by John Sedgwick

You do something for a while, and it changes you. After I'd been a magazine journalist for over 20 years, it slowly dawned on me that I had become a kind of voyeur. I asked probing questions of interview subjects that I would never have dared ask my friends -- or wanted to answer myself. I kept my eyes open for the private details that revealed the hidden parts of my subjects' psyches. In short, I became a terrible snoop, prying into other people's lives without revealing much about my own. I knew I wasn't absolutely alone in this. After all, what's a movie screen if not a large, lit window, and what are audiences if not a collection of peepers in the dark? But I still felt somewhat awkward about this aspect of my character.

Nevertheless, it's a part of me I plundered to write my first novel, The Dark House. The book is a psychological thriller about a man named Rollins who likes to follow people in his car, tail them back to their houses, and then, on occasion, watch them through the windows. He is not a classic peeper, I hasten to emphasize: His nose is not up against the bedroom windows, hoping to catch someone in the act. He's happy enough just watching his subjects peel potatoes, do laundry, or play a CD. He just likes to see how people live, what they do.

I started in on this book in 1996, a time when -- just try to imagine this -- voyeurism of any sort was actually considered shameful. My Rollins was a kind of confession, a revelation of the secret me. But now it's 2000, my book is out, and the world is awash in voyeurs -- swamping those weird, bare-all webcam sites, and driving up the Nielsen ratings for intrusive network fare like "Survivor," "The Real World," and "Big Brother."

What's the deal? Has the zeitgeist mutated? Has my book somehow changed things? Or did I simply stumble upon a truth that is buried deep within all of us, but which I chanced upon only by opening myself to honest self-examination?

I'm guessing it's the latter…that, indeed, it is in the innermost recesses of the private self that the universal truths are hidden. When my poor, guilt-stricken Rollins ventures out onto darkened streets to gaze up at open windows, their gauzy curtains fluttering in the breeze, he is there for everyone, representing an unacknowledged self in all of us.

Yes, reader, I will confess that Rollins is me -- but only if you admit that he is you, too.

John Sedgwick recommends three good books:

Philip Roth, American Pastoral. To my mind, this is the richest, most American novel in the last few years. I saw my father in the tragic story of Roth's Swede, and I'm sure many other members of my generation -- the sixties generation -- saw their father in him, too.

Ian McEwen, Amsterdam. Evelyn Waugh lives in this sneaky, rollicking fable of a politician, a composer, and a Fleet Street editor, all snarled up in the twin fascinations of sex and death.

Patrick McGrath, Asylum. A marvelously twisted love story. When it comes to portraying madness, McGrath is an English version of Edgar Allen Poe.