Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    On Elegance While Sleeping
    On Elegance While Sleeping
    On Elegance While Sleeping
    Ebook161 pages1 hour

    On Elegance While Sleeping

    By Emilio Lascano Tegui and Idra Novey

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The first English translation of the self-proclaimed "Viscount" Emilio Lascano Tegui—a friend of Picasso and Apollinaire, and a larger-than-life eccentric in his own right—On Elegance While Sleeping is the deliciously macabre novel, part Maldoror and part Dorian Gray, that established its author's reputation as a renegade hero of Argentine literature. It tells the story, in the form of a surreal diary, of a lonely, syphilitic French soldier, who—after too many brothels and disappointments—returns from Africa longing for a world with more elegance. He promptly falls in love with a goat, and recalls the time, after a childhood illness, when his hair fell out and grew back orange—a phenomenon his doctor attributed to the cultivation of carrots in a neighboring town. Disturbing, provocative, and mesmerizing, On Elegance While Sleeping charts the decline of a man unraveling due to his own oversensitivity—and drifting closer and closer to committing a murder.

    from On Elegance While Sleeping:

    "I was born in Bougival. The Seine flowed through our village. Fleeing from Paris. Its dark green waters dragged in the grime from that happy city. As the river crossed our town, it jammed the millwheel with the shy bodies of drowning victims hidden beneath its surface. Their trip ended with a final shove. They didn't drain easily through the sluice gates as the water passed under the mill and so it happened, occasionally, that one of their arms would go through without them, reaching into the air in a gesture of help. I fished out a number of these bodies as a child. Like the mailman in town who was famous for bringing news of a death, I was known for discovering the most cadavers. It gave me a certain aura of fame among my comrades, and I prided myself on the distinction. I threatened the other children my age that I was going to find them too, the day they drowned."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDalkey Archive Press
    Release dateNov 30, 2010
    ISBN9781564786739
    On Elegance While Sleeping

    Related to On Elegance While Sleeping

    Related ebooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Orlando Spirit Of The Age

      Jun 11, 2019

      Orlando Spirit Of The Age
      5 min read

    • Article

      Queer Identity Cards

      Dec 7, 2021

      Queer Identity Cards
      1 min read

    • Article

      Literary MagNet

      Jun 16, 2021

      The beginnings of M. Leona Godin’s new book, There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness (Pantheon, June 2021), trace back to a class on Milton that she took as an undergraduate. Since then, Godin’s experiences as a scholar, writer

      3 min read

    • Article

      Kafka On The Tram

      Mar 1, 2024

      Enrique Vila-Matas ON ONCE again re-reading the penultimate fragment of Robert Walser's Jakob von Gunten—the part where Herr Benjamenta and the narrator go off traveling together, dreaming of absolute freedom—I sense a possible family resemblance wit

      3 min read

    • Article

      Pickpocket

      Jun 1, 2020

      Pickpocket
      7 min read

    • Article

      D. H. Tracy

      Dec 1, 2020

      It is desirable that as little happen as possible.An aristocrat said this, knowing (I hope) it was hopeless.Inevitably,sporadically (like clockwork,unlike clockwork), somethinggoes thlunk into the pond of you,and the normal expires.Your contract/leas

      2 min read

    • Article

      Back Draft: Ada Limón

      Jul 18, 2022

      Back Draft: Ada Limón
      9 min read

    • Article

      A Wild Ride

      Feb 23, 2024

      A Wild Ride
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Cheapness of Luxury

      Jul 18, 2024

      The Cheapness of Luxury
      5 min read

    • Article

      Recent Memory

      Dec 2, 2021

      Recent Memory
      9 min read

    • Article

      Emotion Seller

      Mar 20, 2024

      Justin Kuritzkes hacked his way into the public consciousness with a god-tier viral YouTube video named Potion Seller which, if you haven’t seen it already then put this down and watch it now. He expanded his repertoire of dramatic writing and perfor

      6 min read

    • Article

      Apology

      Mar 1, 2022

      My father would take the washclothand wring it out with both of his hands,the water falling like rain from a heavenhe controlled. He would wash my back,and I would watch him teach metenderness—the way he would guta deer, holding the ribs like a dance

