Descant 142 was such a perfect marriage of theme and content– literature about hotels. Not to mention the pictures, including a colour spread of Gladstone Hotel suites and Arnaud Maggs‘ portfolio “Hotels of Paris” (of which the cover photo shown here is a part). I was excited to see a table of contents containing some authors I like very much– Margaret Atwood, Camilla Gibb, Catherine Bush– and as I read through the issue, I was impressed with the variety of approaches each writer brought to the subject (which is fascinating, since most of the stories’ destinations were similarly lovers’ trysts).
As the entire magazine makes clear, hotels are ideal places for story, their neutrality offering even the most conventional character the opportunity to act out of type. They are ideal meeting places for strangers who’d never assemble together anywhere else, with thin walls offering such intimacy. To be at once foreign and familiar, for a character to be both home and away. Things happen here, as evidenced by the fact that when I started brainstorming literary hotels with some friends, we went to town.
As follows (edited for space): the beginnings of The Bell Jar and of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, Hotel Du Lac by Anita Brookner, Forster’s A Room with a View, “most detective fiction”, Down and Out in Paris and London, Salinger’s “A Perfect Day for a Bananafish”, Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach, Sharon Butala’s short story “Fever”, much of Henry James, Stephen King’s The Shining, and (of course) Eloise. Also The Royal Albion Hotel in Brighton, which is referenced in passing in Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock, such a reference altogether important as I stayed there on my honeymoon.
Stepping out of fiction, I also found a video of Russell Smith on hotels in literature, New York City’s Library Hotel, and Five Literary Hotels worldwide. Also the British survey compiled by hotel chain Travelodge of most-discarded books in hotel rooms from 2007 and from 2008, which includes political memoirs, celebrity autobiographies, and a Harry Potter. Also interestingly On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan, which might suggest that people in hotels don’t like reading about people in hotels, but I don’t know.
I do know that I set out to write this blog entry and entitle it “Encounters with Books: Reading in Hotels”. Inspired by Descant 142, and Russell Smith’s comments about hotels proving a most fruitful place for writers, I figured readers would have a similar experience. But when I stayed at a hotel some weeks ago, I found that it wasn’t the case.
The neutrality providing writers with the space to imagine and think does not serve to create a passionate reading experience. I’ve written before here about books read while traveling, books read on vacation, both offering reading experiences that can be most profound, but these experiences tend to take place in verdant parks, under sunny skies, on a train with entire countries whipping by outside the window, and in crowded cafes noisy with foreign tongues and espresso machines.
Whereas a hotel room is a void. Empty drawers, empty closets, naked hangers, untouched stationary, unstained towels, with the water glasses sterilized and wrapped in plastic so you know. This is not a place that stays with you, the whole reason a writer can escape to anywhere. And the reader can escape inside his book, of course, but he brings nothing of his surroundings with him. When he remembers the book, he won’t remember where he read it, and he’ll remember the hotel, but not even that he read.