Semiotexte

“Love is romantic, and then all of a sudden you’ve got diapers, the fridge, getting up early in the morning . . . everything becomes prosaic. Children and making a film: two reasons why guys leave me.”

Catherine Breillat from I Only Believe in Myself (@semiotexte.bsky.social).

buff.ly/0wtgaAe

Cinéaste and Answered, by Murielle Joudet We've recently updated our website to make signing in easier and more secure

“I’ve realized that I wasn’t such a good mother. It’s not enough to love your children, that’s too easy, and I think I’m completely selfish.”

Catherine Breillat from I Only Believe in Myself ( @semiotexte.bsky.social ).

Journey to the End of Autofiction | Los Angeles Review of Books Emily Wells and Aaron Bornstein talk with John Tottenham about his debut novel, “Service.”

Great interview with John Tottenham at LARB:

Creatures Apart - Boston Review Shulamith Firestone’s portraits of madness reveal a condition afflicting us all.

A beautiful piece by Vivian Gornick:

www.bostonreview.net/articles/cre...

Dog lying on a white chair near Ian Penman's Erik Satie Three Piece Suite and Roger Shattuck's The Banquet Years

Radu lounging with an immaculate pairing, the Penman being from @semiotexte.bsky.social.

A paperback book lying on top of bedsheets. It is entitled Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors and written by Ian Penman. On its cover, a bearded man with glasses and hat looks to the left. In the background, a religious sculpture like that of a cemetery pulls our attention.

Late Night Read: Ian Penman's Fassbinder Thousands of Mirror, put out by @semiotexte.bsky.social

MEMORY by Dorothea Lasky Pre-order: publishing November 2025 What constitutes personhood and consciousness? What memories get lost, and why? Dorothea Lasky’s MEMORY is a cycle of poet’s essays ranging across three dimensions ...

Now available for pre-order from our site (everywhere excluding N. America - MEMORY is publishing with @semiotexte.bsky.social in NA, also Nov 2025). Use the code AUTUMNPREORDER at check-out for 10% off (applies to all forthcoming books): www.silverpress.org/collections/...

“Categories of Erasure”: Tom Comitta on the Books That Shaped Patchwork, Their New Novella-in-Fragments - Library of America Practitioners of the cut-up have long stitched superficially disparate literatures together, flattening differences and drawing out unexpected points of connection. Now, to the newspaper insertions of...

Probably my favorite essay I've written this year. Mainly on The Missing Pieces by Henri Lefebvre (@semiotexte.bsky.social) + my own brief list of literary and artistic gaps. Might keep adding to this list...

Thank you to Ben & @libraryofamerica.bsky.social

www.loa.org/news-and-vie...

De-con-struc of ass-up dooky-dent flip 'Castle F****t' [guessing the uncensored title will get flagged] by Derek McCormack [published by @semiotexte.bsky.social ] that turns Disneyland into Doodyland and the brown shit inside the crypt into hyperreal everything.

psychoholosuite.com/2025/07/16/d...

Covers of The Magic Kingdom by Stanley Elkin, Blue Self-Portrait by Noémi Lefebvre and Indivisible by Fanny Howe

Recent buys from Type Books in Toronto @transitbooks.bsky.social @semiotexte.bsky.social @dalkeyarchive.bsky.social

💙📚 #BookSky #Books

Heike Geissler Seasonal Associate Translated by Katy Derbyshire Afterword by Kevin Vennemann

'That's how it is: you're exhausted now, not just physically; your mind, which is also a little bit your heart, has sustained damage as well. Or your heart, which is also a little bit your mind [...]'

From Seasonal Associate by Heike Geissler, tr. Katy Derbyshire, out via @semiotexte.bsky.social

Never a Patient Woman | Los Angeles Review of Books Emmeline Clein finds pockets of faith in feminist writer Shulamith Firestone's ostensibly airless spaces in an essay from LARB Quarterly no. 45: “Submission.”

lareviewofbooks.org/article/neve...

Hazards of Reality | The Point Magazine What if Airless Spaces, and the life of its author, cannot be read as a story at all?

