Staff Pick
These essays flirt among the intersections and commingling of commodification, connection, agency, and love, never shying from the difficulties of contradiction. Chelsea Hodson's writing at times feels coldly sexy, like looking at something beautiful through glass. Don't fall for this trap: these words draw blood. Recommended By Cosima C., Powells.com
I've had the biggest Internet crush on Chelsea for so long, and wholeheartedly believe this debut essay collection will help her take over both the literary and nonliterary worlds.
On intimacy, her writing lovingly slapped me in the face with the intersections of tenderness and submission related in ways I'd never read or experienced before. Subjects range from relationships, Arizona, space exploration, the body, the digital age, and modeling, among others. Wholly consuming and magnetic, Tonight I'm Someone Else is a perfect summer, vacation, whenever and however read. Recommended By Emily L., Powells.com
I've had the biggest Internet crush on Chelsea for so long, and wholeheartedly believe this debut essay collection will help her take over both the literary and nonliterary worlds.
On intimacy, her writing lovingly slapped me in the face with the intersections of tenderness and submission, related in ways I'd never read or experienced before. Subjects range from relationships, Arizona, space exploration, the body, the digital age, and modeling, among others. Wholly consuming and magnetic, Tonight I'm Someone Else is a perfect summer, vacation, whenever and however read. Recommended By Emily L., Powells.com
Chelsea Hodson is somewhere between poet and magician. Her sleight of hand is dazzling, weaving dark themes and just the right amount of vulnerable heart into these essays, whether they be meaty and full or broken into sharp, diamond-like shards of prose. I'm not sure I know another writer who can be so hard and soft at the same time. And don't overlook the humor herein — it's the kind of sharp wit that reminds me of Fran Lebowitz or the songs of PJ Harvey. This book is an amazement. Recommended By Kevin S., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
"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."