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Out of My Skin: A Novel, by John Haskell
PDF Ebook Out of My Skin: A Novel, by John Haskell
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Los Angeles. A would-be movie reviewer, looking for romance, takes an assignment to write a magazine article about celebrity look-alikes. After getting to know a Steve Martin impersonator, the writer decides to undertake his own process of transformation and becomes not Steve Martin but a version of him―graceful, charming, at home in the world. Safe in the guise of "Steve," he begins to fall in love. And that's when "Steve" takes over. Set in the capital of illusion, this is a story of one man's journey into paradise―and his attempt to come out the other side.
- Sales Rank: #2184470 in Books
- Published on: 2009-02-03
- Released on: 2009-02-03
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .51" w x 5.00" l, .43 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 224 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In his excellent third book, Haskell gets into the head of a lonely writer whose shot at a second chance hinges, strangely and brilliantly, on an impersonation of an impersonation of Steve Martin. The narrator, who could or could not be named Jack, leaves New York after a breakup and lands in Los Angeles to write about movies at the invitation of his editor friend, Alan. Soon, Alan introduces him to Jane, an ex-dancer apparently, who wanted to learn about photography, and assigns him a story about celebrity impersonators. When the narrator meets Scott, a Steve Martin impersonator, he begins channeling a version of the actor himself, and his impersonations mushroom into continuous Steve. Meanwhile, his relationship with Jane escalates (complicated by his Steveness), he tries his hand at acting and muses about famous movies and the ways in which Hollywooders reinvent themselves. Haskell's vision is frightening and exhilarating, and his prose can imbue a spiritual glow to, for instance, a discarded raisin on a Starbucks table. It's an odd world, and certainly one worth entering. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The New Yorker
A journalist leaves New York in the wake of a failed love affair and heads to Los Angeles, hoping to write about movies. He winds up interviewing a Steve Martin impersonator and is inspired to try “being Steve” himself—not as a paid gig but as a daily incarnation. What at first seems like just another novel about L.A. anomie turns out to be something more transfixing: a kind of pop Zen parable, at once whimsical and austere. Haskell cultivates a winking deadpan to chronicle his narrator’s twilight of the soul, inserting revelations in unexpected places. When the narrator (who, inevitably, becomes an actor) is cast as a monster in a video game and required to lift a heavy co-star for a prolonged shot, he hopes that “with acceptance the pain would lose its meaning”; later, he discovers a raisin abandoned on a table at Starbucks, “glowing with its raisinness.”
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From Booklist
Haskell’s debut, American Purgatorio (2006), featured an emotionally fractured protagonist, Jack, crisscrossing the country in search of his missing wife. This latest novel’s narrator is almost Jack’s temperamental opposite, a transplanted New Yorker reporting on his newly adopted Los Angeles surroundings with deadpan existential detachment. While writing an article about celebrity impersonators, the man—never named, but whose biographical details resemble Haskell’s—meets a Steve Martin look-alike and suddenly begins to take on the comedian’s persona and mannerisms. In an impromptu romance that develops with L.A. native Jane, he quickly discovers that his Martin shtick not only smooths over the kinks in the relationship but also leads to a few unexpected acting gigs. Yet as the alter ego becomes more aware of the L.A. mystique of performance-driven behavior, the Martin persona becomes less useful role than burden. Haskell’s prose loses a little something through his penchant for rambling digressions, but his frequent insights on the nature of identity are ultimately engaging. --Carl Hays
Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
If Only He Could be Steve Martin, He Believes, He Would be Happy
By M. JEFFREY MCMAHON
John Haskell has written a taut, sinewy novel Out of My Skin, which presents a self-loathing narrator, a struggling New York writer who has recently moved to Los Angeles, so crippled by neuroses that he feels compelled to reject himself and instead become the actor/comedian Steve Martin. When he experiences insecurities as himself, these insecurities seem unpalatable, but when he experiences his foibles as Steve Martin, they become easier to swallow.