Emmett Rensin: ?"I have read very few like Airless Spaces. I have loved it for years in large part because it does not profer any story, does not comfort, and does not pretend to have anything at all to do with the Shulamith Firestone who came before her break."
thepointmag.com/criticism/ha...

Le Drugstore, by Constance Debré We've recently updated our website to make signing in easier and more secure

“You can buy it over the counter. The instructions say it’s to be used to soothe stomachache. All the junkies take it when they need a fix.”

From Name, Constance Debré, published in April by @semiotexte.bsky.social. Translated from the French by Lauren Elkin.

Review | A novel of the great Gen X icon: The misanthropic retail employee In “Service” by John Tottenham, a bookstore clerk struggles to write a novel that sounds a lot like “Service” by John Tottenham.

I reviewed John Tottenham’s excellent debut novel for @washingtonpost.com. www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/0...

Service How the fuck did it come to this? A modest career on the lower slopes and outer fringes of journalism dried up when the frontiers of the internet opened up to people who were prepared, free of char…

an excerpt of John Tottenham's Service in Lithub:

SERVICE by John Tottenham Semiotext(e) May 6th 2025 A book review by Alexander Laurence SERVICE by John Tottenham Semiotext(e) May 6 th 2025 A book review by Alexander Laurence Service is the first novel by John Totten...

SERVICE by John Tottenham Semiotext(e) May 6th 2025 A book review by Alexander Laurence portable-infinite.blogspot.com/2025/04/serv...

8 New Books You Should Read This May A grumpy bookshop employee’s musings, an investigation of parenthood in the digital age, and an essential history of OpenAI.

Thanks Jasmine Vojdani for selecting John Tottenham's Service in VULTURE's 8 Books you should read in May.

www.vulture.com/article/new-...

Tender, Compassionate, Crushing: the Fiction of Shulamith Firestone In Airless Spaces, the feminist theorist dramatizes what happens when capitalist alienation makes everybody miserable.

www.thenation.com/article/cult...

Constance Debré’s Intoxicating New Book Argues Against Family and Identity In Name, the third book in her acclaimed trilogy, Constance Debré recalls a chaotic childhood spent with drug addicted parents. Here, she talks about identity, autofiction, and her dislike of sentimen...

www.anothermag.com/design-livin...

Book cover for Defund: Conversations Toward Abolition by Calvin John Smiley (Haymarket Books), depicting a police shield with stylized flames drawn coming out of its top. Illuminating interviews with leading abolitionist organizers and thinkers. https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2292-defund

How to Fuck Like a Girl by Vera Blossom, Dopamine/Semiotext(e): A cheeky how-to guide, as raunchy as it is heartfelt, from a bright new literary voice. A bold and vulnerable collection from a new, young voice, How to Fuck Like a Girl is a daring mash-up of pillow book, grimoire, and manifesto by writer Vera Blossom. From hooking up to trans witchcraft, petty crime, capitalism, friendships, divorce, and survival, Blossom brings wit and melancholy, grandeur and smarts, debuting a bright literary voice as raunchy as it is heartfelt. A cheeky how-to guide that earnestly asks if it is possible to fuck oneself into girlhood, How to Fuck Like a Girl is a cult classic in the making. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781635902273/how-to-fuck-like-a-girl/

Engage: Indigenous, Black, and Afro-Indigenous Futures (Joy James, Pluto Press) Engage is a tribute to the power of self-determined stories. This dynamic anthology of writings includes reflections by Black and Indigenous organizers and educators speaking in defiance of the violence and theft that has oppressed them for so long, imagining a future ripe for revolution. Both raw and disciplined, Engage discusses spirituality through environmentalism, security, freedom, autonomy, anti-Blackness and family. It is an invitation to dismantle colonial oppressions and a toolkit to build a future free from the harmful legacies of racism and genocide. Engage includes contributions from under-platformed writers from diverse political perspectives. It emphasises the role of non-academic collaborators as stewards of progressive, radical, and revolutionary projects to realise an optimistic future, that is not a repetition of the violent past. https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745350301/engage/

