Voltaire’s writing chair/desk
Still working
My Year in Writing 2019
Taking a cue from last year’s list, I’m posting links to a few pieces I wrote in 2019.
The year began with a very short piece on W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz for Frieze magazine, in which I describe buying an ARC at a used bookstore a month before its publishing date: https://frieze.com/article/aaron-peck-wg-sebalds-austerlitz
After that I wrote a piece about the fascinating Canadian poet Sylvia Legris for Music & Literature: https://www.musicandliterature.org/excerpts/2019/3/27/the-wit-of-their-strange-appearance
Then, as Notre Dame burned, I was walking down to the river to witness the conflagration when I received a text message from one of my editors at Frieze asking me to cover it. I wrote it the next morning in two hours: https://frieze.com/article/notre-dame-fire-burning-paris
A bit later, I had the immense pleasure of writing about one of my favourite writers of my Canadian generation, Souvankham Thammavongsa, for Music & Literature. I’ve know Sou since 2003, even edited a small manuscript of hers in 2006, so it was a wonderful to spend some time with her new collection of poetry, Cluster: https://www.musicandliterature.org/reviews/2019/5/26/souvankham-thammavongsas-cluster
One of my more research-intensive pieces of the year was a review for the New York Review of Books Daily of “The Black Model,” an exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay, which explored the lives of the black models who appear throughout nineteenth and twentieth century French painting. It was one of the best exhibitions I saw this year: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/06/22/reframing-the-black-model-at-the-musee-dorsay/
Another piece I really enjoyed writing was on some of the beguiling news stories from Belgium for The Halloween Review, a one-off online-only magazine, with contributions from Lydia Davis, Sheila Heti, Lynne Tillman, Jana Prikryl, Naben Ruthnum, Joni Murphy, Michael LaPointe, and many others: http://thehalloweenreview.com/curfew.html
The biggest commission I had this year was a profile on the artist Jeff Wall for Walrus magazine, in which I explored some of his most recent work, specifically a new photograph-of-a-painting entitled Recovery (which I like quite a bit): https://thewalrus.ca/one-photographers-artistic-encounters-with-the-selfie-generation/
And finally the year ended with a review of a new collection of previously unpublished material by Marcel Proust for Frieze magazine: https://frieze.com/article/new-collection-prousts-writings-uncovers-origins-his-complex-desires
Well, that’s it for now!
My translation of Pauvre Belgique by Charles Baudelaire. A strange project, as I have no intention to publish it (although it is funneling into a different one). It is Baudelaire’s 150 pages of notes for a unfinished polemic against Belgium. A strange and troublesome text. Difficult to get through – nasty, repetitive, boring, angry, yet hilarious. I started it sometime last year – in, I think, September. Put it a way for a while and only got back to it a few months ago. What a bizarre experience.
My Year in Writing 2018
My year in writing. For years now, on this nearly dead tumblr I’ve been compiling lists of favorite books of the year. I am more and more dissatisfied with Best Of lists, so instead I’m providing a series of links to works of criticism that I had published. Was a good year for writing, with a number of pieces I’m particularly proud of.
The year began with a piece on the French book illustrator Gus Bofa for The New York Review Daily. Bofa is often seen as a precursor to Franco-Belgian bande dessinée, but he is equally as fascinating as a kind of modernist who broke boundaries between word and image:
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/01/23/gus-bofas-low-life-art/
That was followed up by a review for frieze magazine of Badlands Unlimited’s recently published interview by the deceased American art critic Craig Owens. Owens’s approach to criticism feels particularly prophetic right now. In the 1980s, for example, he foresaw what would become known as “intersectionality”:
https://frieze.com/article/craig-owens-portrait-young-critic
Then was a piece on the American writer Harry Mathews for The White Review. His excellent posthumous novel, The Solitary Twin, was published by New Directions in the spring. Mathews was the first anglophone member of the Oulipo, a French avant-garde writing collective, which produces literary works by applying compositional constraints. Mathews was always secretive about how his constraints worked, and The Solitary Twin is no different in that regard. Even still, this is perhaps his most accessible and humane:
http://www.thewhitereview.org/reviews/harry-matthews-solitary-twin/
The same month saw my review of Belgian fashion designer Martin Margiela published in frieze magazine. Margiela had two concurrent exhibitions at Musée des Arts Decoratifs and Palais Galliera in Paris. His influence on culture at large since the 1990s is still underrated:
https://frieze.com/article/famed-fashion-designer-martin-margielas-career-firsts
Along with my piece on Gus Bofa, I was particularly proud of this strange article on the graphically violent political graffiti of Brussels, which I wrote for The Happy Reader:
https://www.thehappyreader.com/issue/11/
In Paris this summer, I saw a fantastic exhibition of the Japanese modernist painter Foujita at the musée Maillol, which I had the pleasure of writing about for The New York Review Daily. He is mostly associated with the School of Paris in 1920s Montparnasse. Foujita is having a bit of a moment right now, and I’m glad to have had the opportunity to write about him:
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/05/27/foujita-imperial-japan-meets-bohemian-paris/
Finally, right as the year ended, I wrote about Two Step, Emma Ramadan and Chris Clarke’s translation of Olivier Salon and Jacques Jouet’s play, Pas de deux, for The Quarterly Conversation. I was particularly interested how this little Oulipian play could help me think about translation as a kind of friendship:
http://quarterlyconversation.com/two-step-a-boolean-comedrama-by-jacques-jouet-and-olivier-salon
Many thanks to the editors of all of the above. I have never had the pleasure of working with such an exceptionally talented gathering of people.
Vive les ramonages!
This morning, I completely forgot that the chimney sweeps (yes, this is still a thing – les ramoneurs) had booked an appointment to clean our fireplace. Really nice guys. They remembered me from last year – that I was a writer, and an anglophone. We chatted. They gave me a bit of a French grammar lesson. One of them asked me if my French was improving. So I told them that, as a way of learning, I was translating Baudelaire. They both nodded with approval. I love that about this country. The workers who come by your house do their work, then chat about grammar, and finally approve of your choice of translating 19th century poets.
Speaking of, on Friday, I’ll be reading from those translations – Baudelaire’s Pauvre Belgique, prose fragments about his hatred of living in Brussels. I, too, hated living in Belgium. The event is at the American University of Paris, at The Center for Writers and Translators. This Friday, 18:30. Come by, if you’re in Paris. You need to RSVP, and bring photo ID, but otherwise it’s open to the public.
https://www.aup.edu/news-events/event/2018-09-21/center-writers-translators-salon