GAY TALESE  never learned to swim and only occasionally ventures onto the beach. The wind makes it impossible for him to read the newspaper and, he said, during a recent visit to his second home in Ocean City, N.J., “I’m not going to sit on the sand swatting flies.”

Yet for the last 40 years, Mr. Talese, a writer, and his wife, Nan, a Manhattan book editor, have spent weekends and summers there, in the town where he was born, tucked into a rambling red-shingled Victorian they own that sits just one block from the ocean.

Unlike the Hamptons or Litchfield, Conn., where many of the couple’s Manhattan friends seek refuge, Ocean City has long been a getaway for middle-class Philadelphians.

SECOND-HOME TOWN Nan and Gay Talese at their 1902 house in Ocean City, N.J., where Mr. Talese was born

The Taleses like it because it’s the antithesis of the Manhattan literary whirl. So, don’t ask for a whole-wheat roll at the hoagie shop, or a chic mixed drink when you’re dining out. Ocean City has been dry since its beginnings as a Methodist retreat in 1879. Night life? Choose between the kiddie rides on the boardwalk or star-gazing on the beach.

“It’s a great contrast to New York,” said Mr. Talese, who is 75, as he conducted a tour around town, pointing out the building on Asbury Avenue where his mother owned a dress shop, his father ran a tailoring business and the family lived in an upstairs apartment.

Large parts of many of his books, including “The Kingdom and the Power”; “Thy Neighbor’s Wife”; “Unto the Sons,” a family reminiscence that’s largely set in Ocean City; and his latest, “A Writer’s Life,” were written in the third-floor office of his Ocean City Victorian.

“Nobody bothers me here,” he said. “I much prefer it in winter. It’s empty, and you can see the sky. It’s light, and cheerful.”

Built in 1902, the house sits on a tree-lined street in one of the resort town’s most desirable neighborhoods, the Gardens. As in most houses of its kind at the shore, the first floor is raised above street level to take advantage of sea breezes, with a wraparound porch, white wicker furniture and a green-and-white-striped awning. Although the original view from the front porch favored dunes stretching all the way to the Atlantic, by the time the Taleses arrived there were already houses across the street. Five years ago, those were torn down and replaced by town houses, which still did nothing to revive the old sea view.

If you squint, though, you can still see a bit of ocean from a wide window seat in the second-floor master bedroom. Mrs. Talese, who is publisher of Nan A. Talese/Doubleday books (her writers include Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan), likes to read there in the afternoons after her morning swim and some weeding in the garden. “It’s marvelous with the sun on your skin,” she said.

The house has seven bedrooms, four on the second floor and three on the third, one of which is Mr. Talese’s office. The three bathrooms on the second and third floors contain original claw-foot tubs, each painted to coordinate with the wall color.

Their purchase of the house came about almost by accident. The couple rented it for the summer in 1967 when their older daughter, Pamela, was a toddler, and their younger daughter, Catherine, was a newborn. They were planning to rent it again the next summer when they discovered that another family was considering buying it to live in year-round.

“I said to Gay, ‘Buy it,’ ” Mrs. Talese recalled. They were renting an apartment in an Upper East Side brownstone, a building they would buy many years later, and had little money to spare. But it didn’t deter her. “It was on the spur of the moment,” she said. “He’s cautious. He wants to be unfettered. But I like real estate.”

It turned out to be a wise investment. The house cost $32,000, including the adjoining lot. Mr. Talese said he recently had offers of $1 million to $1.4 million.

Although the two considered buying a place in the Hamptons or Connecticut in the 1970s to be able to spend more time with friends, they decided it would be too much like their social life in New York.

“It’s a place to be away,” Mrs. Talese said. “When we come down, we just stay at home.”

One of the first major changes they made was to winterize the house so Mr. Talese could write there year-round. A deck was added on the back, and bookshelves were added to in the dining and living rooms. And a pantry wall in the kitchen was demolished to open up the space.

