Hurricane Hotel: A Novel Review

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(More customer reviews)Hurricane Hotel is a surrealistic romp through the madness of the soul. It yanks the reader into a place in time that exists like a meteorite in the night sky; it shines brightly, then burns away in a glorious blast of light. Lawson's characters are sinuously developed to encase the reader in a quest to find the end of the story. And for those of us who have experience swimming through the sub-strata of the heavy New Orleans night, it makes it just in time, just before the street sweeper passes by outside the gates. Beware!

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Hurricane Hotel is a rollicking, streetcar ride of a novel setin New Orleans, before, during, and after a Hurricane. The Spirit of Jelly Roll Mortontells a story that revolves around young Zack, who leaves his dysfunctional, ruralLouisiana home, and hitch-hikes to New Orleans and there is befriended by a soiree ofcolorful characters: Some Guy Upstairs, a Mardi Gras bead artist; Martha, who has leftthe medical profession to become a Downtown Queen; the Chemical Sisters, a duo hell benton changing the world; and others, all of whom reside at the hotel.Hurricane Hotel is a book of voices, with each characterenlightening and seducing the reader to join him or her in traversing the dailyescapades that could happen only in New Orleans. With a foreword by Andre Dubus III,(author of House of Sand and Fog), and lyrics from Bob Dylan, Dr. John and many others,Hurricane Hotel is a love letter to a drowned city destined to be reborn and a must readfor the young and rebellious at heart.

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Fifteen Years: Chelsea Hotel (Portuguese and English Edition) Review

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(More customer reviews)The Chelsea Hotel remains a fixed point in the chaotic map of New York's creative overworld. It is a collection of brief moments which superimpose "has-been's" with "will-be's", names, facts and faces flashing in and out of notoriety. Somewhere in the building there are holes that lead not exactly into John Malkowitch head but surely into those of likes of Greg Corso, Arthur C. Clark, Sid Vicious, Leonard Cohen among many others. Some holes lead directly to some ugly swamp in New Jersey, so you need a tour guide. Rita Barros is the best you can get. She has wistfully cohabited with this unending cast of characters for those many years; she has become one of them; she has probed the holes in those walls for a decade and a half; inhabited the minds they lead to. She has captured them in the butterfly net which is her camera, she has pined them into postcards, complete with the rooms they refashioned in their own image. She now mails them from beyond the edge in this picture book of quirkiness which is bound to turn any coffee table upside down. To observe that her photos are vivid, vibrant, vicarious, or exuberant, eccentric, hilarious (which they all are) is to realize that, while browsing these pages, one trips on an unending treasure trove of adjectives which never cease to suggest themselves. More than anything these images show the affection and respect for its subjects which are the distinguishing marks of great photography. Having this book around is like joining a new group of old friends or waking with a sudden urge to paint your living room. Get it before its gone!

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day in day out. in the last fifteen years, Rita Barros has unfolded a spectacle lost but still alive in the rooms, doorways, lobby and other secret places of a unique world: the Chelsea Hotel. Barros guides us into the Chelsea theater of solitude, haunted with reveries, emotional ambiguities, fragments of self, hidden desires and emotions, shadows from lost worlds and all powerful semi-alive beings which tend to dissolve into a new dimension: the New York dimension. In Rita Barros' diarist photographs one experiences the artist's distinctive singularity as opposed to the New York 'angst". The "angst" to be. With a penetrating clarity not only does she raise the curtain of the famous Chelsea but illuminates it. It is a privilege for a viewer to discover the secret world of New York's Chelsea Hotel.

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The Beat Hotel: Ginsberg, Burroughs & Corso in Paris, 1957-1963 Review

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(More customer reviews)I lived at number nine rue Git-le-Coeur from 1955 until 1958 and visited there often until 1960 and knew most of the people mentioned in the book. I was an ex-Korean War Vet studying on the G.I. Bill as were thousands of "Americans in Paris" in the 50,s. I can attest that most of the events related are accurate. The Hotel was special because of the freedom the owner granted us: cooking in our rooms, decorating them, allowing overnight guests, etc.) I believe it was the Hotel that helped form the "Beats" rather then the other way around since it was a creative beehive before they got there. My main argument with the book is the insistance of the hotel as being sordid, rat-ridden and dirty. This was not true. I never saw a four-legged rat there and the only roaches were the cannibis kind. The rooms were swept and mopped daily. It was a great place to be even before the "Beats" arrived and should not be defamed by exaggeration at the expense of the wonderful blue haired MadameRachou who owned it and took care of us, her Americains.

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