Invasion of privacy
Was Talese conned by an unreliable narrator or has he simply lost his power?
If you were a high-profile journalist, how would you react if you received an unsigned letter from a motel owner who admits spying on his guests? Especially one who writes, “I have witnessed, observed and studied the best first-hand, unrehearsed, non-laboratory sex between couples, and most other conceivable sex deviations, during these past 15 years.”
Would your obligation be to the ethics of your profession, to report a peeping tom, or would you just be thinking, “this could be my next book?”
Legendary journalist Gay Talese received this letter in 1980, when what would become his controversial bestseller, Thy Neighbor’s Wife, exploring the effects of the sexual revolution, was soon to be published.
So he was curious about the letter’s author, an amateur sex researcher by the name of Gerald Foos, who purported to be following in the footsteps of controversial biologist and sexologist Alfred Kinsey. In recent weeks, since The New Yorker magazine published a long excerpt from his new book, The Voyeur’s Motel, Talese has been the centre of a commotion about ethical lapses and shoddy research. In the book he writes that after receiving Foos’s letter, he was “deeply unsettled by the way (Foos) had violated his customers’ trust and invaded their privacy.”
But he was interested enough to see for himself if Foos was legit, so he visited him in Colorado a few weeks later. Afraid of lawsuits, Foos had Talese sign an agreement that stated, “I would not identify him by name, or publicly associate his motel, with whatever information he shared with me, until he had granted me a waiver.”
Then the journalist joined Foos in the attic beneath the motel’s pitched roof, where three layers of shag carpet deadened the sounds of their footsteps. In 12 rooms, Foos had installed ventilation grilles in the ceilings above the beds so he could observe his guests. Talese describes watching with Foos as a couple from Chicago has sex. (In a comical moment, Talese’s redstriped necktie slips through the slats of the vent and dangles within yards of the couple, who are too absorbed in their lovemaking to notice.)
For the next quarter-century, Talese received hundreds of pages of notes from Foos documenting every kind of sex as well as various fetishes. The notes dominate The
Voyeur’s Motel, often with minimal commentary or framing by Talese. In this way the book differs from most of Talese’s work, which has typically relied on the author’s extensive, on-the-scene observations of his subjects.
As Talese later would explain, “There was no way I could spend years of my life staying at that motel, lying beside him in the attic night after night. I had to defer the role of the observer to the observer himself.”
While we might sympathize, it’s now apparent that Talese didn’t do even elementary due diligence.
The Washington Post has reported that property records show Foos had sold the motel in 1980, which changed hands again before Foos bought it back in 1988. (Talese seems not to have been aware of the first sale.)
While most of Foos’s activities took place in the 1970s, Talese writes in The Voyeur’s Motel that “from the 1980s through the 1990s … the mail continued to bring me personal greetings and attic-observed information from Gerald Foos …”
When the Washington Post reporter informed Talese, now 84, of several discrepancies, Talese at first said he would not be promoting the book now that “its credibility is down the toilet.”
Later he reversed himself, saying, “I am not disavowing the book and neither is my publisher. If, down the line, there are details to correct in later editions, we’ll do that.”
That’s a likely outcome, given that Talese admits in the book itself that he doubts the reliability of some of Foos’s research, since he found inconsistencies in some details and dates.
Adding to the murky circumstances, Talese’s publisher, Grove Press, paid Foos an undisclosed fee for his “research.”
So is this a case of Talese being conned by an unreliable source or has the great journalist lost his powers?
Talese is a pioneer of what in the 1960s was called “The New Journalism” and today is referred to as “literary journalism” or “longform” journalism.
His books and magazine articles over the years have become a collective template for the blending of a reporter’s dedicated fact-gathering with the literary tool kit of the novelist. Talese’s 1966 Esquire profile Frank Sinatra Has a Cold has been called the greatest magazine profile ever written. At a time when some of his peers — Truman Capote, Gail Sheehy and Joe McGinniss, for example — had been accused of taking liberties with the facts, Talese was considered an exemplary reporter.
But his work didn’t keep pace with his reputation. Some assumed he was past his prime, his career permanently stalled.
But with The Voyeur’s Motel (in 2013, Foos had finally agreed to waive their agreement), Talese hoped the copious note-taking of a peeping tom would show everyone not only that he’s still in the game, but that he remains a marquee player.
His subject, Foos, claims to be a social scientist but unscientifically chose the guests for his “viewing rooms” based on how attractive they were, and often made distinctly presumptuous observations about them.
He rationalized that his guests weren’t affected by his spying since they didn’t know they were being watched, that “there’s no invasion of privacy if no one complains.”
But Foos also entered some of their rooms to check women’s bras for their precise sizes and, in some cases, to dispose of illegal drugs.
This brings us to the book’s most disturbing incident, which allegedly took place in November 1977 when a drug dealer and his girlfriend were staying in a room at the motel. Foos observed the dealer selling to schoolchildren, so while the couple were out he flushed the drugs down the toilet.
Later, when the dealer found his stash was gone, he accused his girlfriend and Foos witnessed him assaulting the woman, choking her and leaving her lying on the motel room floor.
Noticing that she was still breathing, Foos convinced himself she would live and didn’t notify the police until the next day when a maid found the body. (Obviously Foos was wrong — she had not survived.)
“I spent a few sleepless nights asking myself whether I ought to turn Foos in,” Talese writes, but having read about the incident in Foos’s notes six years after it had happened he reasoned “it was now too late to save her.”
Once Talese was freed from the confidentiality agreement and was preparing the book, he contacted the local police to ask about the death of a woman in Foos’s motel in 1977. They told him they could find no records for such a case. Were their archives unreliable? Did Foos invent the story? Here, and elsewhere when readers need him, Talese is strangely absent.
When The New Yorker ran its excerpt, Talese’s inactions became the subject of ethical debate. Although journalists often honour confidentiality agreements, those stories are usually in the public interest. Still, there is a long tradition and ample case law for protecting anonymity, even that of lawbreakers. But that doesn’t mean journalists are exempt from their obligation to research diligently.