Mr. Talese’s third-floor office is set up so that he rarely has to leave. There is a bed that he sleeps in when he’s in Ocean City alone; an ancient IBM Selectric with a grimy plastic cover; and a five-year-old Power Macintosh, which is not connected to the Internet. (Mr. Talese does not engage in e-mail and prefers to hand-deliver his manuscripts to his editors). To reduce the glare from a skylight, Mr. Talese has put together a plastic foam canopy that swoops over his U-shaped desk like a sail on a blustery day. Mrs. Talese calls it “the suspension bridge.”

His summer routine is to write in the morning, play tennis in the afternoon, then maybe watch a game on the 36-inch Sony Trinitron with DirecTV service that he has set up in his office. His tastes run from the Yankees to Japanese skiing.

At the other end of the hall is a room that doubles as a home gym (Mr. Talese lifts weights, and Mrs. Talese uses a videotape for Pilates) and a guest room for visiting writers. The novelist William Kennedy and Mr. Talese’s cousin, Nick Pileggi, are among those who have stayed and worked there for extended periods.

The house is strictly a kick-off-your-shoes-and-stay-awhile place, even though Mr. Talese continues his habit of dressing formally — even in the heat of summer.

“There’s nothing spiffy about this place,” Mr. Talese said one 90-degree day earlier this summer, looking natty in a long-sleeve, pink linen shirt with contrasting white collar, cufflinks, tan pants, a yellow-and-green neck scarf, white belt and brown shoes. Outdoors, he covered his silver hair with a straw fedora and, by early evening when the sun had lost its edge, slipped on a beige jacket with a yellow silk handkerchief tucked in the pocket.

Memories are what seem to count most in the Taleses’ Ocean City home. In the living room, the surface of an old baby grand piano with yellowing keys that once belonged to Mr. Talese’s parents is crowded with family photos and pictures of him with his writing peers — John Irving, Kurt Vonnegut, William Styron, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller. In one baby photo, the Taleses’ daughter Catherine, now a photo editor in New York, sits on the lap of the legendary Random House editor Bennett Cerf.

Journalist pals, like the late David Halberstam, have always been frequent guests. Pamela Talese remembers her father and his writing cronies lined up on the front porch in their chairs in the mornings, each with his own copy of The New York Times.

Growing up, the Talese children remember old-fashioned summers of swimming, biking and baseball games in the yard. But they also had chores. Each morning they would buy their father a glazed doughnut, leave it outside his office door, then return at 11 a.m. with a plate of poached eggs. After reserving a tennis court for her father in the afternoon, Pamela would bring him a hoagie sandwich and half a beer at 3 p.m. while he watched a ballgame on TV. “Then he would go back and write,” she said.

Although the Talese children have long been on their own, they say they still love visiting the Ocean City house. Once there, they fall into the old routine — padding around in bare feet and taking daily dips in the ocean with their mother, who’s an avid swimmer. On a rare day, they might even catch a glimpse of their father on the beach in a long-sleeve shirt, straw hat, neck scarf and swim trunks, struggling with a newspaper and swatting flies.

By RICHARD DEGENER Staff Writer press of Atlantic City0 comments

CAPE MAY — Rising scallop prices helped boost this commercial fishing port’s catch to $81 million in 2010, an increase of slightly more than 10 percent over 2009.

Dock foreman Herb Singleton (right) checks the weight of bags as scallops are offloaded from the boat at the Lobster House Dock in Cape May. The Port of Cape May is the number two port for fish landings along the easter seaboard for value of the seafood.

“The catch is the same. It’s just that the price is better,”said Tom McNulty Jr., 30, of Middle Township, who works on the family-owned scallop boat Negotiator.

The 2010 data kept Cape May — including docks in Wildwood — the second largest port on the East Coast behind New Bedford, Mass., which retained its No. 1 ranking with $306 million in catch. New Bedford, also a large scallop port, totaled $249 million in fish in 2009.

Massachusetts remained the top state for scallops by harvesting 31.2 million pounds of the 57.5-million-pound U.S. catch. New Jersey was No. 2 at 14.2 million pounds.

Cape May’s $81 million is what the fishermen are paid, but the federal government says the value increases sixfold as fisheries’products make their way to wholesalers, retailers, and consumers.

