"Hotel Women" isn't so much an independent novella as it is an enactment of hotel consciousness. Throughout the story, the articles "the" "a" and "an" never appear -- Koestenbaum's refusal to distinguish definite from indefinite. The effect is to transform all things into ideas: One does not sit in a chair; one sits in chair. So when "Hotel Women" ends first, leaving "Hotel Theory" alone to dissolve into fragments, Koestenbaum's project is complete: The hotel no longer exists; what is left is "hotel."

¶ 7:12 AM