news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site, secretly watch his guests’ most private bedroom moments.

One such voyeur — victim, apparently, of the terrible and stern dictates of the penis — is Gerald Foos, the subject of Talese's new book. To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Foos certainly felt betrayed by Talese, and immediately regretted consenting to the project upon the publication of Talese's New Yorker piece. Among the scenes he claimed to have witnessed was the murder of a young woman by her boyfriend in 1977. Talese has covered bad guys before: Honor Thy Father, his 1971 book about a Mafia family, for instance. “I would have been adamant ... You don’t put that kind of stuff in there. But the journalistic no-man, the disembodied observer, the silent witness, does not exist. You also agree to our Terms of Service. A preshow dinner at 6 p.m. is free for Chicago Media Project members and costs $35 for others. That lack of consent is the book's original, irreducible sin. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Last modified on Thu 22 Feb 2018 14.53 GMT. I have covered contemporary art and film since the late 1990s, and have taught journalism and film courses at the college level since 2004. You could say voyeurism hits twice: There is the original violation of privacy and then the second punch of revelation. The Voyeur’s Motel, due out on 12 July, is Talese’s account of how Colorado motel owner Gerald Foos spent four decades spying on unsuspecting guests from an attic “observation platform” that he built in the 1960s. He also installed “viewing posts” in several bathrooms, so he could watch guests in there too. Talese presents the voyeur like the journalist's dark twin — the curious invisible observer taken a step too far. This is a chronicle of two men — writer and subject — obsessed with the theme of spying on unsuspecting, innocent people who have no idea their private lives are on display.

The murder Foos claims he saw is a key element of “The Voyeur’s Motel,” a forthcoming book by acclaimed journalist Gay Talese about Foos’s lifelong voyeurism obsession. We rely on readers like you to uphold a free press. We can join them in the attic, or we can do what Foos and Talese didn't: Look away. Premieres Friday on Netflix. We Insist: A Timeline Of Protest Music In 2020, 'I Write About Awful People,' Says Gay Talese, Credibility Concerns Overshadow Release Of Gay Talese's New Book, Foos lied to Talese about a number of important facts. Early on in “Voyeur,” the famous and controversial journalist Gay Talese takes us into the “bunker” — a converted wine cellar in his New York townhome — where he has many of his most famous articles and books.