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The Voyeur's Motel
by
On January 7, 1980, in the run-up to the publication of his landmark bestseller Thy Neighbor’s Wife, 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 ...more
Hardcover, 240 pages
Published July 12th 2016 by Grove Press
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Popular Answered Questions
This isn't a question but a comment. I read the book and just watched the documentary on Netflix called "Voyeur". Very interesting but still leaves me wondering - is this guy's story is true?
Tim I hope not. The book was creepy and disgusting. I'm equally disturbed by the actions of Gerald Foos and the writing of Gay Talese. Foos is an interest…moreI hope not. The book was creepy and disgusting. I'm equally disturbed by the actions of Gerald Foos and the writing of Gay Talese. Foos is an interesting, albeit disturbed individual, but what he did doesn't warrant publishing. He should have gone to jail. Maybe Talese should have, too. (less)
Susan Abenilla-brown there is no simple answer - I have not finished the book yet, but this is both the story of the voyeur and how he started and ran his business and als…morethere is no simple answer - I have not finished the book yet, but this is both the story of the voyeur and how he started and ran his business and also of the author both coming to terms with his decision to not say anything about it when it first came to his attention and also his reporting of the motel owner's reports of guests.(less)
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Community Reviews
Showing 1-30
Average rating 3.24 ·
· 3,064 ratings · 415 reviews
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Oct 03, 2017 Matt rated it did not like it
“I know a married man with two children who bought a twenty-one-room motel near Denver many years ago in order to become its resident voyeur. With his wife nearby to assist, he cut rectangular-shaped holes in the ceilings of a dozen rooms, each hole measuring six by fourteen inches. Then he covered the openings with louvered aluminum screens that simulated ventilation grilles, but were in fact, observation vents that allowed him, while he knelt or stood on the thickly carpeted floor of the attic ...more
Jul 14, 2016 Elyse Walters rated it it was amazing
Freaky .... Freaky .... Creepy!!!!!
Gerald Foos is the former owner of the Manor House ....a twenty-one room motel near Denver. (Aurora, Colorado). He later owned the Riviera motel, about a 10 minute drive from the Manor House. It was a two-story building with seventy-two rooms.
Foos was married with two children. His first wife, Donna assisted Gerald with cutting
rectangular-shaped holes in the ceilings of a dozen rooms, each hole measuring six by fourteen inches at the Manor House. His second w ...more
Gerald Foos is the former owner of the Manor House ....a twenty-one room motel near Denver. (Aurora, Colorado). He later owned the Riviera motel, about a 10 minute drive from the Manor House. It was a two-story building with seventy-two rooms.
Foos was married with two children. His first wife, Donna assisted Gerald with cutting
rectangular-shaped holes in the ceilings of a dozen rooms, each hole measuring six by fourteen inches at the Manor House. His second w ...more
Oct 01, 2016 Trin rated it it was ok
A guy I have a crush on recommended this book to me. Warning sign?
Jul 28, 2016 Susan rated it did not like it
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Oct 24, 2016 Guy Portman rated it really liked it
The Voyeur’s Motel consists of the confessions of a motel owner and voyeur by the name of Gerald Foos. His lifelong obsession began in childhood, spying on his aunt through the window of her bedroom. It was his purchase in the 1960s of the Manor Park Motel in Aurora, Colorado that provided Foos with the perfect opportunity to indulge in his passion. Having constructed a viewing area above some of the rooms, consisting of a carpeted crawl space and artificial vents in the ceiling, he embarked on ...more
Jul 22, 2016 Ammar rated it liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: read-in-2016
3.5 stars for this book.
This book isn't as explosive as one would think. Yes, an owner of a hotel rigged some rooms and spied on his visitors in various sexual positions and in various sexual arrangements.
Nothing shocking was described in the pages of the journal that Gerald Foos would send to Gay Talese over the years. Yes it was an invasion of privacy, but at the same time it was harmless. The guy was curious, and he took it a bit too far.
Is he mentally ill? I don't think so. As he got olde ...more
This book isn't as explosive as one would think. Yes, an owner of a hotel rigged some rooms and spied on his visitors in various sexual positions and in various sexual arrangements.
