Exploding Helicopters #8Ali Smith - Hotel World Dear Ali Smith, I love you long time. Seriously, any time you want. I’ve never really had any homosexual tendencies before but your words totally do it for me. Trains go direct to Cambridge (where you live) from Leicester (where I live) so just say the word and I’ll buy a ticket. If you don’t want me for my body, I’ll even come over to clean your bathroom. I guess it’s the least I can do since this little second-hand books project means that you don’t get a penny from me. I can even put a few quid in an envelope if that’s easier. Do you have PayPal? Yours always (but don’t tell Cormac McCarthy - wouldn’t want him getting jealous) Meg. (and this time I’d throw myself willingly down it wooo- hooooo and this time I’d count as I went, one elephant two eleph-ahh) if I could feel it again, how I hit it, the basement, from four floors up, from toe to head, dead. Dead leg. Dead arm. Dead hand. Dead eye. Dead I, four floors between me and the world, that’s all it took to take me, that’s the measure of it, the length and death of it, the short goodb—. Bring me apples, Bring me (something), Bring me hazlenuts, Bring me wheat, Bring me good things, To eat, Kellogg’s Country Store. The voice still sounded (inside her head all these years later) as if its owner had been brought up on healthy, very good things; it seemed to suggest that eating them every day had made her the successful and socially-upwardly-mobile singer of light classical repertoire that she was, and had got her the morally blameless job of singing on television about these good things precisely for the benefit of others. a terrible way to lose someone close like we lost her in a department store in the sportswear dept & if we went to the customer service desk we could put a call out fro her over the intercom speakers this is a message for Sara Wilby your family is waiting at customer services could Sara Wilby please come back from the dead ah shit ah The people who bought prescriptions in Boots the Chemist yesterday are feeling better, worse or the same. Some have colds. Some have infections. Some have nothing wrong with them. Some feel drowsy and ought not to operate machinery today. See? Isn’t she just amazing? As you can probably tell, Hotel World is about death; one death in particular but really about all deaths. How it is just normal and life goes on, and that sometimes ‘normal’ really means ‘rubbish’, but that’s how life is. Totally fucking love you, Ali Smith. Ali Smith - Hotel WorldPublication date 2002Publisher: PenguinPrice then: £6.99Price now: £1.50Purchased from: The dude under the flyover on Oxford Road, Manchester. From the synopsis: “Brought together - and forced apart - by a bizarre incident involving a dumb waiter, we share their very different experiences of life in the aftermath of death, of pain and sorrow, of hope and love - everything, in fact, that the world dares to throw at us.” You know what, you should totally read this book if you’ve lost someone recently. It’s one of those books that might help, like Jonathon Livingston Seagull.
Exploding Helicopters #8


Ali Smith - Hotel World

Dear Ali Smith,

I love you long time.

Seriously, any time you want. I’ve never really had any homosexual tendencies before but your words totally do it for me. Trains go direct to Cambridge (where you live) from Leicester (where I live) so just say the word and I’ll buy a ticket. If you don’t want me for my body, I’ll even come over to clean your bathroom. I guess it’s the least I can do since this little second-hand books project means that you don’t get a penny from me. I can even put a few quid in an envelope if that’s easier. Do you have PayPal?

Yours always (but don’t tell Cormac McCarthy - wouldn’t want him getting jealous)

Meg.

(and this time I’d throw myself willingly down it wooo-

hooooo and this time I’d count as I went, one elephant two eleph-ahh) if I could feel it again, how I hit it, the basement, from four floors up, from toe to head, dead. Dead leg. Dead arm. Dead hand. Dead eye. Dead I, four floors between me and the world, that’s all it took to take me, that’s the measure of it, the length and death of it, the short goodb—.

Bring me apples, Bring me (something), Bring me hazlenuts, Bring me wheat, Bring me good things, To eat, Kellogg’s Country Store.

The voice still sounded (inside her head all these years later) as if its owner had been brought up on healthy, very good things; it seemed to suggest that eating them every day had made her the successful and socially-upwardly-mobile singer of light classical repertoire that she was, and had got her the morally blameless job of singing on television about these good things precisely for the benefit of others.

a terrible way to lose someone close like we lost her in a department store in the sportswear dept & if we went to the customer service desk we could put a call out fro her over the intercom speakers this is a message for Sara Wilby your family is waiting at customer services could Sara Wilby please come back from the dead ah shit ah

The people who bought prescriptions in Boots the Chemist yesterday are feeling better, worse or the same. Some have colds. Some have infections. Some have nothing wrong with them. Some feel drowsy and ought not to operate machinery today.

See? Isn’t she just amazing?

As you can probably tell, Hotel World is about death; one death in particular but really about all deaths. How it is just normal and life goes on, and that sometimes ‘normal’ really means ‘rubbish’, but that’s how life is.

Totally fucking love you, Ali Smith.

Ali Smith - Hotel World
Publication date 2002
Publisher: Penguin
Price then: £6.99
Price now: £1.50
Purchased from: The dude under the flyover on Oxford Road, Manchester.

From the synopsis: “Brought together - and forced apart - by a bizarre incident involving a dumb waiter, we share their very different experiences of life in the aftermath of death, of pain and sorrow, of hope and love - everything, in fact, that the world dares to throw at us.”

You know what, you should totally read this book if you’ve lost someone recently. It’s one of those books that might help, like Jonathon Livingston Seagull.