Joanna Walsh - Hotel

Hotel F

The basement restaurant where we were served a scotch egg: the smart kind, and perfectly done, but.

Hotel G

On Easter Day they gave us hard-boiled eggs dipped in red or blue paint, at breakfast.

Hotel H

Where there was a rainstorm, and I was tired, so I called up room service, who came with a trolley and on it some slices of the kind of cheese with a straw in the middle.

Hotel I

I was frightened to go to the (excellent) nightly dinner because the waiter did not like that I could not finish the homemade pasta.

Hotel J

I remember the graffiti outside the hotel, but nothing of the hotel.

Hotel K

My deluxe room was “orange.”

Hotel L

I don’t remember staying here at all. Maybe another reviewer covered it. The style in which the hotel is reviewed is, however, indistinguishable from mine.

Hotel M

The skirting board was chipped. While having sex, I noted that, as the hotel manager had told me, I could see the Eiffel Tower in the distance through the window.

Hotel N

The lift shaft rumbled all night. I put my laptop on the windowsill for WiFi. The room was small and unsatisfactory. The steak tartare was good, but not included in the price.

Hotel O

It was expensive, but truly horrible.

Hotel P

The bathwater wouldn’t run warm. I was so tired I could neither understand, nor complain.

Hotel Q

Here I also became ill. Unsure as to whether I would have to pay extra, I skipped the breakfast buffet to go to a cafe with a friend.

Hotel R

In this hotel a friend’s husband got me drunk and tried to sleep with me. That was in older days, (or do I mean younger?) when I was hardly able to recognize what he was trying to do.

Hotel S

It was so hot outside and so cold inside. Elvis Presley played in the lift. The same song, every time.

Hotel T

When I arrived, they brought me tea in a Chinese padded basket, and little cakes. I have never been so grateful for anything.

Hotel U

Was brown. I couldn’t close the skylight. The noise from the club across the road kept me awake all night.

Hotel V

The room was on the sixth floor, an attic. The instructions in case of fire were no more than hopeful.

Hotel W

Was grand, but very ugly. And reception was on the second floor.

Hotel X

In the lounge, they had copper doors with bullet holes from a revolution.

Hotel Y

I got drunk in this hotel, as in several others.

Hotel Z

It was above a pub. I ate raw meat, and cooked potatoes. I am tired of hotels now.

Chapter 1

1Kierkegaard, Søren, Repetition and Philosophical Crumbs , trans. Piety (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009), 5.

All Vaneigem quotes from: Vaneigem, Raoul, The Revolution of Everyday Life , trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Norfolk, UK: Rebel Press, 2006), 30.

Chapter 2

1 The Register News (Mt. Vernon, IL), October 25, 1949.

2It isn’t.

All Janet Malcolm quotes from: Janet Malcolm, The Impossible Profession (London, UK: Picador, 1988).

All Freud quotes from: Sigmund Freud, Psychology of Love (London, UK: Penguin, 2006), unless otherwise stated.

Chapter 3

1Sigmund Freud, The Penguin Freud Reader (London, UK: Penguin, 2006), 462.

Chapter 4

1Sigmund Freud, Complete Works , trans. Strachey, vol. 7 (London, UK: Vintage, 1905).

2http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=dwell.

3Homer, Odyssey , Book 19, trans. A. T. Murray (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919).

All Heidegger quotes from: Martin Heidegger, Building Dwelling Thinking, in Poetry, Language, Thought (London, UK: HarperCollins, 1971).

Chapter 5

1Michel Foucault, Birth of The Clinic (London, UK: Routledge, 2003), 4.

2Although this quote is widespread online, I can find no confirmed source. It is possibly fictional.

3Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, Complete Works , trans. Strachey, vol. 4 (London, UK: Vintage, 1955), 844.

4Sigmund Freud, Dora, cited in introduction by Phillip Rieff (New York, USA: Touchstone Books, 1977), vii.

5Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny, Complete Works , trans. Strachey, vol. 17 (London, UK: Vintage, 1955), 248.

Chapter 6

1Simon Louvish, Mae West: It Ain’t No Sin (New York: Macmillan, 2006), 350–51.

2Another untraceable Mae West quote.

3http://thestir.cafemom.com/pregnancy/162567/every_woman_deserves_a_swanky.

4http://www.mommyish.com/2013/10/13/couple-gives-birth-in-hotel-room/.

5Sigmund Freud, “A Case of Hysteria”, Complete Works , trans. Strachey, vol. 7 (London, UK: Vintage, 1955), 90.

6Sigmund Freud, Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, Complete Works , trans. Strachey, vol. 20 (London, UK: Vintage, 1959), 91.

7Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, Complete Works , trans. Strachey, vol. 5 (London, UK: Vintage, 1955), 17.

8Sigmund Freud, letter, cited in Eran J. Rolnik, Freud in Zion: Psychoanalysis and the Making of Modern Jewish Identity (London: Karnac Books, 2012), 141.

9Denise Riley, Impersonal Passion, Language as Affect (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 51.

All Katherine Mansfield quotes from: Katherine Mansfield), Collected Stories (London, UK: Penguin, 1981). All Oscar Wilde quotes from: Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (London: Methuen, 1981).

Chapter 7

1https://www.nuh.nhs.uk/patients-and-visitors/hospital-hotel/.

2None of these Wilde quotations can be verified.

3Charlotte Chandler, Hello, I Must Be Going: Groucho and His Friends (London: Sphere Books, 1987). All Oscar Wilde quotes from: Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (London: Methuen, 1981).

All Room Service quotes from my transcript of the movie.

Chapter 9

All Grand Hotel quotes from my transcription of the movie.

THANK you, early readers Isabella Streffen, Tristram Burke, John Toby Ferris, Richard Barnett, and Sharon Kivland, and my first reader, as always, Lauren Elkin. Thank you, Deborah Levy, for guiding me to the German Pension. Thank you again, Deborah, and also Brian Dillon, and Olivia Laing, for sponsoring my proposal.

abjection here, here

accommodations

amenities here, here, here, here — here, here — here, here

bars here, here, here, here — here, here, here, here, here, here

bathrooms here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here

bedrooms here, here, here — here

behavior here, here — here, here — here, here, here, here — here