About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherBloomsbury Academic & Professional

ISBN-10162892473X

ISBN-139781628924732

eBay Product ID (ePID)6038490644

Product Key Features

Book TitleHotel

Number of Pages176 Pages

LanguageEnglish

TopicAnthropology / Cultural & Social, Literary, Semiotics & Theory, Food, Lodging & Transportation / Hotels, Inns & Hostels

Publication Year2015

GenreLiterary Criticism, Travel, Social Science, Biography & Autobiography

AuthorJoanna Walsh

Book SeriesObject Lessons Ser.

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0.6 in

Item Weight5.9 Oz

Item Length6.5 in

Item Width4.9 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

LCCN2015-008810

Dewey Edition23

ReviewsWalsh has been praised to the skies by Chris Kraus and Jeff Vandermeer, and it isn't hard to see why. Her writing sways between the tense and the absurd, as if it's hovering between this world and another., "Walsh's writing has intellectual rigour and bags of formal bravery ... Hotel is a boldly intellectual work that repays careful reading. Its semiotic wordplay, circling prose and experimental form may prove a refined taste, but in its deft delineation of a complex modern phenomenon - and, perhaps, a modern malaise - it's a great success." - Financial Times "A slim, sharp meditation on hotels and desire. ... Walsh invokes everyone from Freud to Forster to Mae West to the Marx Brothers. She's funny throughout, even as she documents the dissolution of her marriage and the peculiar brand of alienation on offer in lavish place." -- The Paris Review "Evocative ... Walsh's strange, probing book is all the more affecting for eschewing easy resolution." -- Publishers Weekly "Joanna Walsh is fast becoming one of our most important writers. Hotel is a dazzling tour de force of embodied ideas." -- Deborah Levy, author of Black Vodka "Subtle and intriguing, this small book is an adventure in form. Part meditation on hotels, it mingles autobiography and reflections on home, secrets, and partings. Freud, Dora, Heidegger, and the Marx Brothers all have their moments on its small, intensely evocative stage." -- Lisa Appignanesi, author of Trials of Passion "Featured in The Literary Hub" -- The Literary Hub "Walsh has been praised to the skies by Chris Kraus and Jeff Vandermeer, and it isn't hard to see why. Her writing sways between the tense and the absurd, as if it's hovering between this world and another." -- Flavorwire, "Walsh's writing has intellectual rigour and bags of formal bravery ... Hotel is a boldly intellectual work that repays careful reading. Its semiotic wordplay, circling prose and experimental form may prove a refined taste, but in its deft delineation of a complex modern phenomenon - and, perhaps, a modern malaise - it's a great success." - Financial Times "A slim, sharp meditation on hotels and desire. ... Walsh invokes everyone from Freud to Forster to Mae West to the Marx Brothers. She's funny throughout, even as she documents the dissolution of her marriage and the peculiar brand of alienation on offer in lavish place." -- The Paris Review "Evocative ... Walsh's strange, probing book is all the more affecting for eschewing easy resolution." -- Publishers Weekly "Joanna Walsh is fast becoming one of our most important writers. Hotel is a dazzling tour de force of embodied ideas." -- Deborah Levy, author of Black Vodka "Subtle and intriguing, this small book is an adventure in form. Part meditation on hotels, it mingles autobiography and reflections on home, secrets, and partings. Freud, Dora, Heidegger, and the Marx Brothers all have their moments on its small, intensely evocative stage." -- Lisa Appignanesi, author of Trials of Passion "Featured in The Literary Hub" -- The Literary Hub "Walsh has been praised to the skies by Chris Kraus and Jeff Vandermeer, and it isn't hard to see why. Her writing sways between the tense and the absurd, as if it's hovering between this world and another." -- Flavorwire "Walsh's writing has intellectual rigour and bags of formal bravery ... Hotel is a boldly intellectual work that repays careful reading. Its semiotic wordplay, circling prose and experimental form may prove a refined taste, but in its deft delineation of a complex modern phenomenon - and, perhaps, a modern malaise - it's a great success." - Financial Times "[Walsh's] sentences are like a series of rocks expertly skipped across a body of water that maintains surface tension, refusing to allow objects to sink in." - New York Times "[Walsh] is the author of a short book in Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series called Hotel . With Heidegger, Freud, and Greta Garbo as touchpoints, the pieces use details from her job reviewing hotels and her unraveling marriage to meditate on desire, aphonia, immobility, and isolation. [T]he book is driven by an intense self-consciousness, but perhaps because it doesn't need to make even a gesture toward fiction, there's more linguistic play in here, more aphorisms you want to copy onto a postcard and send to your unhappiest smart friend." -Darcie Dennigan, The Rumpus "Writer Joanna Walsh, after the collapse of her marriage, became a hotel reviewer. She recounts the experience of staying in and reviewing hotels in Hotel , published by Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series. ... The hotel stands in for what should be, or simply what was, but is no longer. 