Out of my skin
A would-be magazine writer, after meeting celebrity look-alike, begins his own process of impersonation, becoming not a movie star but an imitation of a movie star. He becomes a version of Steve Martin, hoping that, in the guise of Steve, love becomes possible.
But in the face of that possibility (and that love) the character he's created for himself takes over his life. Set in Los Angeles, the capitol of illusion, this story of desire and idealism is a journey of a person stepping into the realm of paradise and trying to come out on the other side.
Haskell is particularly interested in people who, in one way or another, assume alternate identities for a living. To him, this is a version of what we all do in the course of daily life. Sometimes the public personas that we develop become traps, but ideally we are not creating a fixed mask: we are developing a way of suspending our habitual thoughts and egotistical impulses.
—Elaine Blair (NY Review of Books)
John Haskell’s fiction revolves around questions that have long concerned both novelists and philisophers: Can we truly express how we fee? Who are we and how do we know? Can we change ourselves, change what we desire?
—Jascha Hoffman The National
I think, therefore I can’t.
—New York Times Book Review