We’re back with another installment of The Pleasure Lists: Pleasures, Curated.
I hope you enjoy reading these as much as I enjoy getting to know members of the Pleasure Lists community and what makes their Pleasures tick.
Lauren Elkin is the author of several critically-acclaimed books, including Scaffolding, Art Monsters, and Flâneuse, which was a New York Times Notable Book of 2017, a Radio 4 Book of the Week, and a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel award for the art of the essay. Her writing on art, literature, and culture has appeared in the London Review of Books, the New York Times, Granta, Harper's, Le Monde, Les Inrockuptibles, and Frieze, among others. She also writes a newsletter called Serious Ladies. An award-winning translator, she lives between Paris and London. My latest book, VOCAL BREAK, has just been published in the UK, but pre-orders are open for the US edition which publishes in November.
Location: London/Paris
Social: @lauren_elkin_
1/ Saturday mornings in a café in Paris
I go to Paris on my own once or twice a month, usually a quick overnight, Friday to Saturday. And on the Saturday mornings, I like to sit in a café, find a seat by the window, order a café crème, and read something by the French art historian and philosopher Georges Didi-Hubermann. The one I’m working my way through now is called Aperçues — which sort of translates as “glances” — it’s a series of short essays on a variety of subjects, like Aby Warburg, Walter Benjamin, the fragment, the idea of partial vision, or of coming to terms with the writing we’ll never have time to get to; it’s a collection of impressions of things seen but not fully. They read like writing prompts: I can end up writing pages and pages in my journal in an hour that goes by all too quickly.
2/ Browsing in a good bookstore
Preferably a French one, or an art one, or a secondhand one. Anywhere there’s going to be a feeling of discovery. I get very tired of going into bookshops in the UK and seeing all the same books over and over. I want to be reminded of something random I’ve forgotten about, or find something I’ve never heard of, or a writer with a totally fresh approach to a subject that fascinates me. Some of my favorites are Librairie Compagnie and Violette & Co in Paris (as well as, of course, Shakespeare & Co and the Red Wheelbarrow), the Tate Modern Bookshop in London, the Strand, Book Culture, or McNally Jackson in New York. My friend Sharmaine who used to have a wonderful bookstore in Berlin called Dialogue has just opened a new one called Chapters and I can’t wait to visit. Others on the wishlist are Desperate Literature in Madrid, Salted Books in Lisbon, and Type Books in Toronto…
3/ The smell of the Paris metro
The line 10 and the line 4 have their own very particular smells, sort of like burning rubber and warm bodies. You can smell it in the metro, but also in the grates above them, laid in the sidewalks — for instance there’s one by Maubert-Mutualité. It’s very comforting for me, it reminds me of being twenty years old and living in Paris for the first time. I know they’re updating the metro trains but I hope the smell never goes away.
4/ A good playlist
I used to love a good mixtape, and then I loved burning CDs for the people I love. We went through a long dry desert as a culture where there were only iTunes playlists and those weren’t sharable, but the advent of Spotify (which I use reservedly and for free; I have my issues with their practices and investments) means I’m back to making lists of songs, this time as soundtracks for my books. Here’s the one for Vocal Break.
5/ Putting a big sweatshirt or warm jumper on in the morning (even in summer, this is England). I just find the weight so reassuring. Anything from my Columbia University sweatshirt to a Babaà jumper will do.
6/ Filling the house with seasonal flowers and plants
It brings me joy to have a vase of flowers on the kitchen table, in my office, in the living room, on the dresser in my bedroom: ilex berries at Christmas, mimosa in winter, tulips and peonies in spring, dahlias into autumn. We have a back garden now so we’re trying to grow some of our own. I grew some amazingly feral tulips this year and was very proud; the nasturtiums are also happy. I tried hollyhocks from seeds we found on the Ile de Ré, but they didn’t grow; one day I’d love to figure out how to get them to. And I maintain these amazing pink geraniums in my office that are totally out of control but I love them that way.
7/ Reading a really tight, really good slim novel or essay collection.
Recent favorites: Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume, Ben Lerner’s Transcription, Rachel Aviv’s You Won’t Get Free Of It, or Lisa Robertson’s Riverwork which I’m reading right now, very slowly so as to savor it. I love a good novella: you’ve got more room for exploration than a short story but without the commitment of a long novel. Which I love too! But at this point in my life, with all my work deadlines and caring responsibilities, I am so overextended that I have been shying away from long books.
8/ Cheese snack
My partner laughs at me because come 5 pm, I am breaking out the cheese. Sometimes it’s just a hunk of cheddar with oatcakes and a glass of apple juice mixed with fizzy water, but my preference is a comté or a nice firm chèvre with fruit or a tasty slightly recherché jam - Bonne Maman’s figue et violette or reines claudes, something like that - and whatever bread I have around, usually the overpriced sourdough you get here in London but when in Paris I’m perfectly happy with a baguette from the bakery that costs €1,20. And a glass of wine. I call it l’heure de l’apéro. My partner calls it my cheese snack.
9/ My Moleskine notebook and a good pen.
The notebook has to be the graph paper kind: I find the small boxes calming. I’ll take hard or soft cover, in any color but I gravitate towards black hard covers or kraft paper soft ones. Pens need to be Pilot V7 Hi-tech .7 in black or blue; they’re the right thickness and they dispense ink at a speed I like. If I don’t have one of those to hand it’ll be a Muji pen, as I believe was the case in this photo.
Taking a moment to enjoy something specific: giving it attention, and space, and possibly, though not necessarily, language.
Each week, a new Pleasure-seeker will document their personal Pleasures and ruminate a bit on what Pleasure means to them. True to The Pleasure Lists style, I keep the list-maker’s je ne sais quoi in as much as I can — only minor editorial changes are made when necessary. I do this intentionally so that the writer’s inner world really comes through. The style of the list says as much about the writer as the list itself.
Pleasure Lists are a summary of what you need, want, or have, or see at a particular moment in time. They are a survey, an overview, a summary of the crucial facts of the state of one aspect of your life. It’s a kind of blueprint that can be a guide to the future.
Mull it over and if you’re moved to, send me a list.
Questions? Comments? Send any recommendations or suggestions for what you’d like to see in these newsletters my way. I’d love to hear more about what you’re currently finding pleasure in.
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