Autoportrait
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
In this brilliant and sobering self-portrait, Édouard Levé hides nothing from his readers, setting out his entire life, more or less at random, in a string of declarative sentences.
Autoportrait is a physical, psychological, sexual, political, and philosophical triumph. Beyond "sincerity," Levé works toward an objectivity so radical it could pass for crudeness, triviality, even banality: the author has stripped himself bare. With the force of a set of maxims or morals, Levé's prose seems at first to be an autobiography without sentiment, as though written by a machine—until, through the accumulation of detail, and the author's dry, quizzical tone, we find ourselves disarmed, enthralled, and enraptured by nothing less than the perfect fiction... made entirely of facts. Shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award in 2013.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Simultaneously brilliant and banal, Lev 's newest (after Suicide) is a vivid self-portrait/autobiography that lays bare the workings of his mind, the flashes of recollection that make up his life. Fears, observations, pets, favorite words, foods, sleeping positions, and sexual infidelities emerge in a dreamy, stream-of-conscious m lange reminiscent of Lyn Hejinian's seminal My Life: "I cut my own hair I have seen too many grinning corpses on TV I will repeat sentences or opinions that I've heard, verbatim To reassure myself, when I am lost in a foreign city, I go to the supermarket." There is no coherent narrative here no beginning or middle , and the string of unconnected musings does occasionally grow monotonous; but then life is often unremarkable, and Lev does not discriminate. This is an autobiography to be read slowly, piece by piece, savoring the sensory details and fragmented stories, all the while pondering what parts of our own lives we would use to tell our own self-portrait though Lev admits that "To describe life would take longer than to live it."