As the novel progresses, the narrator becomes more and more obsessed with Steve Martin, living vicariously through what he perceives Steve Martin to be. This alter ego becomes a way of coping: An escape from the demons within himself he is too terrified to face.
A good companion for this funny, sometimes lugubrious novella, is the film Being John Malkovich, which also tackles the theme of self-loathing people wanting to vicariously live through celebrities.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
"Not only did I prefer [being] Steve, I was seeing my old self as a hindrance."
By Mary Whipple
(4.5 stars) In this "autobiographical novel," author John Haskell tells the story of Jack Haskell, an excruciatingly self-conscious young man who has given himself one month in Los Angeles to see if he can find a job. Unsure of himself and constantly obsessing about the impression he is making, Jack is seeking a job in journalism, preferably writing about the film industry. It is not surprising that Jack, insecure in the real world, loves old films and feels most comfortable with actors and acting. In Los Angeles he soon meets Scott, who is starring in Bertold Brecht's Galileo, while supporting himself as a Steve Martin impersonator. Soon Jack is acting like Scott acting like Steve Martin. Eventually, Jack applies for a full-time job as a Steve Martin imitator.
As Jack throws himself completely into his role as Steve Martin, he discovers that "an entirely new world was possible." When he meets Jane, a writer of young adult fiction, he finds that he is able, as Steve, to make overtures with a confidence that the real Jack Haskell has never felt. As the relationship progresses, however, Jack realizes that he must understand who he is--without relying on Steve--if he is ever going to have a complete relationship.
Within this relatively simple framework, author John Haskell writes a fully realized and rich novel in which every detail adds to his themes of fantasy vs. reality, pretense vs. integrity, and expediency vs. personal courage. The author creates dozens of parallels between the insecure Jack, and the world of drama and actors, compressing them to give depth and universality to what might appear at first to be a somewhat superficial story about a superficial and undeveloped character. Every detail counts.
Several films serve as motifs. In the 1945 film of Detour, a young piano player hitchhikes across the country to woo a lounge singer. During the trip, the owner of the car, ironically named Charles Haskell, dies, and the hitchhiker then assumes his identity. Sunset Boulevard (1950) reminds Jack of his relationship with Jane. Here, William Holden, an unsuccessful scriptwriter flees in his about-to-be-repossessed car. Turning into an old, seemingly abandoned mansion, he discovers Gloria Swanson, a silent-era film star, who offers him a place to stay, while he pretends to love her. Steve Martin's Roxanne (1989), a film paralleling the story of Cyrano de Bergerac, also figures in the plot. Jack's fascination with the transformation of Archibald Leach into the actor Cary Grant, and his equal obsession with the remarkably insecure Charles Laughton, who played the role of Galileo in the 1947 play, are also motifs.
One of the best constructed novels I've read in ages, this is a study of a young man of extreme sensibility who is trying to deal with himself and his limitations. Some readers may become impatient with Jack's extreme self-consciousness (and self-indulgence), but for those who love carefully realized, often humorous, novels in which every detail fits and adds to the universality of the themes, this novel is a satisfying pleasure. n Mary Whipple
I Am Not Jackson Pollock: Stories
American Purgatorio: A Novel
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Well-written and weirdly intriguing
By Keith Nichols
This book is sufficiently well-written that I kept reading, supposing that an author so skilled would get around to creating some significant action or event. But, at least by my standards, this did not occur. The protagonist, Jack Haskell, instead spends his time drifting about town imagining himself to be channeling the personality of the multitalented Steve Martin. Not channeling Mr Martin's talents, just apparently the upbeat way Martin relates to people or perhaps maneuvers his pelvis in standing and walking or something. This takes place after Jack Haskell has reached Los Angeles and begins socializing with a girl. The fact that he's in LA is of minor importance, though, since his interest, aside from the girl, is almost entirely in staying aware of how much Steve Martin he is channeling at the moment and whether that is serving him well in whatever social situation he's in.
This is a short book and even if you find it unsatisfactory, you'll have not wasted a lot of time in reading it. Then again, you may find it quite gratifying in some way.
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