The Fraught Nature of Belonging: Nathalie Handal’s Life in a Country Album
Each poem opens a window into cities and vocabularies of exile.
...more
Posts Tagged: French
Body of Nonsense
It is winter, and I’ve been thinking a lot about Samuel Beckett.
...more
Mom Vagina
When the physical therapist explains the electric dildo she holds in her hand will reset the nerve endings in my vagina so I won’t need to pee every hour, I say, “Get it in me and let’s go.”
...moreThe Summer of Lana Del Rey
Three summers ago, I did nothing but drive around Middlebury, Vermont, blasting Lana Del Rey and chain-smoking cigarettes. It was—and I will be dramatic, because that is how it felt—an act of survival. That summer I was in an academic program where we were only allowed to speak or be spoken to in French. But […]
...more
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Chen Chen
Chen Chen discusses his new collection When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, playing the game white supremacy has set up, and if God is trying and failing to be a cool dad.
...more
A Meer-Kin in Paris
Her face lit up, and I checked to make sure the man’s scowl had returned. It wasn’t enough for me that heaven should exist for the wife; her husband had to end up in hell.
...more
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Iben Mondrup and Kerri Pierce
Iben Mondrup and Kerri Pierce discuss the translation of Justine, Mondrup’s 2012 Danish novel about a young artist in Denmark.
...moreJulia Deck on the Game of Writing
To me, writing a book is also creating a game for both myself and the reader. Over at the Believer Logger, Natasha Boas talks to Julia Deck, author of Viviane Élisabeth Fauville, about unreliable narrators, conciseness, titles, Paris, French publishing houses, and mysteries.
...moreNavigating French
Over at The Millions, Hannah Gersen interviews Lauren Collins about her memoir, When in French; learning a foreign language; and writing about herself. As Collins recalls: I wanted to describe the terrain of French, the kind of landscape and its physical features and its hills and valleys. I was thinking of it that way. To […]
...moreLearning and Loving in French
Supposedly, the best way to master a foreign language is to fall in love with a native speaker. Language, in delineating a boundary that can be transgressed, is full of romantic potential. … If first languages are reservoirs of emotion, second languages can be rivers undammed, freeing their speakers to ride different currents. Over at […]
...more
Spotlight: The Rumpus Review of Panthers in the Hole
Brandon Hicks reviews Panthers in the Hole, a new graphic novel from by Bruce and David Cénou.
...more
Reading Mademoiselle Gantrel
We squinted into the smoky room and saw ourselves on junior year abroad, frolicking on the Left Bank with artists in berets like hers.
...more
Scarf as Signifier
In honor of the upcoming centennial birthday of French literary theorist and philosopher Roland Barthes, Hermés is releasing a limited-edition scarf designed in his honor. The New Yorker will gladly demystify that commodity for you.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Etgar Keret
Writer Etgar Keret talks about his new memoir The Seven Good Years, the early criticism he faced as a writer, and the surreal that is always waiting.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Kate Walbert
Author Kate Walbert talks about her new novel, The Sunken Cathedral, about the way cities change over time, and her approach to using footnotes in fiction.
...moreThe Man Who Brings Us France
A profile on Arthur Goldhammer, who has translated over 100 books from French to English. As a translator, Goldhammer tries to find a pragmatic middle-ground between literalism and freestyle. The goal is to be faithful to the contents of a book but also find a style for it that works in English. For Goldhammer, Derrida’s […]
...moreWord of the Day: Atelier
(n.); artist’s studio or workshop; c. 1840, from the old French astelier (“carpenter’s workshop, woodpile”) “Part of what I loved about poetry was how the distinction between fiction and nonfiction didn’t obtain,” [Lerner] says, “how the correspondence between text and world was less important than the intensities of the poem itself.” From “With Storms Outside, […]
...morePoems from Guantanamo
In 2010, French poet Frank Smith took the transcripts of the initial combatant status review tribunals from Guantanamo and turned them into a book of poetry. The New Inquiry looks at Vanessa Place’s recent English translation of Smith’s Guantanamo.
...moreMavis Gallant and Monsieur Le Verbe
Alors, Mademoiselle, have you noticed how we French, unlike our Anglo-Saxon friends, use all the muscles in our face and mouth when speaking? Raise your upper lip toward your nose. When performed correctly, this action will cause the nostrils to flare. Now tip your neck back…and without slackening the tension, articulate a pure clear U-sound, […]
...moreLearning French, And Other Escapes
“Here I am wanting some other language to rescue me, wanting some escape route, when the very desire to transform, to mean something in the world, to take to the air, is such a chubby little caterpillar urge. If I were only a bit older and sadder, a bit more eager to trot out pleasant […]
...moreKerouac’s lost French works
The Words without Borders blog has a fascinating post on two novellas by Jack Kerouac in his native French, works that were written in the early 1950s and which reflect his interest in Proust, Balzac and the French literary tradition. News of Kerouac’s French works came in a panel at the Americas Society in New […]
...more