Noted author Gay Talese (“Frank Sinatra Has a Cold”, The Kingdom and the Power) has a new book coming out.
The Voyeur’s Motel is allegedly based on the diaries of a man named Gerald Foos. Mr. Foos owned a motel in Colorado, and claims that he constructed special walkways above the ceilings of some of the rooms so he could secretly watch his guests having sex.
Except there are some problems with the Foos story:
Foos sold the motel, located in Aurora, Colo., in 1980 and didn’t reacquire it until eight years later, according to local property records. His absence from the motel raises doubt about some of the things Foos told Talese he saw — enough that the author himself now has deep reservations about the truth of some material he presents.
More:
Talese does note in “The Voyeur’s Motel” that he found discrepancies in Foos’s accounts. Foos’s earliest journal entries, for example, were dated 1966. But the author subsequently learned from county property records that Foos didn’t buy the Manor House Motel until 1969 — three years after he said he started watching his guests from the catwalk. “I cannot vouch for every detail that he recounts in his manuscript,” Talese writes in the book.
If you can’t vouch for details, why did you write the book? Shouldn’t this have sent up some warning flags?
In a series of interviews, he expressed surprise, disappointment and anger to learn about the transactions. He said he had not been aware of them until a reporter asked him about it on Wednesday.
“The source of my book, Gerald Foos, is certifiably unreliable,” Talese said. “He’s a dishonorable man, totally dishonorable. . . . I know that. . . . I did the best I could on this book, but maybe it wasn’t good enough.”
The odd thing is, nobody seems to be talking about pulling the book. Yet.
Edited to add: And now Talese is disavowing his disavowal:
In a statement from his publisher, Grove Atlantic, the 84-year-old author said, “Gerald Foos, as no one calls into question, was an epic voyeur, and, as I say very clearly in the text, he could also at times be an unreliable teller of his own peculiar story. When I spoke to the Washington Post reporter, I am sure I was surprised and upset about this business of the later ownership of the motel, in the [1980s]. That occurred after the bulk of the events covered in my book, but I was upset and probably said some things I didn’t, and don’t, mean. Let me be clear: 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.”
If I were a betting man, I’d bet money that there’s going to be even more information coming out that throws doubt on Foos and his claims, and that this will end badly for Talese, the book, and Grove Atlantic.
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