Precarious Lease

(Paperback)

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On 31 December 2012, Le Bloc opened its doors. Situated at a far edge of Paris, near where the banlieue began, the legendary squat was eight stories tall and four basements deep. It took in artists and activists as well as immigrants to France from various corners of Europe, Africa and the Americas, all of whom lived and worked within Le Bloc's labyrinthine structure, continually threatened with eviction and existential as well as financial precarity. Jacqueline Feldman, a reporter from the US, spent a number of years with the residents of the squat, witnessing firsthand the creativity and grief inherent to everyday life there and the gradual dismantling of Paris's counterculture. WithPrecarious Lease- the title itself referring to a French legal device by which squatters could receive a temporary reprieve from eviction but were reduced in status to property guardians - Feldman tells Le Bloc's story. In the tradition of Walter Benjamin and with the journalistic attunement of Joan Didion, Feldman draws on Paris's revolutionary and bohemian history as she raises questions of the most contemporary urgency about hospitality and refuge, idealism and utopia, creativity and precarity, ecology and the possibilities left for writing and inhabiting a capital city.

Reviews

Feldman'sPrecarious Leaseis marked by erudition, astringence, biting wit, and the perspicacious awe of a seasoned examiner of our time, attributes bound to be hallmarks of her work for years to come. Diving under the rubble of social and class collapse, Feldman deftly maneuvers between investigative reportage and essayist forays while weaving through this tapestry a tone so sharp yet compassionate, so personal, it feels like a friend delivering dire news from the front lines of the world.
Ocean Vuong, author ofOn Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

InPrecarious LeaseJacqueline Feldman follows her curiosity about alternate forms of living into the heart of north-east Pariss squat scene, and takes the reader with her, asking fundamental questions about how we live together under late capitalism, and the relationship, in France, between freedom and bureaucracy, marginality and the state. Its completely fascinating, an American in Paris memoir like no other.
Lauren Elkin, author ofArt Monsters

Jacqueline FeldmansPrecarious Leaseoffers an enthralling immersion into the confluence of 2010s-era social and political activism, Parisian and French real estate and the margins of the global artworld. Multimodal in its storytelling, encompassing critical journalism, social history, the precision of documentary writing, and more,Precarious Leasealso holds up a mirror to our current capitalist moment and suggests other ways of imagining our world.
John Keene, author ofCounternarratives

'To trust a writers insight, we must first trust their eyes, must be able to see what, how, and as they see. In Precarious Lease, Jacqueline Feldman trains her vision indeed all her senses on the striking, insistent particulars of the culture of squatters in Paris. Feldman assuredly, brilliantly, guides us through their unstable circumstances, through their fraught world. At every turn, the urgent, vivid, vitally empathic prose of Precarious Lease is grounded in a sense of our shared, our undeniable humanity. That is where revelation springs from. You heard me right: Jacqueline Feldmans Precarious Lease is a revelation. This is a masterful, elegant, powerful book.'
Richard Deming, author of This Exquisite Loneliness

Destined to become a classic of literary reportage,Precarious Lease: The Paris Documenthonors the poetry of facts in its vivid, boldly intimate depiction of artists and artists manqu struggling and dreaming in the squat houses of Paris and its peripheries. In its narrative sweep, the photorealism of its details, its sure grasp of cultural and subcultural history, its winsome and confiding tone, and its indelible portraits of eccentrics, rebels, and visionaries, Jacqueline Feldmans deep-hearted and brilliant firsthand account offers us nothing less than utter enchantment.
Garielle Lutz

The authenticity with which [Feldman] renders her subjects on the page creates memorable characters and brings Le Bloc to life as a character in its own right. An atmospheric work of personal reportage that artfully renders the history and lived experience of Parisian squats.
Kirkus

'Like the diary of Samuel Pepys,Precarious Leaseis not so much reporting or even memoir as full-on history writing. Biased in the most important and necessary ways and at the same time telepathic, translucent, and hard-won, Feldman's attempt at an account will make you rethink citizenship and all the hideous fictions associated with contemporary real estate. It will also remind you of the sacred and anarchic power of description.'
Lucy Ives, author ofLife is Everywhere

Author Bio

Jacqueline Feldman's writing has appeared inTriple Canopy,The White Review, theParis Review,New Yorker,Atlanticand many other publications.