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Patrick Langley
Patrick Langley's debut novel Arkady was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in March 2018. He writes on contemporary art for Frieze, Art Agenda, and other publications. He is a contributing editor at The White Review.

Articles Available Online


Jesse Ball’s ‘Census’

Book Review

May 2018

Patrick Langley

Book Review

May 2018

Reading Jesse Ball’s new novel feels like being hypnotised, or like having your heart broken – but really it feels like both at once....

Book Review

November 2017

M. John Harrison's 'You Should Come With Me Now'

Patrick Langley

Book Review

November 2017

In a 2012 interview with the Guardian, M. John Harrison argued that the segregation of literature into genres is ‘a...

Towards the end of the 1960s, Luke Rhinehart was practicing psychoanalysis in New York, and was sick and tired of it He lived in a nice apartment, with windows facing his neighbours, through which everyone had nice views of each other He did yoga, read books on Zen Buddhism, and toyed with the idea of joining a hippie commune, but didn’t dare Failing that, he wore bell-bottoms and a beard, which made him look less like a depressed bourgeois than an out-of-work actor As a therapist, he was resolutely nondirective If an obese, virginal and compulsively sadistic patient told him whilst on the couch that he’d like to rape and murder a little girl, his professional ethics compelled him to repeat in a calm voice, ‘You’d like to rape and murder a little girl?’ An elusive question mark disappearing into ellipses Long silence The absence of judgement But, in reality, how he really wanted to reply was: ‘Go on, then! If what really turns you on is to rape and murder a little girl, stop boring me with your fantasy: do it!’ He held himself back, obviously, from saying such terrible things, but they obsessed him more and more Like everyone else, he forbade himself from living out his fantasies even though they were more or less harmless – not the sort of thing that got you sent to prison, like his sadistic patient would be if he ever let himself go What he would have liked, for example, was to sleep with Arlene, his colleague Jake Epstein’s wife with the sumptuous breasts, who lived on the same floor in his apartment building He had the feeling she wouldn’t be opposed to the idea, but as a faithful, married man, a responsible adult, he left the thought to bubble away in the backwater of his daydreams   So his life passed, calm and dull, until the day when, after a particularly boozy evening, Luke spotted a die, a boring old die for playing games, lying on the carpet and suddenly the idea came to him to roll it, and to do

Contributor

August 2014

Patrick Langley

Contributor

August 2014

Patrick Langley’s debut novel Arkady was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in March 2018. He writes on contemporary art for Frieze, Art...

Art

September 2014

Semi Floating Sculpture

Luke Hart

Patrick Langley

Art

September 2014

Luke Hart will meet me at Gate 7. I get the text on the DLR, heading east past Canary...

Ordinary Voids

feature

Issue No. 9

Ed Aves

Patrick Langley

feature

Issue No. 9

I am standing in a parallelogram of shrubbery outside London City Airport. Ed is twisting a dial on his Mamiya RZ67 and squinting into its viewfinder. He...
Car Wash

fiction

January 2013

Patrick Langley

fiction

January 2013

He is sitting on the back seat of a car, somewhere in France. It’s a bright blue day, absurdly hot, and the roads are...
Ryan Trecartin: The Real Internet is Inside You

Art

April 2012

Patrick Langley

Art

April 2012

 ‘What’s that buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzing?’ Marshall McLuhan   1: Your Original Is Having A Complete Human Change Meltdown Makeover   It’s difficult to describe Ryan Trecartin’s...
Nigel

poetry

September 2011

Patrick Langley

poetry

September 2011

Jamie sat alone at the edge of the dance floor and wondered how long it would be until Nigel arrived. The band had been...
Beyond the Horizon

fiction

Issue No. 1

Patrick Langley

fiction

Issue No. 1

Listen to the silence, let it ring on. (Joy Division, Transmission) I It is not yet dawn. The city is a distant murmur. Laid...

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Interview

October 2015

Interview with Marine Hugonnier

Izabella Scott

Interview

October 2015

Like the figures found in a spread of Tarot cards, an artist can assume a variety of viewpoints and characters...

fiction

June 2017

Turksib

Lutz Seiler

TR. Alexander Booth

fiction

June 2017

The jolts of the tracks were stronger now and came at irregular intervals. With my arms outstretched, I held...

feature

June 2014

Writing What You Know

Simon Hammond

feature

June 2014

In the summer of 1959, a headstrong but lovesick English graduate took a trip to the hometown of his...

 

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