There's an interesting profile of Gay Talese and wife Nan in the latest issue of New York: "A Nonfiction Marriage." While the premise of the piece is to focus on Talese's work in progress, a book about his marriage, it focuses a fair amount of its attentions on Talese's controversial-at-the-time study of sex in America, Thy Neighbor's Wife, which is being republished this month.
Gasp, faint, wheeze. Talese was a bit of a cad while writing Wife. While running around the country studying sex, and a married man, he didn't just stand to the side and observe; sometimes, he crossed the line. He cheated on his wife, got naked with the nudists, managed a massage parlor, ran wild at sex clubs. In the context of the piece, it's all very, well, dear. As if Talese is a tchotchke in a weird wunderkammer that no longer exists.
Of course, what Talese did is nothing new, nor very revolutionary. At "The World's Biggest Gangbang III," I distinctly remember noticing a reporter getting a blowjob from a fluffer in one corner. Photographer Ian Gittler recollects screwing Savannah in Pornstar; the scene is more depressing than inspiring.
Sometimes, when it comes to the sex beat, it seems like male writers have, well, a hard time. After all, the thinking around it goes, how can he not be turned on by what's right in front of his nose? But do these scenes make the story? Or do they undermine it?
In this case, that question isn't really raised. But things get complicated when the reporter sticks his dick in it. You'd think. Wouldn't you?
