Speak / Stop

by Noémi Lefebvre

An irreverent semiotic fever dream that weighs meaning and meaning-making against idea and ideology.

—We have read Proust but we’re not sure

—Who has really read Proust

—Besides a few Proustians

—We are no Proustians

—Despite not being anti-Proustian...


Speak / Stop comprises two interrelated texts: a chorus of unidentified voices followed by a work of literary criticism that only Noémi Lefebvre could write—a semiotic fever dream that weighs meaning and meaning-making against idea and ideology.

Abstracted, irreverent, and full of biting satire, Lefebvre picks apart hypocrisies in our lives and the language of our lives, skewering our literary pieties before delving headfirst into the paradox of self-criticism. Working against conventional notions of genre and form, Speak / Stop is “a madhouse of earthworm sentences” interrogating concerns of class and taste, ease, and inclusion/exclusion that are the foundations of Lefebvre’s work.

Genres: Fiction

120 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2024

About the author

Noémi Lefebvre was born in 1964 in Caen, and lives in Lyon. Further to a PhD on the subject of music education and national identity in Germany and France, she became a political scientist at CERAT de Grenoble II Institute.

She is the author of three novels, all of which have garnered intense critical success: L’autoportrait bleu (2009), L’état des sentiment à l’âge adulte (2012) and L'enfance politique (2015).

She is a regular contributor to the respected French investigative website Mediapart and to the bilingual French-German review La mer gelée.

Reviews

[Annie Tate Cockrum · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book in two parts - Speak is a witty, often laugh out loud funny, fragmented piece of work and Stop is its “postface” - think of it as a preface after the fact. I found this book to be incredibly funny, incredibly unique, and sharp as hell.

[Briana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I read through Speak / Stop by Noémi Lefebvre twice before writing down my opinions on it. The first time around, I thought it was pretentious slop, and I was prepared to give this two stars max. However, something pulled me into reading it all over again, and once I understood where Lefebvre was going with this (as best as I can, anyway), I thought it was pretty cool. It's sharp, witty, and funny. It's split into two parts: "Speak" and "Stop." Speak is kind of a stream of consciousness about daily thoughts on the state of the world, Flaubert, and Proust. I saw everything from climate change to literature to nuclear war mentioned in this section. It reminded me a lot of Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman, about the casual mania we all experience just by living in this world and trying to understand ALL of the things happening at once. Stop is a "preface" to Speak and is more of a literary criticism and essay about creation and whether artists should talk about their work in the manner in which Lefebvre did. While this part was more "cohesive," I didn't find it as enjoyable or radical as Speak.

This isn't for everyone but this is one of those little books that I will think about for a long time.

[Jillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Speak/Stop carefully and thoughtfully deconstructs the questions, "Should writers take about their work?" and "How do we even classify our work anyway?" Noémi Lefebvre does so by taking one of her own texts, Speak, and then performing literary criticism on it (Stop). It's so intelligent and thought-provoking and complicated that you don't realize what she's doing until a great way through the text. Lefebvre is thinking more about the production of writing and how to talk about it more and better than maybe anyone else right now. It's very French of her, and I'm obsessed with it.

[123abc · Rating 2 out of 5]

this book was probably some way above my literary level (if you, like me, aren’t seriously familiar with proust and flaubert maybe pass) - ‚speak‘ (the first half) was fun and interesting but ‚stop‘ is like a phd analysis of what ‚speak‘ is

ultimately it’s everything!

“There is no identifying Speak with any particular genre or any form. We could equally say that Speak is a slightly short novel, a rather long short story, a play without characters, a Hörspiel text, a radio play with no broadcast schedule, or an untrue film. Speak is a bit of everything and nothing at all.”

[Ashley]

so much of this went so far over my head 😵‍💫

[Lee Ling · Rating 4 out of 5]

To me, Speak/Stop is the type of narrative that reflects real life self-narrative. The ones that encourages, hyped up and just speak out thoughts, followed by the ones that snaps it back to reality - the criticisms, the rationality, the reality. It brings out the conversations and thoughts in a poetic way. Such a relatable and refreshing read especially after a long pause in reading.

[Georgina · Rating 4 out of 5]

really interesting text format which I enjoyed greatly! i did not come into the book with the knowledge that it was non-fiction so it through me off but i enjoyed the discussion the author had with themself? as they explored what it means to be a writer, ownership over your writing and what it means to speak on it or not!

[Hetian bias · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Wikipedia’s definition of a poem, ‘a poem is a text of poetry’”

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars because I liked what I could parse and the overall message but I’m not well read enough to have understood half the references

[anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

knifey. damn entertaining

[Jaimie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I need to stop reading books only for the cover.