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bookchew's review against another edition
5.0
Excellent meditation on the phenomenon of hotels in consciousness, in literature, music, film.
In which Wayne Koestenbaum describes how Chopin's music embodies "hotel consciousness."
In which he defines "Hotel Woman" as "a fugitive sensibility or character, often feminine, reprieved from the rigors of fixed address."
"Within a Chopin nocturne's melody, the ornament is the guest (the hotel woman), the malingerer, the cause of malingering in others. . . The ornament sustains the culture of the nocturne but also signals infection in the tune."
"Why hotels offer psychological safety: The room, its objects deliberately generic, offers no interference to the free play--dervish--of consciousness."
"Do you check into a hotel? Or does the hotel condition check into you?"
"The hotel room harbors the has-been as well as the star."
And so Wayne Koestenbaum leaves no one spared from his Hotel Analysis. Chopin, Walter Benjamin, Gertrude Stein, Joan Didion, Julia Stiles, Oscar Wilde, Siegfried Kracauer, Heidegger, Elizabeth Bishop... Who are the has-beens? Who are the stars?
In which Wayne Koestenbaum describes how Chopin's music embodies "hotel consciousness."
In which he defines "Hotel Woman" as "a fugitive sensibility or character, often feminine, reprieved from the rigors of fixed address."
"Within a Chopin nocturne's melody, the ornament is the guest (the hotel woman), the malingerer, the cause of malingering in others. . . The ornament sustains the culture of the nocturne but also signals infection in the tune."
"Why hotels offer psychological safety: The room, its objects deliberately generic, offers no interference to the free play--dervish--of consciousness."
"Do you check into a hotel? Or does the hotel condition check into you?"
"The hotel room harbors the has-been as well as the star."
And so Wayne Koestenbaum leaves no one spared from his Hotel Analysis. Chopin, Walter Benjamin, Gertrude Stein, Joan Didion, Julia Stiles, Oscar Wilde, Siegfried Kracauer, Heidegger, Elizabeth Bishop... Who are the has-beens? Who are the stars?
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