Nothing shocking was described in the pages of the journal that Gerald Foos would send to Gay Talese over the years. Yes it was an invasion of privacy, but at the same time it was harmless. The guy was curious, and he took it a bit too far.
Is he mentally ill? I don't think so. As he got olde ...more
Dec 09, 2016 Angus McKeogh rated it really liked it
Built around the nonfiction tale of a Colorado motel owner that built observation portals into some of his establishment's rooms, this guy watches how people's private and public images are so very different. He sees everything from a brother and a sister having sex and a priest beating off to a porno mag to a murder. Some of the events seem fanciful due to timing and evidence checked after the fact; however, the truthfulness of the proprietor never really comes into question. Most amazing of al ...more
Feb 28, 2017 Debra Komar rated it did not like it
After 50 pages, I wanted to have a shower and throw this book in the trash where it belongs. This is a "true life" account of a hotel owner who spied on his guests for years and of the author who joined him in his voyeurism in the name of "journalism."
The question here is not how the motel owner got away with it, or even why he did it, but rather why Talese thinks we want to read about it. There is nothing compelling here - it is just repugnant and repulsive. The fact that no guest names are re ...more
The question here is not how the motel owner got away with it, or even why he did it, but rather why Talese thinks we want to read about it. There is nothing compelling here - it is just repugnant and repulsive. The fact that no guest names are re ...more
Apr 11, 2016 Sketchbook rated it did not like it
Posturing as nonfiction, here's really baaad fiction by a basse-bourgeois writer who should forget Sex and stick to writing about bridges. Talese's fantasies are not interesting because he is not interesting. ...more
Aug 05, 2016 John Lamb rated it liked it
This book would have been much more interesting in someone else's hands that would have pushed the creep at the book's center more in his hypocrisy and inconsistencies and looked at the wider scope of the subject as well as found the victims of the voyeurism. ...more
Jun 08, 2020 Eric_W rated it liked it
This is a bizarre little book. Talese is known for his vignettes of people from sports stars to gangsters. He's also been intrigued by the sexual habits of Americans (Thy Neighbors Wife raised more than a few eyebrows as he inserted himself into the story to write his book.) This book came out long after TNW but only because he was waiting for permission from the ostensible author to reveal himself.
Talese had received a hand-written letter from a man who claimed to have purchase a 21-room motel ...more
Talese had received a hand-written letter from a man who claimed to have purchase a 21-room motel ...more
Jul 30, 2016 Amanda Nan Dillon rated it really liked it
This just fed my persistently nosy mentality. Part of me is horrified by this -- horrified that I slurped this book up in less than 3 hours of reading, horrified that this went on and he never got caught, horrified for all those people who never had any idea that someone was violating one of their fundamental human rights.
But it's like a bad car accident, or a crime scene -- you just can't look away. I have a hard time believing that Talese would publish this book if he didn't feel confident ab ...more
But it's like a bad car accident, or a crime scene -- you just can't look away. I have a hard time believing that Talese would publish this book if he didn't feel confident ab ...more
Sep 30, 2016 Lisa rated it did not like it
Asinine. This was like reading some lonely dude's letters to a milder version of Penthouse magazine. I do not doubt that this motel owner spied on hundreds of people over the years, but I doubt the truthfulness of what he witnessed, and I absolutely question his "objective" opinion on what he saw. Terrible journalism on the part of Telese as well. ...more
Jul 17, 2016 Jeff rated it liked it
This book is disturbing on so many levels, but as in coming upon a horrific accident or inadvertently catching a member of the opposite sex in the nude, your first reaction is to turn away, but your gaze is riveted for a fleeting second and you take it all in. Such is the case with The Voyeur's Motel by Gay Talese who is one of the writers, such as Hunter Thompson and Tom Wolfe, who was part of the new journalism of the 1960s. It seems that at 84 he's still pushing the boundaries of journalism. ...more
Feb 15, 2018 Cait marked it as abandoned
