The Voyeur's Motel

The Voyeur's Motel

On January 7, 1980, in the run-up to the publication of his landmark bestseller <i>Thy Neighbor’s Wife</i>, Gay Talese received an anonymous letter from a man in Colorado. “Since learning of your long awaited study of coast-to-coast sex in America,” the letter began, “I feel I have important information that I could contribute to its contents or to contents of a future book.” The man went on to tell Talese an astonishing secret, that he had bought a motel to satisfy his voyeuristic desires. He had built an attic “observation platform,” fitted with vents, through which he could peer down on his unwitting guests.<br /><br />Unsure what to make of this confession, Talese traveled to Colorado where he met the man—Gerald Foos—verified his story in person, and read some of his extensive journals, a secret record of America’s changing social and sexual mores. But because Foos insisted on remaining anonymous, Talese filed his reporting away, assuming the story would remain untold. Now, after thirty-five years, he’s ready to go public and Talese can finally tell his story. <i>The Voyeur’s Motel</i> is an extraordinary work of narrative journalism, at once a portrait of one complicated man, and an examination of secret lives and shifting mores in a culturally-evolving country.