McNulty returned to port Thursday from a five-day fishing trip to an ocean area known as the Hudson Canyon. The Negotiator returned with its limit of 18,000 pounds of sea scallops and unloaded them at Cold Spring Fish & Supply on Schellenger’s Landing.

But it isn’t the catch that resulted in Port of Cape May’s total increasing from $73.4 million in 2009 to $81 million in 2010. The average price paid for East Coast scallops jumped from $6.59 to $7.92 per pound during the year. The 2010 fisheries data are just being released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and there are indications that 2011 will be an even better year.

Keith Laudeman, who owns the dock where McNulty unloaded Thursday, said scallop prices have gone above $10 a pound at times this year.

Visitors line up to purchase seafood at the Lobster House market in Cape May

“It’s good. It’s always good when you get more for your product. Scallops are in all the restaurants wherever you go in the country. You go anywhere now and they’re on the menu and I don’t see that changing,” Laudeman said.

Jeff Reichle, of Lund’s Fisheries on Ocean Drive, said the March tsunami in Japan has helped boost scallop prices even higher by hurting aquaculture operations in Japan. A weak dollar also helped scallop exports.

“Most people look at scallops as a luxury item that is still affordable,” Reichle said.

Squid also helped boost local catch. Lund’s Fisheries is New Jersey’s major squid company. California led squid catches with 286 million pounds, but New Jersey had the second highest catch at 20.3 million pounds.

Reichle said a weak dollar helped with exports of squid and other fish. The industry saw record prices for illex squid this summer, and Reichle said boats are looking for good fall fishing for loligo squid.

“We’re exporting more products all the time,” Reichle said.

Hampton Roads, Va., was the third largest port on the East Coast, trailing Cape May, 2010 data show.

Cape May did slip from the fifth largest port in the country to the seventh largest due to the phenomenal growth of the fishing industry in Alaska. Dutch Harbor-Unalaska, Kodiak, Naknek, Cordova, and Akutan are the five Alaskan ports ahead of Cape May.

“Alaska is very strong on salmon and halibut. Some vessels operate at huge scales, way beyond ours,” said Greg DiDomenico of the Garden State Seafood Association.

Still, DiDomenico said, optimism is high with scallop prices rising and quotas increasing next year for a number of fin fish, including fluke and scup, or porgy.

“What we’re getting back is the opportunity for our traditional winter trawl fisheries,” DiDomenico said.

Barnegat Light and Point Pleasant also saw increases in the value of the catch, but a decline in surf clams hurt the Port of Atlantic City.

Barnegat Light — which includes all of Long Beach Island — went from 8.1 million pounds worth $21.7 million in 2009 to 8.5 million pounds worth $25.8 million. Barnegat Light is one of the most diverse fishing ports, with scallops, tunas, swordfish, tilefish, monkfish, bluefish, bunker, croakers, spiny dogfish, and many other species. The port specializes in fresh fish and has a fleet of smaller boats that use nets to catch fish by their gills.

“You have really the last gillnet fleet in New Jersey,”DiDomenico said.

Barnegat Light was the 38th largest port in the U.S. in 2009 but moved up to No. 33 in 2010.

Atlantic City, which mostly has ocean clamming vessels, declined from No. 37 to No. 49 as inshore surf clam beds continue to disappear in New Jersey. The value of the Atlantic City catch dropped from $24.2 million in 2009 to $17.3 million in 2010.

Point Pleasant Beach, Ocean County, also registered gains with a jump from 18.4 million pounds worth $20.2 million to 20.9 million pounds worth $22.8 million. The port rose from No. 41 in the nation to No. 37. Point Pleasant Beach could continue rising with a big increase in the scup quota next year.

“It’s becoming a strong scup port. You have these guys going back to traditional trawl fisheries,” DiDomenico said.

On the beach near The View Condominiums at 101 Boardwalk, Atlantic City. Produced and edited by Ian Lazarus, The View Condos, Project Director, For more information about the condos contact us at info@ViewAC.com 609-457-0258  ~ www.TheViewAtlanticCity.com

Do you love our new logo ?