      1 min read

    • Article

      Three’s Company

      Mar 20, 2024

      Three’s Company
      9 min read

    • Article

      TALKING POINTS The Write Stuff

      Aug 6, 2020

      TALKING POINTS The Write Stuff
      1 min read

    • Article

      Fractions

      Mar 1, 2024

      One third of this poem is a lie; I'll let you decide which. I missed the irises this year. They bloom for a breath of May, their purple lips parted like suns. I had my excuses: so much to do, so much reaching. Gathering stems in a shattered vase. My

      1 min read

    • Article

      Hilltop

      Dec 7, 2021

      Returning to the very same place,let it be a hilltopwith a view of the night city where once you used to be,when your “whole life”still lay ahead of you,when everything was before. Returning—when it’s already after:irrevocably, decisively.What a stra

      1 min read

    • Article

      Isabella Hammad

      Sep 15, 2017

      It happened like this. A week after the Six-Day War, Sam walked to the eastern bank of the Jordan River. He was working as a counselor that summer near Karameh, at a day camp for boys. Although the fighting occurred further upstream, camp activities

      16 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Casey Gerald

      Dec 14, 2018

      There’s a line in my book that reads, “I have been so many things along my curious journey: a poor boy, a nigger, a Yale man, a Harvard man, a faggot, a Christian, a crack baby (alleged), the Spawn of Satan, the Second Coming, Casey.” My reading tend

      2 min read

    • Article

      Literary MagNet

      Apr 12, 2023

      U.S. Supreme Court decisions on policing, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, death certificates, physics textbooks, property labels on books. In their debut poetry collection, I Am the Most Dangerous Thing, published in May by Alice James Books, Cand

      3 min read

    • Article

      Loquats

      Dec 7, 2021

      In the spring they ripen and swarm the trees,the waxy little fruits that resemble bald heads. I collect their remains: piebald, sweetand sour. A syrup made of loquats is said to cure cough. Their woolly twigssplinter in pear blight. I am bereft when

      1 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Oct 16, 2023

      What a thing of joy is a new Francis Spufford novel. Golden Hill, his debut, was a transporting piece of historical fiction that captured life in early New York in all its quirk and contingence, and deservedly won a bag of awards. His second, Light P

      3 min read

    • Article

      Nick Laird

      Dec 15, 2017

      I was trying to write like an adult.I had children.I was at the end of something. As I waited at my table by the window for the coffee,I saw that the sirocco had depositeda scrim of dust on the sill overnight,and it was the dark red of powdered blood

      3 min read

    • Article

      Bookshelf

      Aug 3, 2020

      Bookshelf
      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for On Elegance While Sleeping

    4/5

    36 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      On Elegance While Sleeping - Emilio Lascano Tegui

      The first time I entrusted my hands to a manicurist was the evening I was headed to the Moulin Rouge. The woman trimmed back my cuticles and polished my nails with an emery board. Then she filed them to points and finished up with some polish. My hands no longer looked like they belonged to me. I put them on my table, in front of my mirror, and changed their positions in the light. With the same sense of self-consciousness one feels when posing for a photographer, I picked up a pen and began to write.

      That’s how I started this book.

      At the Moulin Rouge that night I heard a woman standing nearby say in Spanish: He cares for his hands like a man preparing for a murder.

      MAY 19, 18—

      I was born in Bougival. The Seine flows through our village. Fleeing from Paris. Its dark green waters drag in the grime from that happy city. As the river crossed our town, it jammed the millwheel with the bodies of drowning victims, bashful beneath its surface. One last shove and their journeys were at an end. But they couldn’t pass through the sluice gates under the mill, and so it happened, on occasion, that one of their arms would go through without them—and be seen reaching into the air, as if for help. As a child, I fished out a number of these bodies. There was a mailman in town who was famous locally for always being the one to deliver news of a death; I soon developed a similar sort of notoriety, becoming known for having discovered the most cadavers. It gave me a certain distinction among my comrades, and I prided myself on this honor. I threatened the other children that I would soon find them as well—the day they drowned. They’d tilt their heads, imagining themselves tangled in the sluices beneath the mill. My authority was beyond question: I had, in making my grim prediction, planted an inkling of tragedy into everyday life; which is precisely where logic will say it belongs, once the works of Aeschylus have been thoroughly assimilated into human consciousness, and seem as ordinary and simple as a schoolboy’s

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1