'The Orgy Nex Door: An Exploration of Ethical Relationships in Gay Talese's 'Thy Neighbor's Wife' and 'The Voyeur's Motel'

Gay Talese, credited as the founder of the New Journalism by Tom Wolfe, has long been revered among literary journalists and cited as an exemplar of the long-haul investigation, “the Art of Hanging Around,” where the writer immerses him- or herself into the lives of the subjects. However, in 2016 his reputation and methods came under public scrutiny when media reports revealed that the subject of his new work of immersive journalism, The Voyeur’s Motel, had falsified his testimony. As critics questioned Talese’s suspension of critical judgment, doubt was also cast on his lack of appropriate research methods and clear ethical guidelines. This article explores concerns about theories and methods that literary journalists and ethnographers share as they affect the relationship between the researcher and the subject, the impact of the researcher on the community or individuals studied, and how conflicting loyalties may mitigate against wider ethical considerations. These concerns include a questioning of the limits a literary journalist must place on personal professional behavior, notably sexual experiences or the observation of sexual practices, when using such encounters to provide a vicarious experience for the reader. These issues are investigated through a critical analysis of Talese’s two works that take sexuality as their subject matter, The Voyeur’s Motel (2016) and Thy Neighbor’s Wife (1980). This essay offers insight for contemporary literary journalism in considering the balance between loyalty to the reader and to the investigated subject, the test of genuine public interest and the writer’s personal agenda, and the need for self-awareness

Beyond the spooks: The problem of the narrator in literary history

The discrepancies between a biography about a decorated Soviet intelligence agent and the authenticated facts of her life illustrate the inherent difficulties and ethical dilemmas of researching intelligence history. Kitty Harris was among the few women named in the official history of Soviet Intelligence because of her role as double-agent Donald MacLean’s controller and in running couriers from Mexico to Los Alamos in the late 1940s. Harris’s biography written by the former KGB agent Igor Damaskin, presents an example of a source that is unreliable since the majority of sources on which it is based remain closed to public scrutiny. This paper explores the difficulties of constructing a scholarly literary history in the field of intelligence when both interview sources and official records prove more unreliable, and susceptible to bias, than other public domain sources and records