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Rosanna Mclaughlin
Rosanna Mclaughlin is an editor at The White Review.

Articles Available Online


The Pious and the Pommery

Essay

Issue No. 18

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Essay

Issue No. 18

I.   Where is the champagne? On second thoughts this is not entirely the right question. The champagne is in the ice trough, on...

Essay

April 2019

Ariana and the Lesbian Narcissus

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Essay

April 2019

‘Avoid me not!’ ‘Avoid me not!’                                   Narcissus   Let me describe a GIF I’ve been watching. A lot....

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 spooky months when particular trajectories align: what was once opaque becomes transparent, and the story may be told in its complete complexity Try to write such an essay at the wrong moment and your movement will be impeded You will have the rudimentary shape you want, but all the curves and angles and lines will remain coarse – crude, compared to what you might have written had you waited   I only really came to understand these things when I began to imagine an essay that I knew I must write, but equally knew I would fail at For years I waited, and if I try to write it now, it is owing to an intuition that has arrived as a blessing of maturity I have become the writer who might accomplish this task On top of that, something has informed me that for a few ripe months the barriers are down, and I may cross in and out of this longed-for terrain unimpeded   I must get this essay right Each word that I put down becomes a part of my living memory – in a very real sense this is self-creation – and that first cut is always the deepest Yes, it is possible to work around the scar later on – to revise, reformulate, rediscover, redirect – but that first attempt is decisive Everything grows from those initial, indelible words   It was a midsummer’s evening, and through the window looking down on the bay the sky reddened, the sun sank beneath the earth That declining sun brought me fear I reasoned to myself that so long as I could see the light, I was safe from whatever had come unleashed in my mind But as that blackness climbed over the land, so too did some blackness encompass my head This is illogical, I know – magical thinking – but these were my terms that evening I was truly afraid of what the dark of night would bring

Contributor

July 2016

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Contributor

July 2016

Rosanna Mclaughlin is an editor at The White Review.

Ten Years at Garage Moscow

Art Review

November 2018

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Art Review

November 2018

When I arrive in Moscow, I am picked up from the airport by Roman, a patriotic taxi driver sent to collect me courtesy of...
Becoming Alice Neel

Art

August 2017

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Art

August 2017

From the first time I saw Alice Neel’s portraits, I wanted to see the world as she did. Neel was the Matisse of the...

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Art

July 2013

Redressing the Balance: Women in the Art World

Louisa Elderton

Art

July 2013

London is among the capitals of the international art world. Every day and night is witness to innumerable new...

Interview

April 2017

Interview with Mark Greif

Daniel Cohen

Interview

April 2017

Since 2004, when his work started to appear in n+1, the magazine he co-founded, Mark Greif has taken contemporary...

feature

August 2016

The Place of the Bridge

Jennifer Kabat

feature

August 2016

I.   Look up. A woman tumbles from the sky, her dress billowing around her like a parachute as...

 

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