Speak/Stop and the Taste of Taste

On the publication of Noémi Lefebvre’s third work to appear in English translation, Speak/Stop, in October 2024, and as her regular translator, I wrote a short essay about the workings of bad taste in this book. Originally published in French as two texts in one volume, ‘Parle’ followed by ‘Tais-toi’, in 2021, the two texts known in English as ‘Speak’ and ‘Stop’ form a pair that look like chalk and cheese on the page. ‘Speak’ is a series of unattributed (unhooked, unhinged?) voices, building arguments without ever quite conversing, while ‘Stop’ is a piece of critical prose commentary, interrogating form, influence and especially who gets to say what about what. In both texts, taste, good and bad, are invoked and in play, and so I think the book shows its cultural critique as much or more than it tells.

Lefebvre is a French cultural critic, editorial director at the Franco-German magazine La mer gêlée and also a twentieth-century musicologist, based in Marseille. She has published six works of fiction, of which Speak/Stop is her latest to be published in the US by Transit Books. This essay first appeared as one of the ‘on a sentence’ series commissioned by Transit for their website.

Noémi Lefebvre starts by setting out her menu, and it’s a hearty one. Although it is less than obvious where we should start, which element is meant as the main course, and what will round it off as our coffee and dessert. She opens:

– You can’t address us in just any tone
– You ...