasn’t for me. I had met Gay by then, and I told him I wanted to do something serious that would really interest me, something more significant. He was the one who suggested publishing and got me into Random House.”
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Talese shared some style habits — possibly gleaned from her previous employer — including a preference for short skirts (“There’s something terribly unfree about pants”). But the editor was more interested in talking shop. Nonfiction, she explained, excited her more than fiction — yet, in a prescient quote, Talese noted that the latter would still have shelf life. “The reason fiction is perhaps not as well read as nonfiction today, Nan believes, is the speed of communication. ‘But because one thing becomes more popular, it doesn’t mean it kills the other. The novel will always be with us.’”