Hotel Theory

"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 hotel 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.Koestenbaum, Wayne is the author of 'Hotel Theory ', published 2007 under ISBN 9781933368696 and ISBN 1933368691.