'A hotel sets itself apart from home and, in doing so, proves rather than denies home's existence,' Walsh writes. Ruminating on what went wrong in her marriage, she realizes at its center is the idea of what makes something -- or someone -- a home." -Jessica Ferri, The Barnes & Noble Review "It's a knock out. Completely engaging, juicy and dry--such a great book." -Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick, A slim, sharp meditation on hotels and desire. ... Walsh invokes everyone from Freud to Forster to Mae West to the Marx Brothers. She's funny throughout, even as she documents the dissolution of her marriage and the peculiar brand of alienation on offer in lavish place., "Walsh's writing has intellectual rigour and bags of formal bravery ... Hotel is a boldly intellectual work that repays careful reading. Its semiotic wordplay, circling prose and experimental form may prove a refined taste, but in its deft delineation of a complex modern phenomenon - and, perhaps, a modern malaise - it's a great success." - Financial Times "A slim, sharp meditation on hotels and desire. ... Walsh invokes everyone from Freud to Forster to Mae West to the Marx Brothers. She's funny throughout, even as she documents the dissolution of her marriage and the peculiar brand of alienation on offer in lavish place." -- The Paris Review "Evocative ... Walsh's strange, probing book is all the more affecting for eschewing easy resolution." -- Publishers Weekly "Joanna Walsh is fast becoming one of our most important writers. Hotel is a dazzling tour de force of embodied ideas." -- Deborah Levy, author of Black Vodka "Subtle and intriguing, this small book is an adventure in form. Part meditation on hotels, it mingles autobiography and reflections on home, secrets, and partings. Freud, Dora, Heidegger, and the Marx Brothers all have their moments on its small, intensely evocative stage." -- Lisa Appignanesi, author of Trials of Passion "Featured in The Literary Hub" -- The Literary Hub "Walsh has been praised to the skies by Chris Kraus and Jeff Vandermeer, and it isn't hard to see why. Her writing sways between the tense and the absurd, as if it's hovering between this world and another." -- Flavorwire "Walsh's writing has intellectual rigour and bags of formal bravery ... Hotel is a boldly intellectual work that repays careful reading. Its semiotic wordplay, circling prose and experimental form may prove a refined taste, but in its deft delineation of a complex modern phenomenon - and, perhaps, a modern malaise - it's a great success." - Financial Times "[Walsh's] sentences are like a series of rocks expertly skipped across a body of water that maintains surface tension, refusing to allow objects to sink in." - New York Times "[Walsh] is the author of a short book in Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series called Hotel . With Heidegger, Freud, and Greta Garbo as touchpoints, the pieces use details from her job reviewing hotels and her unraveling marriage to meditate on desire, aphonia, immobility, and isolation. [T]he book is driven by an intense self-consciousness, but perhaps because it doesn't need to make even a gesture toward fiction, there's more linguistic play in here, more aphorisms you want to copy onto a postcard and send to your unhappiest smart friend." -Darcie Dennigan, The Rumpus "Writer Joanna Walsh, after the collapse of her marriage, became a hotel reviewer. She recounts the experience of staying in and reviewing hotels in Hotel , published by Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series. ... The hotel stands in for what should be, or simply what was, but is no longer. 'A hotel sets itself apart from home and, in doing so, proves rather than denies home's existence,' Walsh writes. Ruminating on what went wrong in her marriage, she realizes at its center is the idea of what makes something -- or someone -- a home." -Jessica Ferri, The Barnes & Noble Review, Evocative ... Walsh's strange, probing book is all the more affecting for eschewing easy resolution., "Walsh's writing has intellectual rigour and bags of formal bravery ... Hotel is a boldly intellectual work that repays careful reading. Its semiotic wordplay, circling prose and experimental form may prove a refined taste, but in its deft delineation of a complex modern phenomenon - and, perhaps, a modern malaise - it's a great success." - Financial Times "A slim, sharp meditation on hotels and desire. ... Walsh invokes everyone from Freud to Forster to Mae West to the Marx Brothers. She's funny throughout, even as she documents the dissolution of her marriage and the peculiar brand of alienation on offer in lavish place." -- The Paris Review "Evocative ... Walsh's strange, probing book is all the more affecting for eschewing easy resolution." -- Publishers Weekly "Joanna Walsh is fast becoming one of our most important writers. Hotel is a dazzling tour de force of embodied ideas." -- Deborah Levy, author of Black Vodka "Subtle and intriguing, this small book is an adventure in form. Part meditation on hotels, it mingles autobiography and reflections on home, secrets, and partings. Freud, Dora, Heidegger, and the Marx Brothers all have their moments on its small, intensely evocative stage." -- Lisa Appignanesi, author of Trials of Passion "Featured in The Literary Hub" -- The Literary Hub "Walsh has been praised to the skies by Chris Kraus and Jeff Vandermeer, and it isn't hard to see why. Her writing sways between the tense and the absurd, as if it's hovering between this world and another." -- Flavorwire "Walsh's writing has intellectual rigour and bags of formal bravery ... Hotel is a boldly intellectual work that repays careful reading. Its semiotic wordplay, circling prose and experimental form may prove a refined taste, but in its deft delineation of a complex modern phenomenon - and, perhaps, a modern malaise - it's a great success." - Financial Times, Subtle and intriguing, this small book is an adventure in form. Part meditation on hotels, it mingles autobiography and reflections on home, secrets, and partings. Freud, Dora, Heidegger, and the Marx Brothers all have their moments on its small, intensely evocative stage., Joanna Walsh is fast becoming one of our most important writers. Hotel is a dazzling tour de force of embodied ideas.

