The Best Place for You to Stay is Ultimately a Book

Twenty-seven stories from the Writers’ Hotel, including Ronald Giphart’s ‘The Chelsea’

The Best Place for You to Stay is Ultimately a Book is an English-language literary anthology containing 27 stories by prominent Dutch and Flemish authors. The collection grew out of Sheltering in the Writers’ Hotel, a collaboration between Amsterdam’s Ambassade Hotel and the Dutch newspaper Het Parool.

During the coronavirus pandemic, bookshops remained closed for months and writers were unable to attend readings, book signings, literary festivals, award ceremonies or the annual Book Ball. The Ambassade Hotel, known for its long association with authors and literature, consequently found itself without the writers who normally brought its rooms and corridors to life.

To preserve this connection, one author was invited to stay at the hotel each week for six months. The participating writers reflected on their lives, work and experiences during this exceptional period. Their Writers’ Hotel columns were published in the Arts Section of Het Parool between May and November 2021. Ambassade Hotel

The Dutch collection appeared under the title In een boek logeer je uiteindelijk het beste: Zesentwintig verhalen uit het Schrijvershotel. Its title was taken from the concluding sentence of Adriaan van Dis’s contribution. The English edition includes an additional story by journalist and book coordinator Marjolijn de Cocq, bringing the total number of contributions to 27.

The hardcover was published by Samsara Books as a promotional edition and was not originally available through regular bookshops. All 27 English-language columns can also be read on the website of the Ambassade Hotel.

Ronald Giphart and ‘The Chelsea’

Ronald Giphart’s contribution is entitled ‘The Chelsea’. In this humorous and personal story, he recalls visiting the legendary Hotel Chelsea in New York with his friend Dylan van Eijkeren during the mid-1990s.

For decades, Hotel Chelsea was a temporary home and meeting place for celebrated writers, artists, actors and musicians. Giphart combines this extraordinary cultural history with an amusing memory of his own stay. When his shared hotel room unexpectedly becomes the setting for a romantic encounter, he is forced to look for somewhere else to sleep.

With the assistance of two sympathetic receptionists, he eventually finds a bed in a modest staff room on the twelfth floor. The result is a characteristically entertaining Giphart story filled with literary history, humour, anecdote and self-deprecation.

Book details

Title: The Best Place for You to Stay is Ultimately a Book
Subtitle: Twenty-seven Stories from the Writers’ Hotel
Original Dutch title: In een boek logeer je uiteindelijk het beste
Publisher: Samsara Publishers, Amsterdam
Publication year: 2022
Format: hardcover
English ISBN: 9789493228863
Dutch ISBN: 9789493228849
Genre: literary anthology / short stories
Translation: Paul Evans
Ronald Giphart’s contribution: ‘The Chelsea’

Original introduction

The twenty-seven stories included in this book form the heart of a project that was begun during the long lockdown in the winter of 2020-21 with the working title Sheltering in the Writers’ Hotel.

Bookshops had been closed for months and for the authors there were no tours, no readings, no signings, no national Book Ball, no live awards ceremonies… The writers stayed away from the Ambassade Hotel and we missed them.

After all, what is a writers’ hotel without writers? A pen without ink? This is how the idea came about to invite one author each week over six months to stay at the Ambassade Hotel and describe their writing lives at that time.

Throughout the period May to November 2021, the newspaper Het Parool published the Writers’ Hotel columns in its weekly Arts Section.

Ronald Giphart – ‘The Chelsea’

The following is an English translation of Ronald Giphart’s original Dutch contribution.

Hotel Chelsea in Manhattan was, until 2011, the illustrious gathering place of hundreds of artists, actors and musicians. Madonna lived there, in room 822, Leonard Cohen in room 424 and Janis Joplin in room 411. Sid Vicious’s girlfriend was stabbed to death in room 100, and the Sex Pistols’ bass player himself later died of an overdose there, also in room 100.

Artists such as Christo, Robert Mapplethorpe, who occupied room 1017, Willem de Kooning and Andy Warhol paid for their accommodation with works of art—paintings that were displayed throughout the hotel.

Countless writers stayed there as well: from Mark Twain to Jack Kerouac, from William S. Burroughs to Jan Cremer, who lived there for quite some time, and from Arthur Miller to the Irish poet Dylan Thomas, who stayed in room 205. When Thomas returned one evening in 1953 from the nearby White Horse Tavern, his regular bar, he collapsed after drinking eighteen whiskies.

It was a pilgrimage in honour of Dylan Thomas that brought my friend Dylan van Eijkeren—known from Het Parool—and me to Hotel Chelsea in the mid-1990s. We actually managed to book room 205, or at least that is the story we later spread around. In reality, we stayed in room 434.

The Chelsea was everything I had imagined it would be. The lobby was filled with works of art, the hotel was inhabited by a colourful procession of eccentric weirdos, and behind the tiny reception desk sat two men in turbans, twenty-four hours a day, both of whom were called Singh.

On the flight to JFK, Dylan and I had met two Dutch girls. As we said goodbye at the airport, Dylan called out that we would meet them at the White Horse Tavern at ten o’clock that evening. This was before the age of mobile phones, so we had no idea whether the women would actually turn up. They did, and eventually Dylan and one of the girls became inseparable.

The three of us ended up back at The Chelsea. Since I had no desire to lie in my narrow bed listening to the playful exchange of genetic material taking place in the bed beside me, I decided to take a nap on one of the old sofas in the lobby, where Jimi Hendrix had once sat—there were photographs to prove it.

I asked the receptionists if I could rent an additional room, but unfortunately the hotel was completely booked that night.

After I had explained my awkward situation, they looked at one another and shook their turbans sympathetically. One of the Singhs reached into a drawer and handed me the key to a nondescript little staff room with a bed on the twelfth floor. In later years I often claimed that Mark Twain had once lived there, but that was probably not true.

End.

Introduction
Arnon Grunberg
Alma Mathijsen
Esther Verhoef
Jessica Durlacher
Thomas Heerma van Voss
Annejet van der Zijl
Daan Heerma van Voss
Hanna Bervoets
Aaf Brandt Corstius
Adriaan van Dis
Annelies Verbeke
Marente de Moor
Auke Hulst
Susan Smit
Bette Westera
Maartje Wortel
Tom Lanoye
Tommy Wieringa
Pieter Waterdrinker
Jan Mulder
Ronald Giphart
Ian Buruma
Roxane van Iperen
Abdelkader Benali
Jeroen Thijssen
Stine Jensen
Marjolijn de Cocq
Acknowledgements
Biographies
In Collaboration With

Editorial: copy editors at the newspaper Het Parool and Marte Meijs

Original cover photo: Ronald Tilleman

Photography: Jasmine Gunther, Ireen Wyers and Adinda Bekema

Design cover and interior: Erik Thé, www.erikthedesign.com

Translation: Paul Evans

Copyediting: Vimbai Shire

ISBN 9789493228863

NUR 325

www.samsarabooks.com

In collaboration with

This project came about thanks to the collaboration of:

Ambassade Group

The following companies in the Ambassade Group were involved in this project: