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91/92: notes on a Parisian commute (Semiotext(e)/Fugitives) and the UK translator of Simone de Beauvoir's previously unpublished novel, The Inseparables (Vintage).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

JOY OF THE EYES   The future is not the beginning, but the forerunner, of a new intense-formation   The first time that you see me, you will see me, without implication of time   The future expresses what is going to take place at some time to come, adding on the one hand an implication of will or intention, on the other hand of promise or threatening   If you, villain, had not stopped [prāgrahīṣyaḥ] my mouth, Without any implication of time   Circles of future and desiderative border one another; the one sometimes expected where the other might be met   I, conditional, want you to stop my mouth; will you stop My mouth encircles the sustain of these refusals: Sometimes and unexpected, unreasonable and polite   If you, beautiful, would perceive this new stress-formation, Reducing the noise of our [śyas] tomorrow, Heads shaved, future universe, ‘victorious banners unlowered’   Discipline of desire begins in the mouth         PENSIVE REFLECTION   Imagine a time in which you feel happy In your happiness, you imagine another time in which you feel unhappy You are in bed, your love is in your arms; the room is cold and it belongs to you   This is the tower of the past The battlements are formed of anthills, the anthills the curves of the goddess, the curves snakes agreeing sealing themselves away Lookouts lie face down, mouths open to the earth, swallowing the matter of their warnings Lookouts are snakes   In your unhappiness, you imagine another time in which you feel happy You are standing, you catch sight of your love across the room One or both of you is wearing a uniform The room is warm; it does not belong to you   The tower is oversaturated and impossible to date Lookouts’ mouths fill with earth, earth itching, itching converting warning to retch Lookouts reduce the noise of their retching; snakes containing the warnings in the smoothed lines of their swallows   This is how to conjugate the old future tense    

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 2013

What We Did After We Lost 100 Years' Wealth in 24 Months

Agri Ismaïl

fiction

June 2013

‘World finance had, in 2008, a near-death experience.’   The words belong to a partner of a renowned international...

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September 2014

The Fringe of Reality

Antoine Volodine

TR. Jeffrey Zuckerman

fiction

September 2014

Many thanks to those who have allowed me to speak; now I’ll do so.   I’m actually not talking...

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February 2013

Famous Tombs: Love in the 90s

Masha Tupitsyn

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February 2013

‘However, somebody killed something: that’s clear, at any rate—’ Through The Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll   I. BEGINNING  ...

 

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