About Me

Lauren Elkin is a PhD candidate in English literature at the Université de Paris VII and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Originally from New York, she has lived in Paris on and off since 1999 and continuously since 2004. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle, and her work has appeared in Gridskipper, the Huffington Post, Nextbook, The Forward, Parisist, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and the Paris Voice. She is the author of the novel IN DORSODURO, which is currently under representation by Diana Finch, and is at work on novel number two, set in present-day Paris.

As of January 2008, Lauren will be dividing her time between Paris and Tokyo.

All text and most photographs copyright (c) Lauren Elkin, 2004-2008. All rights reserved.

ABOUT THIS BLOG

This blog, which I've been keeping regularly since the summer of 2004, is about Paris, and books, and art, and ideas-- all of those things that shift your worldview just the slightest bit.

The idea is not to contribute to the unrealistically romantic myth of the "city of light," but to extend some of that light on the senseless, cumbersome, and maddening bureaucracy, the inadequacies and paradoxes of the university system, the strict social hierarchies and fragile male psyches, but also the surprising everyday beauty, the charm and the heightened quality of life--

In short, the agony and the ecstasy of being a writer, a researcher, and, above all else, a foreigner, leading a literary life in Paris.

And, before you ask:

Maîtresse: n.f. 1. Personne qui enseigne qqch. 2. Femme avec laquelle un homme a des relations sexuelles en dehors du marriage. 3. Maîtresse femme: femme énergetique, determinée.

That pretty much covers it.

Although there is an S&M film called Maîtresse, I've never seen it and I don't write about S&M.

I do write, however, about my life in Paris, which is itself a constant exercise in sadism and masochism.

Hope you enjoy reading. If you don't, I present my apologies in advance. As the inimitable Adam Gopnik has it, "The essayist dreams of being a prism, through which other light passes, and fears ending up merely as a mirror, showing the same old face. He has only his Self to show and only himself to blame if it doesn't show up well."