Dewey Decimal657/.8374

Table Of ContentPart I. Hotel Haunting 1. Hotel Haunting Part II. Fragments from a Hysterical Suitcase 2. Hotel Freud 3. Marriage Postcards 4. Hometel 5. Hotel Diary 6. In A German Pension 7. The Talking Cure 8. Hotel Marx 9. Postcards from 26 Hotels Notes Acknowledgements Index

SynopsisDuring the breakdown of an unhappy marriage, writer Joanna Walsh got a job as a hotel reviewer, and began to gravitate towards places designed as alternatives to home. Luxury, sex, power, anonymity, privacy.hotels are where our desires go on holiday, but also places where our desires are shaped by the hard realities of the marketplace. Part memoir and part meditation, this book visits a series of rooms, suites, hallways, and lobbies-the spaces and things that make up these modern sites of gathering and alienation, hotels., Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. During the breakdown of an unhappy marriage, writer Joanna Walsh got a job as a hotel reviewer, and began to gravitate towards places designed as alternatives to home. Luxury, sex, power, anonymity, privacy...hotels are where our desires go on holiday, but also places where our desires are shaped by the hard realities of the marketplace. Part memoir and part meditation, this book visits a series of rooms, suites, hallways, and lobbies-the spaces and things that make up these modern sites of gathering and alienation, hotels. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

LC Classification NumberTX911.2.W35 2015