A Standard hotel guest, taking a quick break from Portnoy's Complaint

To coincide with the PEN  World Voices Festival which begins next week, Booker-winner Salman Rushdie has selected 13 books by famous American authors to be placed in the rooms of The Standard, the upscale hotel known for its exhibitionist guests. The books, one to a room, will be second-hand copies provided by Housing Works bookstore, and will be free for guests to take away with them. Below is a list of titles, which, I can’t help but note, is a bit on the conservative side especially considering PEN is dedicated to promoting international literature. It’s a great concept, but I’d love to see another hotel doing something more adventuresome. Perhaps Geoff Dyer, who wrote this essay on the sex appeal of hotel rooms, picking the book selection for The Jane?

Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass

William Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury

F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby

Eudora Welty: The Collected Stories

Bernard Malamud: The Complete Stories

Saul Bellow: Humboldt’s Gift

Philip Roth: Portnoy’s Complaint

Flannery O’Connor: Everything That Rises Must Converge

Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse-Five

Thomas Pynchon: V.

Joseph Heller: Catch-22

Toni Morrison: Beloved

Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay