Out of My Skin: A Novel [Paperback]

John Haskell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 3, 2009

Los Angeles. A would-be movie reviewer, looking for romance, takes an assignment to write a magazine article about celebrity look-alikes. After getting to know a Steve Martin impersonator, the writer decides to undertake his own process of transformation and becomes not Steve Martin but a version of him—graceful, charming, at home in the world. Safe in the guise of “Steve,” he begins to fall in love. And that’s when “Steve” takes over. Set in the capital of illusion, this is a story of one man’s journey into paradise—and his attempt to come out the other side.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In his excellent third book, Haskell gets into the head of a lonely writer whose shot at a second chance hinges, strangely and brilliantly, on an impersonation of an impersonation of Steve Martin. The narrator, who could or could not be named Jack, leaves New York after a breakup and lands in Los Angeles to write about movies at the invitation of his editor friend, Alan. Soon, Alan introduces him to Jane, an ex-dancer apparently, who wanted to learn about photography, and assigns him a story about celebrity impersonators. When the narrator meets Scott, a Steve Martin impersonator, he begins channeling a version of the actor himself, and his impersonations mushroom into continuous Steve. Meanwhile, his relationship with Jane escalates (complicated by his Steveness), he tries his hand at acting and muses about famous movies and the ways in which Hollywooders reinvent themselves. Haskell's vision is frightening and exhilarating, and his prose can imbue a spiritual glow to, for instance, a discarded raisin on a Starbucks table. It's an odd world, and certainly one worth entering. (Feb.)
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From The New Yorker

A journalist leaves New York in the wake of a failed love affair and heads to Los Angeles, hoping to write about movies. He winds up interviewing a Steve Martin impersonator and is inspired to try “being Steve” himself—not as a paid gig but as a daily incarnation. What at first seems like just another novel about L.A. anomie turns out to be something more transfixing: a kind of pop Zen parable, at once whimsical and austere. Haskell cultivates a winking deadpan to chronicle his narrator’s twilight of the soul, inserting revelations in unexpected places. When the narrator (who, inevitably, becomes an actor) is cast as a monster in a video game and required to lift a heavy co-star for a prolonged shot, he hopes that “with acceptance the pain would lose its meaning”; later, he discovers a raisin abandoned on a table at Starbucks, “glowing with its raisinness.”
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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (February 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374299099
• ISBN-13: 978-0374299095
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,185,962 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If Only He Could be Steve Martin, He Believes, He Would be Happy, May 20, 2009

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M. JEFFREY MCMAHON "herculodge" (Torrance, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Out of My Skin: A Novel (Paperback)

John Haskell has written a taut, sinewy novel Out of My Skin, which presents a self-loathing narrator, a struggling New York writer who has recently moved to Los Angeles, so crippled by neuroses that he feels compelled to reject himself and instead become the actor/comedian Steve Martin. When he experiences insecurities as himself, these insecurities seem unpalatable, but when he experiences his foibles as Steve Martin, they become easier to swallow.

As the novel progresses, the narrator becomes more and more obsessed with Steve Martin, living vicariously through what he perceives Steve Martin to be. This alter ego becomes a way of coping: An escape from the demons within himself he is too terrified to face.

A good companion for this funny, sometimes lugubrious novella, is the film Being John Malkovich, which also tackles the theme of self-loathing people wanting to vicariously live through celebrities.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Not only did I prefer [being] Steve, I was seeing my old self as a hindrance.", March 28, 2009

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Out of My Skin: A Novel (Paperback)

(4.5 stars) In this "autobiographical novel," author John Haskell tells the story of Jack Haskell, an excruciatingly self-conscious young man who has given himself one month in Los Angeles to see if he can find a job. Unsure of himself and constantly obsessing about the impression he is making, Jack is seeking a job in journalism, preferably writing about the film industry. It is not surprising that Jack, insecure in the real world, loves old films and feels most comfortable with actors and acting. In Los Angeles he soon meets Scott, who is starring in Bertold Brecht's Galileo, while supporting himself as a Steve Martin impersonator. Soon Jack is acting like Scott acting like Steve Martin. Eventually, Jack applies for a full-time job as a Steve Martin imitator.

As Jack throws himself completely into his role as Steve Martin, he discovers that "an entirely new world was possible." When he meets Jane, a writer of young adult fiction, he finds that he is able, as Steve, to make overtures with a confidence that the real Jack Haskell has never felt. As the relationship progresses, however, Jack realizes that he must understand who he is--without relying on Steve--if he is ever going to have a complete relationship.

Within this relatively simple framework, author John Haskell writes a fully realized and rich novel in which every detail adds to his themes of fantasy vs. reality, pretense vs. integrity, and expediency vs. personal courage. The author creates dozens of parallels between the insecure Jack, and the world of drama and actors, compressing them to give depth and universality to what might appear at first to be a somewhat superficial story about a superficial and undeveloped character. Every detail counts.

Several films serve as motifs. In the 1945 film of Detour, a young piano player hitchhikes across the country to woo a lounge singer. During the trip, the owner of the car, ironically named Charles Haskell, dies, and the hitchhiker then assumes his identity. Sunset Boulevard (1950) reminds Jack of his relationship with Jane. Here, William Holden, an unsuccessful scriptwriter flees in his about-to-be-repossessed car. Turning into an old, seemingly abandoned mansion, he discovers Gloria Swanson, a silent-era film star, who offers him a place to stay, while he pretends to love her. Steve Martin's Roxanne (1989), a film paralleling the story of Cyrano de Bergerac, also figures in the plot. Jack's fascination with the transformation of Archibald Leach into the actor Cary Grant, and his equal obsession with the remarkably insecure Charles Laughton, who played the role of Galileo in the 1947 play, are also motifs.

One of the best constructed novels I've read in ages, this is a study of a young man of extreme sensibility who is trying to deal with himself and his limitations. Some readers may become impatient with Jack's extreme self-consciousness (and self-indulgence), but for those who love carefully realized, often humorous, novels in which every detail fits and adds to the universality of the themes, this novel is a satisfying pleasure. n Mary Whipple

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4.0 out of 5 stars schizoid ride and meta novel, August 21, 2011

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MV (East Bay, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Out of My Skin: A Novel (Paperback)

This novel is like being inside the head of someone with a schizoid personality disorder at worse or Asperger's at best. Unable to recognize himself as a "being", the main character spends the novel in a way both trying to lose and find himself. The beginning of the novel he imitates a Steve Martin imitator but when he gets tired of that, he finds it difficult to be something else.

Interspersed with this strangely compelling narrative is the narrative of various movies and books that pop into the character's mind as he tries to make sense of his self. Most of the novel is the main character looking at himself. In a way, it's a meta novel."