American writer and translator Lauren Elkin talks writing, roots, what’s on her desk and more…
Lauren Elkin is an American writer and translator, most recently the author of Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art and the UK translator of Simone de Beauvoir’s previously unpublished novel Th e Inseparables. She is also the author of No. 91/92: Notes on a Parisian Commute and Flâneuse:Women Walk the City, which was a fi nalist for the 2018 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Born and raised in New York, she lived in Paris for over 20 years. She now lives in London with her partner and son.
ON HOME We moved to South East London a couple of months ago. We’re used to living in cramped, if beautiful, Parisian apartments so we can’t believe our good fortune at having a whole house to ourselves. New York is where I grew up, and where my family is, so that’s home in the sense of home being where you started from and where your people are, but it doesn’t feel like home in the sense of any ongoing relationship with it. I’m only a visitor now. My other home, my real home, is Paris, where I lived for 20-plus years. I long to get back there and will, when our son is a bit older. When I think about where my support system is, my network of friends, my doctor, my dermatologist, all of it is in Paris and so Paris is still my centre of gravity in that sense.
ON ROOTS The funny thing about Americans is that we have no roots and too many roots. Some members of my family moved to America from Italy in the 1960s. I grew up going to family get-togethers where everyone spoke Italian except for us. My mom’s family is from Ireland and Germany and I don’t know what else is mixed in there – and the other side of my father’s family are Russian Jews who came to America fl eeing the pogroms.
ON MY DESK My desk is a white farmhouse table but a lot of the white has worn away. It was the fi rst piece of furniture that I bought in Paris in 2005. I wrote my masters on this desk, several books, my PhD thesis. I have a vase with fl owers, a candle, a Vanessa Bell-inspired jug for my pens. Th e desk for me is about a particular type of work that feels more academic or research-based. If I want to go into creative mode, I have to be on a sofa or in a bed – I have no idea why.
ON WRITING It started for me when I was an undergraduate in Paris and developed this habit of writing in cafés, trying to be like Ernest Hemingway. I soon realised it was really healthy for me to clear out the cobwebs, a kind of daily hygiene to just write in my notebook and it didn’t have to be for anything. Th e bus book (No. 91/92: Notes on a Parisian Commute) came out of that daily writing practice.
ON SUCCESS I’m very happy with where I’m at in my career. Obviously, I have a very strong sense of being a total imposter – any day now people are going to fi gure out there’s not much there and lose interest and I won’t be able to sell my work or make a living from my work anymore!
ON BOOKSHOPS Is it incredibly obvious and cheesy if I say Shakespeare & Company in Paris? I have an ongoing relationship with that bookshop and the people who run it and they’re part of my Paris family. When I fi rst visited in 1999, I was really intimidated by the writers who hung out there. You could just tell they all thought very highly of themselves and they weren’t very friendly. Over time [the owner’s] daughter Sylvia came in and created a diff erent kind of culture and she made a bookshop that feels like much more than a shop. It’s such a welcoming and inspiring atmosphere with some of the best people I’ve ever met – it’s a lifeline to me. Every time I go to Paris, I go see them. @edelcoffey
Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art, by Lauren Elkin. www.omahonys.ie