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Lauren Elkin
Lauren Elkin is most recently the author of No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute (Semiotext(e)/Fugitives) and the UK translator of Simone de Beauvoir's previously unpublished novel, The Inseparables (Vintage). Her previous book Flâneuse: Women Walk the City (Chatto/FSG) was a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, a New York Times Notable Book of 2017, and a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. Her essays have appeared in Granta, the London Review of Books, Harper’s, the New York Times, and Frieze, among others. Her next book, Art Monsters, will be out in July 2023 (Chatto/FSG). She lives in London.

Articles Available Online


Maria Gainza’s ‘Optic Nerve’

Book Review

May 2019

Lauren Elkin

Book Review

May 2019

In his foreword to A Thousand Plateaus, on the pleasures of philosophy, and of Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy in particular, Brian Massumi writes:  ...

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Issue No. 8

Barking From the Margins: On écriture féminine

Lauren Elkin

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Issue No. 8

 I. Two moments in May May 2, 2011. The novelists Siri Hustvedt and Céline Curiol are giving a talk...

In Antal Szerb’s The Incurable, the eccentric millionaire Peter Rarely steps into the dining car of a train steaming through the Scottish Highlands and sees Tom Maclean, the writer, in a corner scribbling away ‘I’m not disturbing you?’ he asks, taking the empty seat opposite him ‘You certainly are’ Tom replies, ‘Please stay and disturb me some more It would be a real kindness You see, at least while I’m talking to you, I won’t be working Sir, the amount I have to do is intolerable I’m fed up with myself, absolutely fed up I’ve just been to Scotland for a bit of rest I tell you – I was there for a month – in that time I translated a novel from the French, wrote two essays and a novella, eight sketches, six book reviews, ten longer articles and I’ve still got two radio talks waiting to be done’ ‘But why the devil do you work so hard?’ Peter asks ‘For a living, my dear sir, to make a living’ As Tom is so busy he doesn’t even have the time to read a book for its own sake, Peter decides to grant him a thousand pounds a year on condition he gives up writing entirely, a proposition Tom wholeheartedly accepts A month goes by, during which Tom gives vent to his desires: he goes fishing, walking, learns foreign languages – and yet feels unnervingly restless, to the point that when he visits his sister’s family one afternoon and finds his nephew Freddy itching to go off to a football match, but unable to do so because he needs to finish an essay on Shakespeare and Milton, Tom writes the essay for him Having failed to keep his end of the bargain, Tom calls on Peter to renege on their agreement, ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he says, ‘but I really have no choice in the matter’ ‘But haven’t you been happy without your writing?’ Peter asks ‘No, sir It’s just no good If you threw me in prison I’d write in blood on my underwear,

Contributor

August 2014

Lauren Elkin

Contributor

August 2014

Lauren Elkin is most recently the author of No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute (Semiotext(e)/Fugitives) and the UK...

The End of Francophonie: The Politics of French Literature

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Issue No. 2

Lauren Elkin

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Issue No. 2

I. We were a couple of minutes late for the panel we’d hoped to attend. The doors were closed and there was a surly-looking...

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fiction

November 2016

The Miserablist

Anne Boyer

fiction

November 2016

This vision was strongly nebulous, an indeterminate but bold reaction only because it was so much like one of...

poetry

January 2014

Three New Poems

Antjie Krog

poetry

January 2014

Antjie Krog was born and grew up in the Free State province of South Africa. She became editor of...

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February 2011

Middle East protests give lie to Western orthodoxies

Emanuelle Degli Esposti

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February 2011

For thousands of individuals across the Arab world, 2011 has already become the year in which the political and...

 

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