Gay Talese, New Jersey's most famous living writer, is leaving Ocean City.

The sale of his his century-old Gardens section home, agreed to on Monday morning, closes a chapter in the author's 79-year life.

The pending sale, with a closing set for June 10, means Talese is departing the town where he was born—a place that shaped him as a writer and person.

Talese contends he learned how to listen and interview people by overhearing the commerce in his mother's dress shop on Asbury Avenue, the city's main street.

Talese and his sister, Marian, an artist who still lives in Ocean City, grew up in an apartment above the dress shop run by his mother, Catherine, and the adjacent tailor shop owned by his father, Joseph.

An Italian-American with a distinctive name and a distinctive way of formally dressing in an otherwise WASPy and homogeneous town, Talese believes that growing up as something of an outsider in his own hometown helped shape him as a journalist and nonfiction writer.

Considered one of the founding fathers of what became known as the New Journalism, Talese pioneered the use of narrative storytelling borrowed from fiction, clefting it with sharply observed detail gained from immersion in his subjects and their lives.

He wrote large portions of several of his books in his third-floor office at his E. Atlantic Boulevard home, particularly Unto the Sons, which chronicled his early years as an immigrant's son growing up in Ocean City.

His pending departure strikes home for me as a reporter—I first met Gay in 1986 in that modest attic office. We've remained friendly since.

Last fall, I learned that his home was for sale, but I put off writing about the sale at Gay's request, because he has until recently remained conflicted about selling the home and leaving the island where he was born.

As he wrote to me in a Dec. 28 letter postponing his plans to sell, "It's an emotional decision and I'm not yet ready to leave my hometown."

On Monday, he explained his decision to finally sell during a 20-minute phone conversation.

"I have been emotional, but it's been four years since my mother's death. So that's that," he said, sounding relieved that the papers were signed and a decision finally made.

The sale was prompted, in part, by the surprise purchase last year of a Connecticut country home by his wife, publisher Nan Talese. She has her own book imprint at Knopf Doubleday.

Talese and his wife are familiar fixtures each summer on the city's tennis courts, arriving in formal attire, with him driving in one of his two classic British sports cars. One of the cars was having its chrome buffed Monday when I stopped by the house.

The Taleses bought the home in 1967 for $32,000.

"In all the years since 1967, my wife has inconvenienced herself by coming down most summer weekends, often just for three days, down the 130-mile parking lot known as the Garden State Parkway. And last year she bought a house in Roxbury that is half as far away.

"I didn't have any compelling reason to come when my mother was dead. I didn't come to take her out, to take her out to eat. Ocean City was no longer the center of our life. Ocean City became out of range.

"I didn't want to depart Ocean City until now. Ocean City was my escape. I did a lot of writing there, so I guess somewhere in there, in what I've said to you, is the reason I can no longer justify keeping it."

His real estate agent, Cheryl Huber, confirmed that the house originally was listed for $2 million last fall and most recently was listed for $1.8 million.

Huber would not disclose the sale price, but she did say Talese did not sell to the highest bidder, but to the buyer he'd committed to first verbally.

"He's very unique and authentic," she said of Talese.

Huber first met the author when she handled the sale of his mother's home several years ago.

His mother's Ocean City home became a teardown, destroyed within minutes of it being sold. He didn't want that to happen to his own home.

He took less money from the contracted buyer than the top offer because the family who is purchasing the house wants to rehab and keep the home as it is. He said they have teenaged children and he likes the idea of the home remaining in use by a family.

He met the buyers several weeks ago before agreeing to sell. Huber has for now declined to identify the buyers.

"For the family resort Ocean City still is, this is a wonderful home for a family, with all of its bedrooms. It offers a lot of solitude," Talese said.

For more information on Talese: randomhouse.com/kvpa/talese/

For more information on the listing: OceanCityHomes.com