The Longcut
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Emily Hall has been a contributor to Artforum since 2003; her writing has also appeared in the New York Times Book Review, The Stranger, and the zine RedHeaded StepChild. The Longcut, her first novel, was shortlisted for the 2020 Novel Prize. She lives in New York, where she edits exhibition catalogues at The Museum of Modern Art.
Shortlisted for the Novel Prize
"I remember how Knut Hamsun's Hunger scared & excited me when I was young & now, later on, Emily Hall's The Longcut has produced its own inimitable effect. I think of a mayor I read about who advocated digging a hole so big there's no alternative to filling it. Emily Hall's digging (for art) is bedraggled and ecstatic ("I was a lunatic for miles"). It makes its mark and I am helplessly subsumed in it still. Her Longcut is like an Artist's Way for bad kids." --Eileen Myles
"The anxieties of the artist are vigorously analyzed to the point of near insanity in Emily Hall's schizophrenic debut. An artist walks through a city to an appointment, asking the simple and unanswerable question: what is my work? Hilarious and claustrophobic, angular and digressive, The Longcut questions the role of capitalism in creation, while proving it's nearly impossible to make art if one thinks about it too much." --Mark Haber
Shortlisted for the Novel Prize
"I remember how Knut Hamsun's Hunger scared & excited me when I was young & now, later on, Emily Hall's The Longcut has produced its own inimitable effect. I think of a mayor I read about who advocated digging a hole so big there's no alternative to filling it. Emily Hall's digging (for art) is bedraggled and ecstatic ("I was a lunatic for miles"). It makes its mark and I am helplessly subsumed in it still. Her Longcut is like an Artist's Way for bad kids." -Eileen Myles
"The anxieties of the artist are vigorously analyzed to the point of near insanity in Emily Hall's schizophrenic debut. An artist walks through a city to an appointment, asking the simple and unanswerable question: what is my work? Hilarious and claustrophobic, angular and digressive, The Longcut questions the role of capitalism in creation, while proving it's nearly impossible to make art if one thinks about it too much." --Mark Haber
