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91/92: notes on a Parisian commute (Semiotext(e)/Fugitives) and the UK translator of Simone de Beauvoir's previously unpublished novel, The Inseparables (Vintage).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

When not listening to the phone messages of recently deceased children or smearing those killed in stadium disasters, journalists at Britain’s largest-selling newspaper, the Sun, may find time to pen light-hearted satires of modern life One such piece was published in January 2003, depicting a new cast of ‘Mr Men’ characters that best reflect twenty-first century Britain After a handful of readers went to the Press Complaints Commission, failing to see the funny side to ‘Mr Asylum Seeker’, ‘Mr Yardie’, and ‘Mr Albanian Gangster’, a new figure was created just for them, ‘Mr Guardianista’:   He suffers bouts of guilt about the poor and homeless but tries not to let it spoil his holiday at a gîte in Provence Dare support the toppling of Saddam Hussein and he’ll choke on his organic vegetarian lunch (washed down with a subtle Chilean chardonnay) Mr Guardianista is also likely to be a student well after an age when he should be working for a living and contributing to a society he thinks owes him one   Guardian readers like myself expect, and embrace, such attacks – we are amazed that our dwindling band of Guardianistas continues to occupy such a prominent place in the national mindset Only 200,000 of us are willing to pay £140 (£230 on Saturday) for the paper, a drop of 11 per cent from last year Guardiancouk may attract over four million unique hits a day (second only to Mail Online in the UK), but the Guardian’s print readership is just over a tenth of the Daily Mail’s and half that of The Times More Britons buy the Scottish Daily Record, yet (as far as I am aware) no pejorative term exists for its patrons   Guardian staff members have enough self-awareness to understand that their work is not to everyone’s taste Last year Michael White, the paper’s assistant editor, listed the charge sheet as follows: ‘Naive, subversive, priggish, lentil-eating, sandal- wearing, feminist, humourless’ Outside of the fold, cartoonish reactionaries tend to project their personal anxieties onto the

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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June 2015

Uneasy Lies the Head

William Watkin

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June 2015

Last October I was standing in my kitchen, waiting for espresso to trickle from the spout of our imposing...

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March 2016

Behind the Yellow Curtain

Annina Lehmann

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March 2016

Notes from a workshop   At first, there is nothing but a yellow curtain at the back of the...

Interview

November 2013

Interview with Javier Marías

Oli Hazzard

Interview

November 2013

Javier Marías is one of Spain’s most acclaimed contemporary novelists. He began writing fiction at an early age –...

 

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