Chelsea Hodson

"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."

Essays

Tonight I'm Someone Else

lily lily 

When the sand gets in our eyes, we blame the shifting of the ground; we feel the world adding itself up. The old love was a meadow where deer approached if you stayed still long enough. The old love was a staring contest in which blinking meant you were still playing. The old love was a basket of fruit begging to be painted, and sometimes we did paint it.

You don’t have to hide, I often tell people right before I hide. Sanity is a way of seeing the world and comprehending it, understanding its scope. I see a glimpse, then turn away. But I imagine madness is a way of seeing everything at once.

Tonight I'm Someone Else quotes

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