Romance or the End

Elaine Kahn

Romance or The End takes up the tools of romantic narrative in order to perform the rupture between self and story that occurs at the onset of trauma. Using known and pathologized literary arcs, Elaine Kahn unspools the fundamental instability of truth, love, and language to create an experiential portrait of narrative's power to both disfigure and restore. Kahn's work has been praised by Kim Gordon, Ariana Reines, Eileen Myles, and Rachel Kushner. According to Ana Cecilia Alvarez, Romance or The End 'belongs in the heartbreak canon with Maggie Nelson's Bluets (2009) or Anne Carson's The Glass Essay (1995)'.