Mailing List


Rose McLaren

Rose McLaren is an artist in London.



Articles Available Online


Talk Into My Bullet Hole

feature

July 2015

Rose McLaren

feature

July 2015

‘Someday people are going to read about you in a story or a poem. Will you describe yourself for those people?’ ‘Oh, I don’t...

feature

May 2014

Art Does Not Know a Beyond: On Karl Ove Knausgaard

Rose McLaren

feature

May 2014

Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle has an oddly medieval form: a cycle, composed of six auto-biographical books about the...

My boyfriend, the comedian, took pleasure in telling me about rejection – how it came about, how to cope with dignity, how it had dangerous, possibly cancerous elements He said if I pinched just above my waistband, where the unfamiliar portions of fat resided, that’s what rejection felt like He claimed the link between cancer and repeated failure was irrefutable He had a lot of unusual ideas ‘Feel that,’ he said, grasping at my hips and thighs, ‘that’s the texture of rejection right there’   My boyfriend was famous and I wasn’t When I walked down our tree-lined street in the city, I came back with styrofoam cups of coffee, croissants, souvenirs I considered mailing back to friends When he walked down the street he returned aggrieved and frustrated by how much people adored him He sent me out a lot ‘Get my coffee extra-hot,’ he told me, like I was an assistant type ‘I want it so hot it feels like hell,’ I instructed the barista   I loved my boyfriend Our back and forth reminded me of black-and-white films I hadn’t seen Physically, we were unmatched On forms, we were in different age brackets: he ticked one box, I ticked another But we weren’t the sort of people who filled out forms He could get worked up about stuff he read on the internet and I knew how to make him happy ‘Here,’ I said, handing him a snow globe containing a miniature Empire State Building, ‘this is for you’ ‘You’re very sweet,’ he told me I guess it was true – I could be sweet I was Irish I didn’t want to rely on it too heavily, do that whole bit, degrade myself When my mother finalised the divorce from my father all she said was, ‘Never give people what they want’ It was such good advice At the party, where I first met him, I explained that I wasn’t a famous person and I had zero intention of becoming one I wanted to make him laugh I liked him That didn’t happen to me every day ‘Really,’ I said,

Contributor

August 2014

Rose McLaren

Contributor

August 2014

Rose McLaren is an artist in London.

The Prosaic Sublime of Béla Tarr

feature

Issue No. 6

Rose McLaren

feature

Issue No. 6

I have to recognise it’s cosmical; the shit is cosmical. It’s not just social, it’s not just ontological, it’s really huge. And that’s why we...
Stalker, Writer or Professor? Geoff Dyer's Zona and Genre

feature

February 2012

Rose McLaren

feature

February 2012

‘So what kind of a writer am I, reduced to writing a summary of a film?’ wonders Geoff Dyer half way through Zona. Such...

READ NEXT

fiction

October 2015

The Bird Thing

Julianne Pachico

fiction

October 2015

You are worried about the bird thing but that’s the last thing you want to think about right now,...

feature

Issue No. 8

Barking From the Margins: On écriture féminine

Lauren Elkin

feature

Issue No. 8

 I. Two moments in May May 2, 2011. The novelists Siri Hustvedt and Céline Curiol are giving a talk...

Interview

April 2012

Interview with Grant Gee

Evan Harris

Interview

April 2012

As the theatre is relit and the credits roll on Grant Gee’s latest film, Patience (After Sebald), an essay on...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required