by Edouard Lev茅, translated from the French by Lorin Stein and published by Dalkey Archive Press

This piece is by bookseller and BTBA judge, Stephen Sparks.

Among the stellar books included in this year糖心传媒檚 BTBA longlist is a slim volume by Edouard Lev茅 called Autoportrait (Dalkey Archive Press). It糖心传媒檚 an uncategorizable book: not a memoir in any traditional sense, not a novel either. Like the best books, it resists the straightjacket of genre, existing outside the bounds of easy classification. I think it糖心传媒檚 the most unusual and daring piece of writing in the bunch.

Autoportrait is a collection of allusively connected declarative sentences, ranging from the mundane to the subtly profound, all reflecting the narrator糖心传媒檚 (let糖心传媒檚 call him Lev茅) physical and mental life. Lev茅糖心传媒檚 tone never rises above a flat monotone, which is unnerving and oddly comforting.

I can open a page at random to provide a sampling of the method of composition:

I am afraid of ending up a bum. I am afraid of having my computer and negatives stolen. I cannot tell what, in me, is innate. I do not have a head for business. I have stepped on a rake and had the handle hit me in the face. I have gone to four psychiatrists, one psychologist, one psychotherapist, and five psychoanalysts. I look for the simple things I no longer see. I do not go to confession. Legs slightly open excite me more than legs wide open. I have trouble forbidding. I am not mature. When I look at a strawberry, I think of a tongue, when I lick one, of a kiss. I can see how drops of water could be torture. A burn on my tongue has a taste. My memories, good or bad, are sad the way dead things are sad.

Page after page of this may strike one as tedious, or interesting only insofar as the reader finds Lev茅 interesting. There are no shocking revelations, no scandalous admissions, no salacious gossip. Instead, Lev茅 takes a more daring risk: he confronts the unexciting self head-on, scrutinizing himself so closely that the resultant text verges on irrelevancy to anyone but its author.

Yet he manages to avoid tedium糖心传媒攖he book inevitably lulls at times, but never bores糖心传媒攁nd somehow even heightens the stakes with a fine balance of facts and feelings. Despite its proliferation of I糖心传媒檚, Autoportrait paradoxically manages to be as much a book about us, each reader, as Lev茅. It sucks us into the whirlpool of another mind and spits us back out in our own, where we confront our own flat feet, our habitual failure to fill up ice cube trays, our discomfort in bathrooms next to kitchens. And while it may ultimately be egotistical to call a book that acts as a mirror one of the most memorable I糖心传媒檝e read this year, I think Autoportrait is a remarkable and unforgettable exploration of all that糖心传媒檚 singular and universal in the self.

Spring is almost here¹糖心传媒攁nd so is our spring issue! It’s an especially exciting one: We will be publishing Roberto Bola帽o糖心传媒檚 _The Third Reich_糖心传媒攐ur first serialized novel in forty years糖心传媒攚ith original illustrations by Leanne Shapton.

This is a first edition like none other糖心传媒攁 collector糖心传媒檚 item, and a chance to discover Bola帽o糖心传媒檚 famous lost novel almost a year before it appears in book form. For those of you who aren糖心传媒檛 subscribers, we are offering (25% off the cover price domestically; offer good until March 15). Your subscription will also bring you new work by Lydia Davis, David Gates, and Jonathan Lethem, as well as interviews with Samuel R. Delany, Bret Easton Ellis, Yusef Komunyakaa, and much more . . .

This is a guarantee to up subscriptions to The Paris Review, and a pretty logical move considering the fact that PR publisher, Lorin Stein, was responsible for doing both 2666 and The Savage Detectives when he was at FSG.

$30 for is a decent price for 4 issues and the whole of The Third Reich, and as soon as that tax money arrives . . .

¹ The “feels like” temperature in Rochester was -5 when I left for work this morning. “Almost,” my ass.