Common Place: The American Motel

by Bruce Bégout, Colin Keaveney (Translator), Bruce Bégout

Literary Nonfiction. American West. Urban Studies. Common Place is the second part of a trilogy begun with Zeropolis, a broad archeological inquiry into the meanings of our daily urban world. Bégout's essay restores the poetry to that essential element of the contemporary imagination that is the motel, at the same time dissecting its myth. Far from a mere sample of the "American way of life," the motel reveals new forms of urban life in which mobility, wandering, and poverty play a dominant role. Standing at the intersection of economy, architecture, and fiction, Bégout's writing sheds light on the problematic character of ordinary things, revealing the fundamental structures hidden beneath their chaotic surface. Especially, what is laid bare here is that this special form of architecture has given birth to a "motel man" whose behavior prefigures new modes of life.

Genres: Nonfiction

137 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Bruce Bégout, né le 21 mai 1967, est un philosophe et écrivain français. Il est maître de conférences à l'Université Bordeaux III.
Il a publié plusieurs ouvrages philosophiques, quatre essais aux éditions Allia (Zéropolis. L'expérience de Las Vegas, 2002 ; Lieu commun. Le motel américain, 2003 ; La Découverte du quotidien. Éléments pour une phénoménologie du monde de la vie, 2005 ; De la décence ordinaire, 2008), mais aussi un « documentaire fiction » à la manière de certains cinéastes tiré de son roman L'Éblouissement des bords de route (Éditions Verticales, 2004). Par ailleurs, il a participé à la revue Inculte avant de la quitter en février 2008. En 2013, il publie aux éditions Inculte Suburbia, un essai sur les banlieues essentiellement résidentielles qui s'étendent à la périphérie des villes. En parallèle à ses recherches, il dirige la collection « Matière étrangère » aux éditions Vrin.
Ses travaux s'inscrivent dans la tradition de la phénoménologie. Spécialiste de Edmund Husserl auquel sa thèse est consacrée, il se consacre à l'exploration du monde urbain, des lieux communs, mais aussi au quotidien.
Également auteur de fiction, il a publié un recueil de nouvelles, Sphex, en 2009 ainsi que Le ParK en 2010. En janvier 2014, c'est à nouveau un recueil de nouvelles qu'il publie aux éditions Allia, L'Accumulation primitive de la noirceur.
Ayant voyagé aux États-Unis, il livre dans Duane Hanson, le rêve américain son point de vue sur le sculpteur américain et ses réalisations

Reviews

[Paula Koneazny · Rating 2 out of 5]

This author’s project (“Our goal is to completely anatomize the motel . . . .”) strikes me as quaint, as if his choice of the American motel as a site of investigation is already passé, its burden of cultural significance already drained of interest. I had to look twice at the original publication date, surprised that is was 2003 and not 1973 or 1983. Generally, I am intrigued by the perspective of European and other non-American writers/ filmmakers, etc. on the American landscape and mores. For example, Philippe Labro’s 1986 novel, L’étudiant étranger and Percy Adlon’s 1987 film, Bagdad Café. However,what more can a European say about an American cultural/ architectural/ economic icon, such as the motel? Although the author mentions the chain motel, at first he seems to be talking solely about a motel out of a Hopper painting, independent, individual yet devoid of individuality, all significance summed up in its sign and in its desolate yet disconnected location. He seems to conflate the pre-1960s motel, and the Motor Inn, the Hideaway with Howard Johnson’s, until quite late in his discussion (Chapter 9) when he notes the demise of the “the old family motel” that “would progressively give way to hotel chains.” Interestingly he never comments on the socio-economic phenomenon of ethnic franchisees. So many motels are now owned or managed by Indian immigrants
The Motor Inn and the classic motel, to a certain extent, share elements of blandness, anomie, nondescript and reiterated architecture and decor. However, those older motels, isolated on back roads and less-traveled highways, have now taken on an aura of nostalgia, distinctiveness of location, and personality just from having been in the same place so long.
Some of the author’s observations are interesting (for example, "Register’s paintings are not still lives. Rather, they belong to what we might call the genre of still culture" and "The hotel has turned into a supermarket of sleep."), while many of his generalizations overreach(for example, his contrasting of the 19th and early 20th century flâneur and the contemporary “wanderer’ or his characterization of the mass killer as “a part of our mass consumer and communication society”). There is also, I think, a certain maleness to his vision. When he analyzes the motives of those who stay in motels, I don’t picture any female travelers.
Perhaps, finally, the author simply doesn't make the sale, doesn't convince me that the American motel is "a determinant part in all the most erratic and provisional aspects of day-to-day life in the West."

[Rafelmenmell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Palabrería

[D Lyons · Rating 5 out of 5]

An introduction to a fascinating breed of cultural critique for me. I’ll be coming back to this one. Beautiful afterword by DJ Waldie as well