Autoportrait

April 30, 2012
Simultaneously brilliant and banal, Levé'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 mélange reminiscent of Lyn Hejinian's seminal My Life: "I cut my own hairâ¦I have seen too many grinning corpses on TVâ¦I will repeat sentences or opinions that I've heard, verbatimâ¦To reassure myself, when I am lost in a foreign city, I go to the supermarket." There is no coherent narrative hereâno beginning or middleâ, and the string of unconnected musings does occasionally grow monotonous; but then life is often unremarkable, and Levé 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-portraitâthough Levé admits that "To describe life would take longer than to live it."