Autoportrait

In this brilliant and sobering self-portrait, Edouard Lev? 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," Lev? 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, Lev?'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. In this brilliant and sobering self-portrait, Edouard Lev? 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," Lev? 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, Lev?'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.