I had read a New York Times long article that featured this story, and just by chance I found that the author had enough material to make it into a book. He tells the true and bizarre story of a hotel owner who installed viewing vents over certain rooms in his hotel and took notes on his guests over the years, without ever getting caught.
The author, like the reader, is shocked that something like this could happen, and most of the book is spent looking at the motivations of the hotel owner, and looking at the ways he justifies his behavior. There is also a lot of social commentary, especially of the transition from the 60s to the 70s in the USA, and what effect it had on the behavior of the guests.
Mostly the hotel owner was interested in the sex lives of others, so the book is full of the owner’s descriptions, quoted directly by the author of this book. It was interesting to see that the “notes” that the hotel owner took were considered by him as scientific documents – but in the end I felt this term was closer to a cover story and justification.
At the end of the book the now elderly hotel owner, having sold off his hotels and staying at home with his wife, complains of the surveillance state that he lives in – with big brother watching him all the time. The author of the book tries to point out the irony of this guy complaining about unwanted surveillance, but the point is wasted on the voyeur owner – who has justified everything in his own head.
This was a short book but from a sociological point of view fairly interesting. What a weird story!
Next I am reading Thinking in Systems by Donella H. Meadows.
