in TLS, review of Joseph Roth, _The Hotel Years_:
"Roth shared Cyril Connolly’s notion that hotel bedrooms were the writer’s spiritual home (Vladimir Nabokov chose to write his last books in the consoling sumptuousness of the Palace Hotel, Montreux). Hotel Savoy (1924), Roth’s
second novel, remains a masterpiece of concise, apocalyptic impressionism, matched in English only by Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust (1939). In the hotel, which stands for the whole of Eastern Europe in the process of accelerating post-1918 decomposition,
Roth’s alter ego, Gabriel Dan, bumps into his wartime companion-in-arms Zwonimir:
“He loved America. When a billet was good, he’d say ‘America!’ If an emplacement was strongly constructed he’d say ‘America!’ Of a fine lieutenant, again ‘America!’ And because I shot well he’d dub my best shots: ‘America!’”"
in LARB, _Hotels of North America_ author Rick Moody interview:
SLK: While I was reading Hotels of North America, I did find myself thinking about Nabokov’s Pale Fire and the character of John Shade. That kind of mysterious narrative-within-a-narrative that takes more than a few reads
to figure out. Was this kind of Nabokovian nonlinear, dimensional approach a part of your storytelling intention?
RM: Yes! I mean, I didn’t really notice how Nabokovian it was until I was nearly to completion. (The preface was suggested by my editor, Ben George, so it was probably a little less Kinbotian before that preface was added — it was the last thing that got
written in the book.) But Pale Fire is one of my very favorite books. It was a real life-changer for me.
One of the extentions of Moody's book is the site rateyourlodging.com seeded with his protagonist's reviews; I expect to see Enchanted Hunters appear shortly ...