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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...

The Dentist’s Chair       I dreamt of the dentist’s chair, that it wore a smart pair of formica trousers and leant itself back in smiling delight when you sat into it, wanting for nothing but the pallid creases in the backs of your knees, and a bead of sweat to follow the seam, implying that the only viable way to this is through your teeth   And before we left and walked out between the narrow grin of two tall buildings we began crying with happiness at the X-ray of your teeth, bleached out and nailed to a light-box on the wall ­– how they’d never been asked for their impression on matters until he took the alginate mould, just decaying stoically in your mouth’s dark, but how on the wall they wailed   And now when I turn back to look at you on the street, I see how the brightness of the X-ray has impressed upon my eye and it is present as the tulips flirting on a canvas mount above the dentist’s head, as an extra tooth behind the upper row that is nudged with a tongue’s nervousness, as someone else’s contented child quietly enjoying the just macaroni and butter at the end of the kitchen table as you get on with the chores   But here the dream’s smile began to get a little wan and my own teeth began feeling ratty and the surgery was becoming something we had only remote knowledge of – like the toxic passage of carcinogens chancing their way past your teeth through your knees, and this could be a language the dentist’s chair speaks       Sky Pavilion       We trust the power lines to run forever overhead to cover our intimacies and itineraries: taxes and car stereos   schools that double as evacuation halls a man who will dutifully come to fix the wires when we don’t see him there is always one like him to call   Just before the envelope is torn in a village some miles down a boy is testing his voice on the comfy confine of his childhood bedroom letting himself fester for the first time   He

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...

READ NEXT

fiction

February 2014

Coral

R. B. Pillay

fiction

February 2014

Early one morning, you wake up with the smell of burnt sheets in your nose, the sheets that you...

Art

February 2015

Filthy Lucre

Rye Dag Holmboe

Art

February 2015

White silhouettes sway against softly gradated backgrounds: blues, purples, yellows and pinks. The painted palm trees are tacky and...

Art

September 2016

Sitting, scrawling, playing

Emily Gosling

Art

September 2016

Amidst the drills and concrete, white walls and big names of London’s Cork Street stands a new gallery, Nahmad Projects,...

 

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