Ken's Reviews > Autoportrait

I like to read. I read literary fiction, poetry, essays, history, philosophy, spiritual books, translations. I might have read autofiction without realizing. I enjoy sentences. I am tolerant of books that break accepted rules like organizing writing with paragraphs. I just read Autoportrait, a 117-page paragraph of autofiction (I auto-guess) that simply strings together declarative sentences. The author, Edouard Levé, writes sentences that often appear to be random non sequiturs, but what is life if not random non sequiturs? I thought the book, in its way, the height of vanity. I thought of counting the number of sentences that started with "I" but am weak at math so could never keep track. I chuckled at some of Levé's frank admissions, as if nothing were sacred, right down to the parts of his body he likes and the parts of his body he dislikes. Safe to say, I will never emulate Levé on this count. At times Levé's Autoportrait is sad, too. On the one hand, he describes himself as a terrific hypochondriac. On the other, he admits to attempting suicide many times (and succeeded in 2007 at the age of 42). I find it ironic that a man who fretted about his health wanted to kill himself and ultimately did so. Ironic and very sad. I feet bad for him because I came to identify with him the more he wrote "I.., I..., I..." (in the plaintive tone of "Aye...aye...aye!"). At least I have gained from his example. I now know I can string sentences, too, and while some might tag them #whocares!, others might follow along and nod sympathetically. I like kombucha and once tried to make my own but the mother in the bottle looked like a jar from a mad scientist's lab. I prefer ginger kombucha. I like many sour tastes, including buttermilk straight up and certain crabapples that make your eyes squint. I do not like liver and onions or lobster or black licorice. I do not drink alcoholic beverages but have no problem with those who do. I'm not very good at swearing in general and have never sworn in front of my parents. I go to bed at 9 o'clock. My kids call it "Dad O'Clock." I wake up at "bird o'clock," which is to say when the first birds sing, typically between 4 and 4:30 in the morning. I much prefer the countryside to cities, but enjoyed Levé's descriptions of his travels and the cities he has visited. He was better traveled than I am, despite being much younger. Perhaps he had more time because he did not marry, though he gave the number of women he slept with, which I forget, but think to be somewhere in the 40s. He wondered if that was a lot of women or not so many women. Given the chance, I would have been frank and said, "That's a lot of women," but then again, he was French and in no way infected with the Puritanism I grew up around in New England. In any event, you might try this book so you can say, "I read outside of the box" as if we live in a box. Is a house a box? Certainly a coffin is, but we won't get much reading done once we're not thinking inside that box. I don't like to think about death. I know it's easy for humans to do, though. Dying may be hard, but being dead has proven a cinch for everyone, by my estimation. OK, I don't have 117 more pages for my autopilot pen to continue, so I'll stop here. This, then, ends my Autoreview.