Bought this book a while back, and watched the Netflix documentary about a month ago, so thought I should finally pick this up. I got through a few chapters, and finished reading the section where Talese visits Foos' motel and goes up into the attic to observe his customers having sex. After lying awake for a few minutes, disgusted with a journalist who believed he would never be able to tell Foos' story and yet DIDN'T report him to the police in any way, I finally fell asleep in order to have w ...more
Jul 18, 2016 Simon Vozick-Levinson rated it did not like it
I probably wouldn't have picked this book up if it hadn't been for the recent controversy about Talese's sketchy source. That appealed to me — a complicated story about an unreliable narrator, with the subtext that he managed to dupe a legendary journalist, has a lot of potential. Sadly, this book fails to meet that promise. There's hardly any of Talese's own observation or thought in The Voyeur's Motel, so we don't get much chance to think about his relationship with the source and how he was m ...more
Sep 19, 2016 Nicole Amburgey rated it did not like it
I was very much looking forward to reading this one. It is a terribly creepy idea that a man, and sometimes other people, were observing guests without their knowing. I wanted to know more. However, what I got instead was a terrible story of things that may, or more likely, never happened. There were frequent inconsistencies in the story, both with dates and people and their behaviors. Nearly half the book consisted of excepts from this "journal" which read like Penthouse letters. I am not reall ...more
Jun 02, 2016 Chris Roberts rated it did not like it
A predictable hum
oxygen deprived sex,
ergo the reader condemned
in a stupor, on and on
of prefabricated prose
the IKEA of non-fiction
and who shops there
anymore for more
than less
there will be
a test.
Loose
the floodgates of mediocrity
now this high bounding sea
cutting the sun into three
and now I must save all of me
brah, fight for your life.
Gay Talese is that suck planet.
Chris Roberts, Sudden God
oxygen deprived sex,
ergo the reader condemned
in a stupor, on and on
of prefabricated prose
the IKEA of non-fiction
and who shops there
anymore for more
than less
there will be
a test.
Loose
the floodgates of mediocrity
now this high bounding sea
cutting the sun into three
and now I must save all of me
brah, fight for your life.
Gay Talese is that suck planet.
Chris Roberts, Sudden God
Jan 22, 2020 Sylvia Teters rated it liked it
While it was an absolutely captivating read, I can’t help but just seriously question Gay Talese as a journalist and how he let himself in this world and allowed it to continue. It is very wild to read how Foos, the voyeur, looked at himself and his “research” in such a self idolizing way. It really is twisted.
Oct 09, 2016 Jillwilson rated it liked it
“New Journalism” is described in Wikipedia as “a style of news writing and journalism, developed in the 1960s and '70s, which used literary techniques deemed unconventional at the time. It is characterized by a subjective perspective, a literary style reminiscent of long-form non-fiction and emphasizing "truth" over "facts," and intensive reportage in which reporters immersed themselves in the stories as they reported and wrote them. This was in contrast to traditional journalism where the journ ...more
Oct 17, 2019 Anne rated it liked it
It was interesting but I almost wanted to learn more about the statistics of what “the Voyeur” observes over the years and less about what he deemed fap-worthy, ya dig?
Sep 21, 2020 Selene rated it did not like it
Shelves: didn-t-finish
Just not for me. Too much sex not enough story. Didn’t care about the author or Foo, who should have been jailed in my opinion. Less interesting than watching paint dry, so off to paint something!
Aug 06, 2016 Jeff Francis rated it really liked it
Shelves: non-fiction, colorado
Even for a reading experience like no other, it’s hard to come away from Gay Talese’s “The Voyeur’s Motel” without feeling tainted. The story of a Denver-area motel owner who spent years spying on his guests—and even manipulating situations to control their behavior—leaves the kind of queasy aftertaste with which voyeurs themselves are undoubtedly familiar.
Simply reading “The Voyeur’s Motel” presents a moral conundrum. There’s a way of thinking, regarding pornography, that goes: if said pornogr ...more
Simply reading “The Voyeur’s Motel” presents a moral conundrum. There’s a way of thinking, regarding pornography, that goes: if said pornogr ...more
Oct 19, 2016 Ryan rated it really liked it
Damn, this was an intense and fascinating read! While not everyone may agree with what Mr. Gerald Foos did over the years, I gotta admit that he did accomplish his goals somewhat. By that, I mean, he did successfully documented things that have never been really studied before, at least not candidly. If you ask permission to watch someone, they're behavior will change, but Mr. Foos observed sides of people and couples completely without their knowledge.
