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The Jacques Lacan Foundation
It's fall (or autumn) 2018. The Trump administration wants to fortify the United States-Mexico border, Robert 'Beto' O'Rourke is running for Senate, and British grifter Nicki Smith has just secured a "low-paid glamour job" at the University of Texas' Jacques Lacan Foundation. In between sleeping with the air-conditioning repair guy (or man) and watching Kate Moss make-up commercials (or advertisements) Nicki completes the first ever American-English translation of Lacan's newly discovered and highly controversial notebook - without knowing any French. An Anglo-American comedy of manners about identity and class The Jacques Lacan Foundation reveals-and revels in-the numerous pretentions that surround academia and authorship, and the institutions that foster them.
Paperback
First published March 31, 2022
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248 people want to read
About the author
Susan Finlay
11 books15 followersSusan Finlay is the author of three poetry pamphlets and five novels, which have been critically acclaimed in the Times Literary Supplement, The Paris Review, Art Review, Elle, and The Huffington Post among others.
Her short texts and poems have been included in group exhibitions and performances at the Royal Academy of Arts, the Whitechapel Gallery, and Camden Arts Centre in London, and published in magazines such as Worms, MAP, POETRY, and The Stinging Fly.
Collaborative projects include the Coelacanth Press, with whom she co-edited four issues of their bi-annual journal; the radio series Documents; The Brexit Chronicles podcast; and the artists and writers' organ Jour Mal Jour Nal.
In 2016 she co-curated Inland Far, an exhibition inspired by Herbert Read's only novel and its relationship to Jung at the Herbert Read Gallery in Canterbury, and in 2018 Isadora, a combination of text, sound, and film pieces based around the concept of a European salon at MoHA, Austin.
Residencies include The Troy Town Art Pottery in London, Unlisted in Austin, the Freud Museum in London, and Callie's in Berlin.
She lives in the UK and Berlin.
Her short texts and poems have been included in group exhibitions and performances at the Royal Academy of Arts, the Whitechapel Gallery, and Camden Arts Centre in London, and published in magazines such as Worms, MAP, POETRY, and The Stinging Fly.
Collaborative projects include the Coelacanth Press, with whom she co-edited four issues of their bi-annual journal; the radio series Documents; The Brexit Chronicles podcast; and the artists and writers' organ Jour Mal Jour Nal.
In 2016 she co-curated Inland Far, an exhibition inspired by Herbert Read's only novel and its relationship to Jung at the Herbert Read Gallery in Canterbury, and in 2018 Isadora, a combination of text, sound, and film pieces based around the concept of a European salon at MoHA, Austin.
Residencies include The Troy Town Art Pottery in London, Unlisted in Austin, the Freud Museum in London, and Callie's in Berlin.
She lives in the UK and Berlin.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
January 19, 2022
Posing as a public-school arriviste, Nicki Smith arrives in a position at the soi-disant Jacques Lacan Foundation, a repository for fustians with a penchant for weak wordplay and the byzantine theories of the French theorist, second only to Derrida for impish intellectual charlatanry. Posing as posho Lettuce Croydon-Smith, Nicki manoeuvres herself in a world of glamorous grifters and Ivy League sorority queens, in a satirical realm spiritually in sync with the offices of Quink magazine in Alexander Theroux’s Laura Warholic. The novel is a fairly tame comedy of manners, set in a nonspecific zone of fashionable artists and eggheads.
The narrator frequently italicises all the Americanisms in her prose, overlards her vocalisations with like tonnes of likes, and sleeps with avant-garde filmmaker Diego as she is put in charge of the French translation of a new Lacan notebook (having massaged her CV with spurious bilingual brag). As she clashes with the primly attired Connecticut crème de la crème, her struggle to maintain the con and retain the poise of her idol Kate Moss becomes an increasing schlepp. Finlay’s novel is a farcical send-up of the culture of blaggers and carpetbaggers that has become the modus operandi for seemingly every pursuer of power, from influencers to politicians, as their talents for thrusting themselves forward leave the rest of us pining for something better.
The narrator frequently italicises all the Americanisms in her prose, overlards her vocalisations with like tonnes of likes, and sleeps with avant-garde filmmaker Diego as she is put in charge of the French translation of a new Lacan notebook (having massaged her CV with spurious bilingual brag). As she clashes with the primly attired Connecticut crème de la crème, her struggle to maintain the con and retain the poise of her idol Kate Moss becomes an increasing schlepp. Finlay’s novel is a farcical send-up of the culture of blaggers and carpetbaggers that has become the modus operandi for seemingly every pursuer of power, from influencers to politicians, as their talents for thrusting themselves forward leave the rest of us pining for something better.
