For my feature writing students – Frank Sinatra Has a Cold

Today I’m posting an edited and updated version of something I first put up back in October 2009:

This week in my feature writing class we’re talking about a classic Esquire feature story from the mid 1960s: Gay Talese’s Frank Sinatra Has A Cold. Here is a link to the story and several commentaries about it for your consideration. (I know, not really for Intro, but many of us are either teaching or studying feature writing!)

• Frank Sinatra Has A Cold, by Gay Talese
  The article acclaimed as the best story published in Esquire.
• Paris Review – An Interview With Gay Talese
  Including a great section on the Harlan Ellison part of the story.
• Gay Talese Reads an Excerpt of Sinatra on This American Life
  Skip ahead to about the 38 minute mark in the program.
• Mary Louise Parker Reads Beginning of FSHAC as a bedtime story
  I have no way to explain this.  But it is fun.
• NPR Interview with Talese
  Talese discusses the liabilities of the “new journalism.”
• C-SPAN Book TV Interview with Talese
  James Reagan interviews Gay Talese in 1999 at the LA Times Festival of Books.