Grab a Seat in Hotel Theory
10 November 2007 Grab a Seat in Hotel Theory
Writer and Cultural Critic to give Fisher Center Lecture
On Nov. 14, City University of New Yorks Distinguished Professor of English Wayne Koestenbaum welcomes HWS students, faculty and staff to Hotel Theory, a lecture that delves into the form and content of his recent book of the same title. Presented in parallel columns, Koestenbaums book simultaneously conveys a philosophic meditation while telling a dime novel, intertwining panic and calm as it creates a genre where philosophy, history, film, literature and the authors dreams spill into what one reviewer calls an oblique manifesto for a philosophy of being-here, being anywhere.
Moving between subjects as seemingly dissimilar as Heidegger and Liberace, Koestenbaums creative inventiveness invites a rethinking on memory as narrative genre, in structure and form. Memory, suggests Koestenbaums work, may be far more playful in being and time.
In terms of the lectures being and time, Koestenbaum will speak at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 14 in the Geneva Room. At 9 a.m. the following day, join this renowned writer and cultural critic for a morning roundtable in the Fisher Center, Demarest 212. Koestenbaum will also be one of four authors speaking at the Lyric Essay Symposium at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 15 in Coxe 8.
He is also a visiting professor at Yale in the School of Art and recipient of the Whiting Writers Award. Koestenbaums previous works include the novel Moira Orfei in Aigues-Mortes, creative nonfiction works Andy Warhol: Cleavage: Essays on Sex, Stars, and Aesthetics; Jackie Under My Skin: Interpreting an Icon; The Queens Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, as well as several books of poetry.