July 5, 2022
After skewering the music world with the wonderfully wicked My Other Spruce and Maple Self , Susan Finlay, with The Jacques Lacan Foundation, is giving a couple of jabs to academia.
Nicki Smith arrives from the UK to the American Jacques Lacan Foundation where she is going to translate a recently discovered Lacan notebook. The problem is that she has no knowledge of the French language. To be honest Nicki see the foundation as an opportunity to mock everything it stands for.
In between sleeping with hipster film director student, Diego ( don’t forget Lacan wrote about film theory) , Nicki, posing as under the name Lettuce baffles the intellectuals who try to give an academic edge to her name. Also as a non American, Smith uses American versions of words that are known differently across the pond, thus elevator instead of lift, purse instead of handbag, pants instead of trousers. All these words are italicized ( I assume this is a small homage to Lacan’s Symbolic stage where language is a proof of sorts in a different entity) . Does Lettuce actually finish the translation? well let’s say the novel ends in a grand farce or is it just Nicki in her mirror stage creating her own world?
In other words the Jacques Lacan Foundation is a romp. Susan Finlay puts Lettuce to many tests and absurdist situations and yet, despite how the novel flows, there is a lot going on. It’s a fun exterior but a clever punch from the inside. As my knowledge of Lacan is rudimentary, basically some crumbs I am sure I missed out quite a few things. I think of The Jacques Lacan Foundation as a less dirty, more madcap and more intellectual version of Terry Southern’s Candy: A girl meets a series of cracked intellectuals but , fortunately gets an upper hand in the end.
The Jacques Lacan Foundation may not seem like an easy read but do stick with it and it is an unforgettable experience. Where Susan Finaly goes next, I don’t know but it will definitely be different and exciting.
Nicki Smith arrives from the UK to the American Jacques Lacan Foundation where she is going to translate a recently discovered Lacan notebook. The problem is that she has no knowledge of the French language. To be honest Nicki see the foundation as an opportunity to mock everything it stands for.
In between sleeping with hipster film director student, Diego ( don’t forget Lacan wrote about film theory) , Nicki, posing as under the name Lettuce baffles the intellectuals who try to give an academic edge to her name. Also as a non American, Smith uses American versions of words that are known differently across the pond, thus elevator instead of lift, purse instead of handbag, pants instead of trousers. All these words are italicized ( I assume this is a small homage to Lacan’s Symbolic stage where language is a proof of sorts in a different entity) . Does Lettuce actually finish the translation? well let’s say the novel ends in a grand farce or is it just Nicki in her mirror stage creating her own world?
In other words the Jacques Lacan Foundation is a romp. Susan Finlay puts Lettuce to many tests and absurdist situations and yet, despite how the novel flows, there is a lot going on. It’s a fun exterior but a clever punch from the inside. As my knowledge of Lacan is rudimentary, basically some crumbs I am sure I missed out quite a few things. I think of The Jacques Lacan Foundation as a less dirty, more madcap and more intellectual version of Terry Southern’s Candy: A girl meets a series of cracked intellectuals but , fortunately gets an upper hand in the end.
The Jacques Lacan Foundation may not seem like an easy read but do stick with it and it is an unforgettable experience. Where Susan Finaly goes next, I don’t know but it will definitely be different and exciting.
Read
July 2, 2024sucks so hard. gave it 50 pages but dnf. reads like fanfic. given to me for bday i have very little trust in friends who give bad books, especially if they have already read them…. sero starz
Read
October 28, 2024meine erwartung, ein von der autorin imaginiertes, verschollenes seminar von lacan beschrieben zu bekommen, blieb leider aus. stattdessen mittelmäßige beobachtungen über das kulturelle milieu in austin und ein schwacher stil.
June 5, 2022
OK, maybe 2.5. I feel bad knocking on an author who isn't super popular or prolific because really, what have I done?! I've never written a novel. This person has. What gives me the right to knock on their completed act of creativity? Are we really sure reviews and social media are good for humanity?
First, let's get biases out of the way.
I read and appreciate Lacan and his theories.
