"I would like to talk to Kevin Spacey... I feel so sad, and I hate that actor that ruined this guy’s career."

"So, O.K., it happened 10 years ago . . . Jesus, suck it up once in a while!... I would like to ask [Spacey] how it feels to lose a lifetime of success and hard work all because of 10 minutes of indiscretion 10 years or more ago.... You know something, all of us in this room at one time or another did something we’re ashamed of. The Dalai Lama has done something he’s ashamed of. The Dalai Lama should confess . . . put that in your magazine!"

Said the venerable author Gay Talese, quoted at Vanity Fair, and of course, subsequently savaged on Twitter. As summarized at WaPo:

Esquire editor Tyler Coates played off Talese’s own quote, writing, “I’d like to ask Gay Talese how it feels to lose a lifetime of success and hard work all because he revealed himself to be a” sh— “person.”

“Petition To Force Gay Talese To Change His Name To Straightoldguy Talese,” tweeted NPR book and movie reviewer Glen Weldon.

“I could steal Talese’s car in less than 10 minutes. I don’t think he’d shrug it off,” tweeted one user.

“Oh dear, twitter’s gonna make Gay Talese wish he was trending because he died,” wrote one user.

"I’m not going to promote this book ... How dare I promote it when its credibility is down the toilet?"

Said Gay Talese. (WaPo link.) His book, “The Voyeur’s Motel,” is about a motel owner who (supposedly) spied on his guests through ceiling vents into various rooms:

Foos’s earliest journal entries, for example, were dated 1966. But the author subsequently learned from county property records that Foos didn’t buy the Manor House Motel until 1969 — three years after he said he started watching his guests from the catwalk. “I cannot vouch for every detail that he recounts in his manuscript,” Talese writes in the book.

But property records also show a series of sales and purchases of the motel from 1980 to 1988, none of which Talese said he knew about. In a series of interviews, he expressed surprise, disappointment and anger to learn about the transactions. He said he had not been aware of them until a reporter asked him about it on Wednesday.

“The source of my book, Gerald Foos, is certifiably unreliable,” Talese said. “He’s a dishonorable man, totally dishonorable. . . . I know that. . . . I did the best I could on this book, but maybe it wasn’t good enough.”

The New Yorker looks bad too: "New Yorker editor David Remnick said he hadn’t had time to review the magazine’s vetting of the excerpt it published in April but would look into it."

We talked about this book back in April when the New Yorker excerpt appeared. In the comments, M Jordan said, presciently: "Wait a minute ... was this fiction or nonfiction?"

UPDATE: Talese repositions himself:

But in a press release sent out by his publisher, Talese said he spoke too quickly: "When I spoke to the Washington Post reporter, I am sure I was surprised and upset about this business of the later ownership of the motel, in the '80s. That occurred after the bulk of the events covered in my book, but I was upset and probably said some things I didn't, and don't, mean. Let me be clear: I am not disavowing the book and neither is my publisher. If, down the line, there are details to correct in later editions, we'll do that."

"I know a married man and father of two who bought a twenty-one-room motel near Denver many years ago in order to become its resident voyeur."

"With the assistance of his wife, he cut rectangular holes measuring six by fourteen inches in the ceilings of more than a dozen rooms. Then he covered the openings with louvred aluminum screens that looked like ventilation grilles but were actually observation vents that allowed him, while he knelt in the attic, to see his guests in the rooms below. He watched them for decades, while keeping an exhaustive written record of what he saw and heard. Never once, during all those years, was he caught."

So begins "The Voyeur's Motel," by Gay Talese. At one point:

I saw what Foos was doing, and I did the same: I got down on my knees and crawled toward the lighted louvres. Then I stretched my neck in order to see as much as I could through the vent, nearly butting heads with Foos as I did so. Finally, I saw a naked couple spread out on the bed below, engaged in oral sex. Foos and I watched for several moments, and then Foos lifted his head and gave me a thumbs-up sign. He whispered that it was the skiing couple from Chicago.

Despite an insistent voice in my head telling me to look away, I continued to observe, bending my head farther down for a closer view. As I did so, I failed to notice that my necktie had slipped down through the slats of the louvred screen and was dangling into the motel room within a few yards of the woman’s head. I realized my carelessness only when Foos grabbed me by the neck and, with his free hand, pulled my tie up through the slats. The couple below saw none of this: the woman’s back was to us, and the man had his eyes closed.

And: "Foos made it clear to me from the beginning that he regarded his voyeurism as serious research, undertaken, in some vague way, for the betterment of society." And: "During the spring of 2013, thirty-three years after I had met him, Foos called me to say that he was ready to go public with his story.... How could he assume that going public with his sinister story would achieve anything positive? It could just as easily provide evidence leading to his arrest, lawsuits, and widespread public outrage. Why did he crave the notoriety?"

RELATED: "Gay Talese has a lady problem -- he can't think of any female writers that inspired him."

Talese... explained that the problem with female journalists was they were limited by their desire to stay above the fray, according to an audience member who spoke to the Washington Post. Amy Littlefield, 29, said that Talese explained "how educated women don’t want to hang out with antisocial people."

His answer seemed to shock the audience, with one person shouting out the name of Joan Didion....

A hashtag happened: #womengaytaleseshouldread.