false 10260220 254989 311621 1933368691 9781933368696 12 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173649105m/311621.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173649105s/311621.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/311621.Hotel_Theory 3.96 47 Hotel Theory is two books in one: a meditation on the meaning of hotels, and a dime novel (Hotel Women) featuring Lana Turner and Liberace. Typical of Wayne Koestenbaum’s invigoratingly inventive style, the two books — one fiction, one nonfiction — run concurrently, in twin columns, and the articles “a,” “an,” and “the” never appear. The nonfiction ruminations on hotels are divided into eight dossiers, composed of short takes on the presence of hotels in the author’s dreams as well as in literature, film, and history. Guest stars include everyone from Oscar Wilde to Marilyn Monroe. Hotel Theory gives (divided) voice to an aesthetic of hyperaesthesia, of yearning. It is an oblique manifesto, the place where writing disappears. A new mode of theorizing — in fiction, in fragment, through quotation and palimpsest — arises in this dazzling work.]]> 22266 3.82 237 34 2007 0 0 false Tue Dec 11 05:53:04 -0800 2007 Tue Feb 12 06:53:27 -0800 2008
I appreciate what Kostenbaum is doing with this text, but (and I am only 34 pages in, so this is a very uneducated opinion)I don't see much in the way of progression; the same ideas are repeated over and over.

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