I don't know Finlay personally, but it's super hard for me to believe anything other than that Finlay hasn't (much) and doesn't.
And I suppose I was hoping for the opposite.
So perhaps this review is based on nothing other than my disappointed expectations.
Objet petit a was "not this."
What's more Lacanian than that?!
But here's the thing. I get the sense that maybe Finlay was assigned Seminar XVII in a lit or theory class and found it impenetrable (as any Lacan text would be as your first entry) and decided then and there that Lacan, his theories, and all parts of the movement surrounding him were complete hoaxes. Silly gobbledygook that deserved a good sardonic pinprick to deflate the balloon of hubris and fakery.
And that's fine as it all goes I suppose.
But I feel the book description and blurbs promised something more or different.
Truthfully I think Finlay should have titled this the Jean Baudrillard Foundation because much of what she seems to be riffing on seems closer to that. The Lacan world provides an interesting cast of characters and at one point an interesting riff on signifying chains, but much of the other theory under-girding seems more closely aligned with simulations and appearances rather than Lacan's theories. Maybe Finlay was pretending at knowledge like her main character? Again, no way to know...
And again, Finlay wrote a novel.
What have I done??
If someone who appreciates and understands Lacan reads this and sees something I didn't see please reach out and let me know - I would love to be wrong here.
I should really finish a novel so I have a leg to stand on...
First, let's get biases out of the way.
I read and appreciate Lacan and his theories.
I don't know Finlay personally, but it's super hard for me to believe anything other than that Finlay hasn't (much) and doesn't.
And I suppose I was hoping for the opposite.
So perhaps this review is based on nothing other than my disappointed expectations.
Objet petit a was "not this."
What's more Lacanian than that?!
But here's the thing. I get the sense that maybe Finlay was assigned Seminar XVII in a lit or theory class and found it impenetrable (as any Lacan text would be as your first entry) and decided then and there that Lacan, his theories, and all parts of the movement surrounding him were complete hoaxes. Silly gobbledygook that deserved a good sardonic pinprick to deflate the balloon of hubris and fakery.
And that's fine as it all goes I suppose.
But I feel the book description and blurbs promised something more or different.
Truthfully I think Finlay should have titled this the Jean Baudrillard Foundation because much of what she seems to be riffing on seems closer to that. The Lacan world provides an interesting cast of characters and at one point an interesting riff on signifying chains, but much of the other theory under-girding seems more closely aligned with simulations and appearances rather than Lacan's theories. Maybe Finlay was pretending at knowledge like her main character? Again, no way to know...
And again, Finlay wrote a novel.
What have I done??
If someone who appreciates and understands Lacan reads this and sees something I didn't see please reach out and let me know - I would love to be wrong here.
I should really finish a novel so I have a leg to stand on...
February 7, 2022
A truly post-modern pastiche, that moves expertly between a variety of genres - everything from screwball comedy, to film noir, to each and every 80s movie that opens with a helicopter shot of the New York skyline. Ottessa Moshfegh meets the Loved One meets White Noise, realised with a dash of enjoyably smutty British humour.
August 2, 2022
Why did it take me 2 months to finish a 200 page book?
I went into waterstones and asked them for a zany rec and they recommended this. Definitely quite zany, and i enjoyed! Think i would have enjoyed more if i read it all in one sitting but still quite fun
I went into waterstones and asked them for a zany rec and they recommended this. Definitely quite zany, and i enjoyed! Think i would have enjoyed more if i read it all in one sitting but still quite fun
June 9, 2022
Wild and silly in the cleverest, coolest way!
August 27, 2022
wonderful, bizarre novel. would make a great companion read to lote. read it mainly as a lacan junkie but it’s so funny and smart and oddly sweet.
December 16, 2022
delicious
July 17, 2023
Weird but weirdly compelling as well
Read
August 3, 2023'I thought back to my then current job at the Freud Museum and all the poor unfortunate women who had never managed to escape the unhappy childhoods now forever trapped upon the page.'
April 25, 2024
2023 favorites.
(Note: I love books that super empathetically ridicule characters I identify with)
(Note: I love books that super empathetically ridicule characters I identify with)
April 20, 2025
Devoured in two sittings. So silly. As somebody who is in training, I loved it.
May 7, 2024
Ha ha
August 17, 2025
Novel for, by(?), and about annoying theory people. Made me laugh so many times. Love the use of italics.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews