NEW YORK — At 60, Gay Talese has finally decided to understand--but not forgive--his immigrant father. Like so many stories of fathers and sons, this one is about guilt and a grudge.
Growing up during World War II, young Gay learned what it meant to live a double life. Outsiders viewed his dad, Joseph, as a hard-working tailor and a patriot. But in the privacy of his Ocean City, N.J., home, the old man grieved over relatives fighting for Italy against American troops.
One morning, he snapped. Enraged by the latest U.S. bombing raid over Naples, Joseph Talese stormed into Gay's bedroom and smashed his son's prized collection of model American warplanes. The boy rushed out of the house in tears and disbelief, screaming that he hated his father.
"I don't know if I ever forgave him for that," Talese says, relaxing in the study of his Manhattan townhouse. "But I \o7 understand\f7 . I understand it now because of history. Developing a sense of history, of where you came from, can explain so many things."
It can also take up 10 years of your life. In his new book, "Unto the Sons," the author of bestsellers such as "Honor Thy Father" and "The Kingdom and the Power" digs into his Italian ancestry to answer a nagging question: How did his father, a 16-year-old tailor's apprentice from Calabria, come to ply his trade in a New Jersey resort town?
Talese's exhaustive look at the roots of Italian-American immigration reaches back into antiquity and European history before focusing on the drama of his father's 1920 arrival at Ellis Island in New York, the port of entry for millions of would-be Americans. After 10 years of patient digging, he has filled 633 pages with military history, sociology and ruminations on the meaning of leaving one's native land.
It's a hugely relevant theme, 500 years after Columbus, and Talese suggests that the stories of Italian-Americans mirror other cultures as well. Most Americans are from somewhere else, he says, and even the most long-buried loyalties can erupt when a nerve is struck. Talese points out, for example, that U.S. Jews with little connection to Israel were enraged when Iraqi rockets rained on Tel Aviv during the Gulf War.
But he also explores a darker side to the immigrant saga. Although American culture deifies many who came here to start a new life, the author suggests that these pioneering men and women were also deserters who left families and traditions behind, often rationalizing their decisions.
