Mailing List


Scott Esposito

Scott Esposito is the co-author of The End of Oulipo? (with Lauren Elkin; Zero Books, 2013). His writing has appeared recently in Music & Literature, Drunken Boat, and The Point. His criticism appears frequently in the Times Literary Supplement, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Washington Post.



Articles Available Online


The Last Redoubt

feature

November 2014

Scott Esposito

feature

November 2014

As they say of politics, I have found essay-writing to be the art of the possible. Certain work can only be done in those...

feature

February 2014

Another Way of Thinking

Scott Esposito

feature

February 2014

I. There is no substitute for that moment when a book places into our mind thoughts we recognise as our...

IV     Every space is too tight for me I move around, I jump, I fling myself and yet I’m still inside that one space which is too tight for me, unbearably small, although at times it is only exactly just a bit too tight, and it is exactly then, when it is exactly just a bit too tight, that it is the most unbearable; I jump and I’m still inside something, whose dimensions could be called redundantly inabundant, because it is not simply a question of dimensions but rather that in the moment when I jump, and I am inside that space, I am immediately caught, the space has caught me, the space into which I leapt unguarded, and it is not that I’m not cautious enough, I am cautious enough, maybe even unduly so, but that it’s all the same where I jump, it’s certain that I’ll end up in a space that is too tight for me, at times only exactly just a bit too tight, but amazingly very often just that, unendurable, I feel that space coiling around me like a cage no matter where I move, I immediately reach the end, in fact hardly do I move at all before the end of that space reaches me, I say, it is so much like being in a cage, as if all I could ever do is jump in a cage, and I can’t do anything else, I have to jump, however if I jump I immediately end up in that space which, as I say, is often maddeningly tight, I feel more or less not as if I were jumping into a square wire cage, or even worse into a brick-shaped one, but at such times I feel that I have got myself into a space that has been measured exactly for me, that’s what I think, that it is exactly as big as I am, and that is the most maddening thing of all, because I

Contributor

August 2014

Scott Esposito

Contributor

August 2014

Scott Esposito is the co-author of The End of Oulipo? (with Lauren Elkin; Zero Books, 2013). His writing has...

Negation: A Response to Lars Iyer's 'Nude in Your Hot Tub'

feature

September 2012

Scott Esposito

feature

September 2012

I do not know whether I have anything to say, I know that I am saying nothing; I do not know if what I...
Art's Fading Sway: Russian Ark by Aleksandr Sokurov

Art

May 2012

Scott Esposito

Art

May 2012

I have often fallen asleep in small theatres. It is an embarrassing thing to have happen during one-man shows, and I am certain that...

READ NEXT

fiction

January 2014

The Black Lake

Hella S. Haasse

TR. Ina Rilke

fiction

January 2014

Oeroeg was my friend. When I think back on my childhood and adolescence, an image of Oeroeg invariably rises...

poetry

January 2015

My Beloved Uncles

Tove Jansson

TR. Thomas Teal

poetry

January 2015

However tired of each other they must have grown from time to time, there was always great solidarity among...

feature

January 2014

Afterword: The Death of the Translator

George Szirtes

feature

January 2014

1. The translator meets himself emerging from his lover’s bedroom. So much for fidelity, he thinks. 2. Je est...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required