Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009
John Haskell's new novel, Out of My Skin, takes place largely in the head of the lonely writer narrator who leaves New York to start a new life in Los Angeles as a movie reviewer. The narrator, who may be named Jack, is introduced to a woman named Jane, with whom he more or less falls in love with, though it's unclear if Jack is actually in love with Jane or whether he is simply in love with the idea of being in love with Jane. As mentioned above, the novel takes place largely in the head of the narrator, and the narrator is a pretty self-absorbed character.
From the beginning, Out of My Skin shows a lot of promise. Haskell's prose illuminates the psyche of a man obsessed with facades of personality and the reinvention of self. The novel is premised upon an encounter with a Steve Martin impersonator, and the narrator's subsequent decision to similarly impersonate the comedian, not as vocation but as an act of personal reinvention. The novel climaxes as Jack finds the lines between self and Steve blurring.
John Haskell's new novel, Out of My Skin, takes place largely in the head of the lonely writer narrator who leaves New York to start a new life in Los Angeles as a movie reviewer. The narrator, who may be named Jack, is introduced to a woman named Jane, with whom he more or less falls in love with, though it's unclear if Jack is actually in love with Jane or whether he is simply in love with the idea of being in love with Jane. As mentioned above, the novel takes place largely in the head of the narrator, and the narrator is a pretty self-absorbed character.
From the beginning, Out of My Skin shows a lot of promise. Haskell's prose illuminates the psyche of a man obsessed with facades of personality and the reinvention of self. The novel is premised upon an encounter with a Steve Martin impersonator, and the narrator's subsequent decision to similarly impersonate the comedian, not as vocation but as an act of personal reinvention. The novel climaxes as Jack finds the lines between self and Steve blurring.
Haskell weaves his own characters' identity struggles with those of Hollywood stars like Cary Grant and Charles Laughton, and quickly makes clear his central theme, this notion of reinvention. If anything, Haskell is a little too heavy-handed with this; I felt as though I was being thematically-hammered. Over the course of the novel, the narrator's agonizing self-consciousness and its blindly destructive effect on his relationships becomes tiring.
In fact, my favorite part of the whole novel occurs in the opening scene in which the narrator, who is writing an article about sharks, finds himself underwater in a shark cage where he undergoes an adrenaline-charged encounter that places him fully in a single immediate moment, in which everything around him crystallizes clearly, in which he is ecstatically unaware of self. The moment is made visceral through Haskell's transcendent prose:
In fact, my favorite part of the whole novel occurs in the opening scene in which the narrator, who is writing an article about sharks, finds himself underwater in a shark cage where he undergoes an adrenaline-charged encounter that places him fully in a single immediate moment, in which everything around him crystallizes clearly, in which he is ecstatically unaware of self. The moment is made visceral through Haskell's transcendent prose:
"I sat there, still in the wetsuit, the electronic wafers still taped to my body, a blue blanket around my neck, my butt bones on the plastic crate, my feet on the deck, the ocean in front of me, the sky above me, and the only thing missing was my thought. I noticed a corroded hinge on the cabin door, and instead of thinking about what kind of paint they used to paint the hinge, or imagining how I would paint the hinge if I owned the boat, instead of reacting to the hinge, I just saw what it was. Every so often I noticed a thought slip into my head, but it was easy enough to let it go and return my attention to the hinge."
The narrator calls this state of mind a paradise, “a place where the need for proection falls away,” and it stands in stark contrast against his ensuing struggles with identity. Haskell uses prose to great effect in illustrating truths about ego and psyche. I just think he might have achieved as much in the span of a short story.
The narrator calls this state of mind a paradise, “a place where the need for proection falls away,” and it stands in stark contrast against his ensuing struggles with identity. Haskell uses prose to great effect in illustrating truths about ego and psyche. I just think he might have achieved as much in the span of a short story.