Was this wrong, sure, yes, definitely, but ...more
Was this wrong, sure, yes, definitely, but ...more
Oct 28, 2017 Pierre-Alexandre Buisson rated it really liked it
Like a lot of readers, my interest for this book began with the article published in The New Yorker, a weekly I've been subscribed to since 2004. I have a feeling that I maybe should have left things that way.
After waiting forever for the paperback to come out, I finally received the book a few months ago and immediately began reading it. I quickly realised that it was an expansion of the article, with only small details added, and Gerald Foo's life narrated with way more depth. I wouldn't say i ...more
After waiting forever for the paperback to come out, I finally received the book a few months ago and immediately began reading it. I quickly realised that it was an expansion of the article, with only small details added, and Gerald Foo's life narrated with way more depth. I wouldn't say i ...more
Jul 11, 2016 Gaylesaks rated it it was ok
When I read the original excerpt in the New Yorker I was fascinated by this story. The book, however, is only slightly longer than the article and shows how incredibly delusional Gerald Foos was in his belief that he was conducting the most important and impartial commentary on the sex lives of ordinary people. Really what he was was a pretty twisted and immoral guy.
As far as Gay Talese's writing--I don't get it. There were a couple of places that the editors seemed to overlook.
The fallout from ...more
As far as Gay Talese's writing--I don't get it. There were a couple of places that the editors seemed to overlook.
The fallout from ...more
Apr 06, 2016 ania rated it really liked it
"Mr. Thomas was my first adult friend, and he told me chickens are pretty stupid birds. He said, 'You can go into the same chicken coup a hundred times, and those birds won't so much as ruffle a feather, but walk in there wearing a new pair of shoes, or a different hat, and they'll panic and fly all over the place." ...more
Sep 04, 2017 Aaron rated it liked it
I'm torn. The Voyeur's Motel is a controversial book for several reasons, including its disturbingly unethical subject matter (the voyeurism at the heart of the tale), it's author's involvement in said unethical behavior and his failure to report the behavior at the time it was going on, his failure to fully grapple with the underlying moral issues, and finally because the central source for the narrative, Gerald Foos, later proved to be even less reliable than initially reported (as revealed in ...more
Feb 23, 2018 T-bone rated it it was amazing
The first five star book of 2018. I'm not one prone to wild exaggerations, so I say this with great caution, this is also the most important book ever written.
As a boy Gerald Foos liked to secretly watch his aunt walk around her place in the nude. And there is nothing wrong with that. As an adult Gerald bought a motel and installed viewing vents in the ceilings of rooms so that he could observe guests. And there is nothing wrong with that either. Some people, wowsers I call them, consider what ...more
As a boy Gerald Foos liked to secretly watch his aunt walk around her place in the nude. And there is nothing wrong with that. As an adult Gerald bought a motel and installed viewing vents in the ceilings of rooms so that he could observe guests. And there is nothing wrong with that either. Some people, wowsers I call them, consider what ...more
Dec 14, 2018 Carol Masciola rated it liked it
This was a nasty little thing. The author, Gay Talese, writes about his decades-long acquaintanceship with Gerald Foos, a motel owner in Colorado who has retrofitted his motel so that he can watch his guests through vents in the ceiling. Gerald keeps a journal of what he sees, and views himself as a kind of social and sexual historian of the time, which is mostly the 60s-80s. He regularly sends updates via mail to Talese, who is a globetrotting celebrity journalist, but Talese says he can't writ ...more
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Gay Talese is an American author. He wrote for The New York Times in the early 1960s and helped to define literary journalism or "new nonfiction reportage", also known as New Journalism. His most famous articles are about Joe DiMaggio, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. ...more
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“I'm in a weird place because the book is about to come out. So I'm basically just walking around like a raw nerve and I'm not sure that I...
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“Gerald Foos's explanation in his journal--he was 'only an observer and not a reporter,' and he 'really didn't exist as far as the male and female subjects were concerned'--were explanations that didn't surprise me because of his often-expressed notion that he was a fractured individual, a hybridized combination of the Voyeur and Gerald Foos” More quotes…
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