Tonight I'm Someone Else
Description
"I had a real romance with this book." -Miranda July
A highly anticipated collection, from the writer Maggie Nelson has called, "bracingly good...refreshing and welcome," that explores the myriad ways in which desire and commodification intersect.
From graffiti gangs and Grand Theft Auto to sugar daddies, Schopenhauer, and a deadly game of Russian roulette, in these essays, Chelsea Hodson probes her own desires to examine where the physical and the proprietary collide. She asks what our privacy, our intimacy, and our own bodies are worth in the increasingly digital world of liking, linking, and sharing.
Starting with Hodson's own work experience, which ranges from the mundane to the bizarre-including modeling and working on a NASA Mars mission- Hodson expands outward, looking at the ways in which the human will submits, whether in the marketplace or in a relationship. Both tender and jarring, this collection is relevant to anyone who's ever searched for what the self is worth.
Hodson's accumulation within each piece is purposeful, and her prose vivid, clear, and sometimes even shocking, as she explores the wonderful and strange forms of desire. Tonight I'm Someone Else is a fresh, poetic debut from an exciting emerging voice, in which Hodson asks, "How much can a body endure?" And the resounding answer: "Almost everything."
More details
Person
Content
Red Letters from a Red Planet 1
Simple Woman 17
Near Miss 35
The New Love 41
The End of Longing 55
Pity the Animal 65
The Id Speaks, Mid-Decision 89
I¿m Only a Thousand Miles Away 95
Swollen and Victorious 111
Artist Statement 123
Halfway Out the Door 133
Second Row 143
Leaving Me 151
The Id Speaks, Mid-Transformation 165
Small Crimes 171
When I Turn 179
Notes 193
Acknowledgments 195