Cover image courtesy FSG.

John Haskell has written a brilliantly muted second novel. Unlike most Los Angeles stories, there are no cocaine binges or trysts with model-actresses in Out of My Skin. Instead, there are dilapidated Downtown hotels and even an earnest conversation with a homeless man. Jack Haskell moves to LA from New York to start over (why else?). Through one of his assignments, he meets Scott, a Steve Martin impersonator. Jack begins imitating some of the more appealing aspects of the Steve Martin character in order to woo Jane, his love interest, but soon finds he is unable to act like anyone else except Steve. Eventually, Jack finds that his Steve act is getting in the way of his relationship with Jane and struggles to surrender it. Haskell is obviously aware of his departure from the popular portrayal of the city, so he sums up just about every Angeleno cliché in his “Alan” character, a swinging LA Times film critic, of all people, who has the swagger of a big shot Hollywood producer and is always trying to get Jack laid either by attempting to coerce him into a threesome in a hot tub or inviting him to a “shower party.” Haskell’s voice is restrained throughout, making the narrative one long deadpan monologue.

Despite its deadpan tone, the novel has a strange dramatic thrust. Haskell’s forte is making the most mundane happenings into cliffhangers: I found myself nearly squirming out of my seat when the protagonist jumped precariously from boulder to boulder on a walk with his love interest through Elysian Park. A number of these tense vignettes follow as the plot progresses: Jack braves a rope swing two stories up over a canyon, or, later, saunters uninvited into Scott’s apartment, only to find that he has mysteriously vanished.

While most authors choose to conceal allusions under the veil of character names or plot devices, Haskell expounds on them. The novel is peppered with meditations on various cultural references, mostly LA-set classic films, and stories about personalities from Hollywood’s golden age and beyond who are loosely related to his experiences. Readers are regaled with tales of Bertolt Brecht, Billy Wilder, Steve Martin, and others. Los Angeles, a city without any real urban planning or structure, is an ideal backdrop for Haskell’s sprawl of idiosyncratic anecdotes. A man trying to find himself in the big city and win the girl of his dreams is one of the most boring clichés in existence, but Haskell’s expert re-imagining of this tired structure is perceptive and layered. Out of My Skin is so blah in it’s blahness it’s fascinating.

Out of My Skin will be published on February 10th by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.