Gay Talese, Take a Seat

I've been reading about Gay Talese's new book on some guy who peeped on people who stayed in a hotel he ran/owned. Apparently, the peeping tom lied about some things in telling his tale to Talese and those lies are in Talese's book that's about to come out. In this day and age, it's hard to believe that Talese and his publisher wouldn't have done some fact-checking prior to publication. Maybe back in the days before the internet you could get away with "creative" non-fiction where no one would call you on made-up quotes or incorrect time lines, but not now. If you're going to publish a "true" story, you'd better have all your facts verified because, if you don't, someone's going to let you (and the rest of the world) know about it. Talese should know better especially since his wife Nan was the literary agent for Oprah Book Club liar James Frey. (Remember A Million Little Pieces? I do, unfortunately.)  Maybe it's time for Gay (and Nan) to both take a seat and retire from publishing. Then again, maybe this whole peeping tom debacle is just a publicity stunt to try and sell more books. That wouldn't surprise me.