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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91/92: notes on a Parisian commute (Semiotext(e)/Fugitives) and the UK translator of Simone de Beauvoir's previously unpublished novel, The Inseparables (Vintage).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...

A twilit bedroom Silence Ceiling view of the base of a hyper-extended bed—the length of a catwalk Slow pan of ruffled bedsheets in close-up—magnified sheets like an Arctic mountain range Shitty camera quality—that of CCTV or a sex tape, colours drained Zoom out Slow tracking shot reveals one by one, as in a Tarkovsky film, a series of sleeping faces—silent apparitions of celebrities—Taylor Swift—Kanye West—Kim Kardashian—eyelids shut, lips loose, mouths ajar—a slumbering parade of pop royalty—not in their usual livery but nude—trashily nude—classically nude Most of the body parts—arms and torsos and necks—are purpled with tattoos Most of the nipples—black or pink—are pierced A pink Caucasian cunt in extreme close-up Blackout   ‘At once both superficial and deep,’ a man’s voice intones—Kanye West’s We fade up on Kanye, wearing a silver jacket, sat in a swivel chair at a mixing desk being interviewed by journalist Zane Lowe ‘Both deep as a canyon and superficial as a razor blade,’ Kanye says, eyes wild, head dipped ‘So, you think you’re pushing the boat out?’ Lowe asks ‘I’ve reached a point in my life,’ Kanye answers loudly—as drums begin a 4/4 beat—’where my Truman Show boat has hit the painting’ Freeze-frame close-up of Kanye’s face, mouth agape—an oil painting filter is now applied to Kanye’s facial image—bass drum and hi-hat kicking—and now all at once a synthetic accordion and descant recorder come in doubling a jaunty melody—the freeze-frame of Kanye’s face cuts for a split-second to an image of Freddy Kruger—then black—and Kanye’s rap enters:   For all my Southside niggas that know me best I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex Why? I made that bitch famous   A glittering legend flashes up on the screen:   ☆ FAMOUS ☆ BY ♫ ‘KANYE WEST’ ♫   ♦   Shoulder to shoulder, half concealed by the sheets, half revealed by the sheets, in that enormous bed they lie, the celebrity bodies in Kanye West’s ‘Famous’ video And lie in more senses than one, all the bodies being at once hyper-real and hyper-fake, seemingly real yet actually prosthetic But, once become an image, isn’t everything real?

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

January 2014

Textile

Orly Castel-Bloom

TR. Dalya Bilu

fiction

January 2014

It was not only avoiding thoughts of home that helped the good sniper to carry out his mission as...

poetry

September 2012

Moscow - Petrozavodsk

Maxim Osipov

Anne Marie Jackson

poetry

September 2012

  Mark well, O Job, hold thy peace, and I will speak. Job 33:31     To deliver man...

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Issue No. 2

The End of Francophonie: The Politics of French Literature

Lauren Elkin

feature

Issue No. 2

I. We were a couple of minutes late for the panel we’d hoped to attend. The doors were closed...

 

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