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…
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…
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.
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…
(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…
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…
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.…
“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…