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 The Guardian, Bookforum, Nextbook, and Five Dials, with work forthcoming in Upstairs at Duroc. She is the author of the novel IN DORSODURO, and is at work on novel number two, set in Paris in 1972 and the present day. She teaches at New York University and the Ecole Polytechnique.

After a year and a half of commuting between Paris and Tokyo, as of July 2009 Lauren will be dividing her time between Paris and Hong Kong.

All text and most photographs copyright (c) Lauren Elkin, 2004-2009. 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 energetique, 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."

COMMENTS POLICY
Your comments and criticism are welcome, as long as everyone plays nice. If you post anonymously, you run a real risk of having your comment deleted. I reserve all rights to delete offensive comments and, if necessary, block people from posting. It's a blog, not the New York Times. This is not a democratic space and I do not pretend to impartiality.

ON THE ADVERTISING
For now I'm stuck with Typepad, and Typepad costs money. The ad revenue goes back into the blog, and what doesn't generally goes into buying books, so it all works out in the end. Except those BlogHer ads are pretty fugly, aren't they?