Book cover for Beyond Cop Cities: Dismantling State and Corporate-Funded Armies and Prisons, edited by Joy James (Pluto Press), depicting two police officers covered in blood splatters as one of them points a gun at a person lying on the ground, also covered in blood. Since 1997, the US Department of Defense has transferred more than $7.2bn in military equipment to law enforcement agencies. Furthermore, the DOD is legally required to make various items of equipment available to local police and school police departments, from flashlights and sandbags, to grenade launchers and armored vehicles. This militarisation has, unsurprisingly, been shown to unjustly impact on Black communities and is associated with increased killings by police. No wonder there have been calls to 'defund the police' echoing across the streets of America. In Beyond Cop Cities, Joy James and fellow contributors take these calls one step further, highlighting the Stop Cop City movement - one of the most vibrant in the US today. Linking anti-policing and racial justice movement with radical ecological 'forest defender' activism, the Stop Cop City campaign is a grass roots movement which aims to push back on police militarisation by blocking the construction of the Atlanta's Police Public Safety Training Center. https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745350486/beyond-cop-cities/

How to Fuck Like a Girl (Vera Blossom, Dopamine/Semiotext(e)), Defund (Calvin John Smiley, Haymarket Books), and, both by Joy James from Pluto Press: Beyond Cop Cities & Engage. @haymarketbooks.org @plutopress.bsky.social @semiotexte.bsky.social #BookSky #DSPBposts #SmallPress #books 💙📚 9/10

Loved this piece by Syd Staiti:

www.smallpresstraffic.org/the-back-roo...

Father and Mother - The Paris Review “When they met she was living in a large apartment in the rue Bonaparte, with the sister closest in age, the one who’s going to die of alcohol and pills.”

An excerpt of Constance Debré's new book NAME in the Paris Review:

www.theparisreview.org/blog/2025/04...

A hand holding Dodie Bellamy’s Bee Reaved. The book features a discomforting image of a person laying down - taken from just above their head. Is the person decomposing? The book is published by Semiotext(e)

A screenshot from Spotify. Chappell Roan’s ‘The Giver’ is currently playing. The image shows her dressed in dentist scrubs with a novelty-sized toothbrush. The footage is intentionally low-quality and has a home cinema vibe

An impossible decision for my train journey! Do I: a) read from a new book (Dodie Bellamy’s Bee Reaved arrived yesterday) OR b) listen to ‘The Giver’ on repeat until I reach Waterloo?

Detournement, “A Canadian Dream”
from Semiotext(e) #17, 1994

Reading very slowly this year, but just finished the republished semiotext(e) edition of IN THRALL by Jane DeLynn. It was so tender and lovely. Recommend if you want a sad lesbian coming of age novel. With an intro by Colm Tóibín, no less! www.semiotexte.com/in-thrall

Cover of Kevin Killian's Selected Amazon Reviews, blue cover in the style of the Library of America editions.

Kinda cool book from Semiotext(e). Really interesting reviews. Clever but also insightful. Here's a review of it: www.newyorker.com/books/under-...

The Question of Subjectivity in a Time of Depression and Panic Franco “Bifo” Berardi A few days ago I received an invitation from an American association that invited me to take part in a convention to be held in Chicago in April. The theme of the …

critinq.wordpress.com/2025/03/20/t...

French writer Didier Eribon: ‘My mother was unhappy her whole life’ [FREE TO READ] The author took longer to come out as working-class than as gay. His newly translated memoir confronts poverty and racism in the milieu he fled

Didier Eribon pioneered the white working-class memoir. Now he has tackled extreme old age, in a "sociobiography" of his mother, who died only weeks after entering an old-age home. My @financialtimes.com interview with the sociologist, on "coming out" as gay and then working-class on.ft.com/4hnmaXz

A Porous Exchange of Mutual Creation | A Conversation with Nate Lippens By Lindsay Lerman

“In Lippens’s books, the messiness of life is stylized, or sharpened into sensibility.”

@lindsaylerman.bsky.social interviews @natelippens.bsky.social about his new novel RIPCORD @semiotexte.bsky.social , friendship, gatekeeping & more…🌀 southwestreview.com/a-porous-exc...