{"id":289506,"date":"2012-03-13T16:19:41","date_gmt":"2012-03-13T16:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2012\/03\/13\/suicide-by-edouard-leve-25-days-of-the-btba\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:39:33","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:39:33","slug":"suicide-by-edouard-leve-25-days-of-the-btba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2012\/03\/13\/suicide-by-edouard-leve-25-days-of-the-btba\/","title":{"rendered":""Suicide" by Edouard Lev\u00e9 [25 Days of the BTBA]"},"content":{"rendered":"

As with years past, we’re going to spend the next four weeks highlighting the rest of the 25 titles on the BTBA<\/span> fiction longlist.<\/a> We’ll have a variety of guests writing these posts, all of which are centered around the question of “Why This Book Should Win.” Hopefully these are funny, accidental, entertaining, and informative posts that prompt you to read at least a few of these excellent works.<\/em><\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> for all past and future posts in this series.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

Suicide<\/em><\/a> by Edouard Lev\u00e9, translated by Jan Steyn<\/p>\n

Language:<\/b> French
\nCountry:<\/b> France
\nPublisher:<\/b> Dalkey Archive Press<\/p>\n

Why This Book Should Win:<\/b> The crazy intense backstory. The fact that Dalkey—one of the leading publishers of literature in translation—has yet to win a BTBA<\/span> award. <\/p>\n

Today’s post is written by Tom McCartan, who writes, works, and, lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He recently edited the collection<\/i> Kurt Vonnegut: The Last Interview and Other Conversations for Melville House Publishing. His fiction has been published in<\/i> Unsaid, the upcoming issue of which contains both Tom McCartan and Edouard Leve.<\/i><\/p>\n

Despite my best efforts, it has proven somewhat impossible to discuss Edouard Lev\u00e9\u2019s Suicide<\/em> without discussing Eduard Lev\u00e9\u2019s suicide. Let\u2019s get it out of the way. Lev\u00e9 delivered Suicide<\/em> to his editor ten days before taking his own life. This fact, as macabre as it is, is the house in which the novel lives and every review or blurb about Suicide<\/em> from now to eternity will mention it. This is kind of a shame because Lev\u00e9\u2019s prose is good enough on its own. However, those inclined towards the postmodern are probably salivating over the idea, for it would be hard for a book to be more self-aware than Suicide.<\/em> Some have even suggested that Suicide<\/em> was Lev\u00e9\u2019s suicide note. I really hope that wasn\u2019t the case, it would ruin the delicacy. Regardless, we\u2019ll never know. <\/p>\n

The novel does not have a plot, but rather its narrator (who could or could not be Lev\u00e9) addresses a friend (wait, maybe the friend is Lev\u00e9) who committed suicide twenty years ago. The result is homage in pointillist prose to a troubled soul explored in minute detail. It is a glimpse into the psychology of suicide. The narrator recounts the instances of his friend\u2019s life in which he felt disassociated and addresses them back to his friend as if to absolve him of his suicide, although the narrator never claims to understand his friend\u2019s pathos fully. We are only given the images and are left to wonder at reasons. <\/p>\n

Suicide<\/em> reads like a photo album. This is no surprise, considering that Lev\u00e9 was as much an accomplished photographer as he was anything else. The prose is clipped, almost terse; while each line can be seen to represent a single idea in just the same way a photo in an album represents one moment in time. These ideas, like collections of photos in an album, create events and distinct sections in a book where there are no chapters. Praise must be given to translator Jan Steyn who deftly maintained the integrity of each line\/photograph while keeping the entire piece cohesive. <\/p>\n

Suicide<\/em> is at times beautiful, immensely sad at others, and in more moments than one might want to admit there is the potential in the text to be deeply relatable. I will not sit here and say, however, that Lev\u00e9 uses suicide as some sort of literary device for to teach us truth and\/or beauty, because that is not what he does. Suicide<\/em> is about suicide. Given that, however, there are still so many instances where a line, again like a favorite photograph in an album, so concisely articulates one of our more complex emotions or frames the nature of contemporary relationships. <\/p>\n

Lev\u00e9 has written several books and put out a number of collections of photographs. The only other piece I\u2019ve read, though, is \u201cWhen I Look at a Strawberry, I Think of a Tongue\u201d that was in the Paris Review<\/em> last summer. I loved it.<\/p>\n

\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As with years past, we’re going to spend the next four weeks highlighting the rest of the 25 titles on the BTBA fiction longlist. We’ll have a variety of guests writing these posts, all of which are centered around the question of “Why This Book Should Win.” Hopefully these are funny, accidental, entertaining, and informative […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[45686,45656,17496,45756,3426,45776,1646,45766],"class_list":["post-289506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-25-days-of-the-btba","tag-btba-2012","tag-dalkey-archive-press","tag-edouard-leve","tag-french-literature","tag-jan-steyn","tag-review","tag-suicide"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289506"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":319416,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289506\/revisions\/319416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}