French Culture

Briggs delves into her experience translating Roland Barthes’s La Préparation du roman to offer us a poignant account of what this translation compulsion might be.

It is both a memoir of Lindon’s literary friendships and a treatise on survival, a tribute to the friends whose care and love, in Lindon’s words, saved his life, even as they were themselves lost.

The French writer Édouard Louis recorded his days in New York, around the time of the American release of his novel The End of Eddy. The following entries originally appeared in French in the June 6, 2017, edition of Les Inrockuptibles.
I’d rather be in my bed, eyes in the dark, lying on my back, head resting on a soft pillow, than in the desert, even in the company of Félicien David, even in the company of Sarah.

“I was spooling cassette tape all around my room in a big loop, running it around and through things. At the time, I got the impression I had invented the loop.”

These two slim volumes, which are somehow stories, memoirs, meditations, diaries, and novels all in one, operate as much at the level of the sentence as that of the story.

The author’s first novel is set in Mexico City, but its themes of violence, grief, and solitude are truly global.

Venezuelan-born artist Javier Téllez’s first exhibition at Koenig & Clinton took its title from his recent film To Have Done with the Judgment of God (2016) and concerns an experience that marked Antonin Artaud’s life in 1936: the author’s encounter with the Rarámuri community living in the Sierra Tarahumara in northwest Mexico.

North of Paris, west of Texas—Laster’s community-based social sculptures span cultures and continents.

As both physician and filmmaker, Lilti discusses his recent hospital drama and the challenges of medical and artistic practice.