Edouard Leve
I feel like I think about Leve a lot but surprisingly I've never written about him or his works. I found out about his work through Paperbird. About a year and a half ago I bought two of his books, Suicide and Autoportrait. I remember especially wanting to read Suicide. It's hard to remember the reason exactly. I must've been reading something and felt like wanting to dig into that topic. Or most likely, I'd just finished reading Gravity's Rainbow and just wanted a light read to enjoy something, and also understand what the fuck was actually being said on the pages.
Just yesterday I picked up Suicide again, and started re-reading it from where I had last put a bookmark in, at around the 40-page mark. And this time it felt like a different read. I feel like the reading experience for really anything changes for me, and probably for a lot of readers, according to what I expect from the book, or like, what I want from the book.
The thing about Suicide is, if you're not familiar with the work or Leve already, it was a book Leve wrote about a friend of his who had committed suicide about 20 years before he wrote it. Trying to, I guess make sense of what had happened. And the thing is that 10 days after he submitted the manuscript to his editor, Leve killed himself. Which is why this book that seems to be mere speculation of what happened to another person becomes deeper. Because there must have been some sort of work going on in the pages too where Leve himself was grappling, coming to terms with the idea of his own suicide. That's how everyone seems to read it, that seems like something the translator of the book, Jan Steyn, wanted us to know via his postscript, and that was most definitely the perspective from which I was reading this book a year and a half ago.
But now that I'm over making meaning out of words and shit like that, I decided to just try and be genuinely curious about whatever I was curious about in the book. Just get whatever I could get, and what I wanted to get, this time around.
And I think what I got out of this reading is that, there was a lot more to Leve's friend (the "you" in Suicide) that I learned about. And at the same time I felt like, fuck, I didn't really know Leve. And I guess this wasn't a conclusion I came up with from just reading the book. Hear me out.
So you'll remember that I was talking about how when I read Suicide the first time, I read it from this perspective of, why did Leve's friend (ok I'm just going to refer to him as "You" from now on to make this simpler), "You", kill himself? But when I let go of that, trying to analyze every sort of antisocial, pessimistic tendency that he had and, oh my god I secretly shared him are we kindred spirits?, I actually saw that "You" was pretty interesting. Because then I was able to pay attention to what he liked doing while he was alive. He liked walking by the ocean, he liked walking alone in foreign streets. He got distracted by subtle tension or awkwardness in social situations. He was loyal to his wife. God I just remember he really liked walking by himself a lot. He had really funny sex dreams and really horrid castration nightmares. He had a really dark sense of humor. This twisted way of thinking about things that probably everyone's thought of once in their lifetime, like it sounds familiar, and yet the guy is adamant and proud of these contradictions he sees in life, almost wanting to hold onto it dearly, maybe as some sort of crutch.
I found myself laughing at his observations, his thoughts. And all the while I couldn't help but think, wow this guy lived a life. A short life no doubt. But a life full of wandering, of emotional abundance, of an astute self-consciousness. And I felt like, wow, all this was going on and I didn't really even care to look into it back then.
Leve even said it in the book itself, to quote:
And I think what people who read Leve, including me two years ago, took this as sort of an excuse to say yes, yes I am one of those people you're talking about, Leve. I need to know, what happened? Why did you kill yourself?
But this time around when I read this passage, I felt like it could be a reason to be conscious of this unconscious thing I was doing, and to try and see "You" for the person he lived while he still did. And this isn't meant to be some sort of pedantic thing of, oh so you should see the bright side of every dead person's life kids. No I'm just trying to say that, this time around this is how I decided to read.
The other thing I was thinking about, and the main reason I said it felt like I "didn't know him at all", was because I realized I never got to see the basic things of Leve, like the basic things people get to know about someone when they first know about them. Like how he makes a living specifically, and maybe I'm just really interested in that because I feel like my idea of what my own career is supposed to shape out to be is pretty shaky at the moment. I think the other real source I had for that kind of stuff was Wikipedia, but even that wasn't extensive. Which is kind of, personally a shame, since it would be cool to live like Leve. Minus the killing himself part, he lived a pretty interesting artistic life with a lot of self reflection. Which sounds really nice. Went to business school too, like me. Maybe he worked corporate for a few years? All these questions.
Anyways yeah, just some thoughts I had. Might add to it later but that's what I have in store for thoughts on Leve.
Just yesterday I picked up Suicide again, and started re-reading it from where I had last put a bookmark in, at around the 40-page mark. And this time it felt like a different read. I feel like the reading experience for really anything changes for me, and probably for a lot of readers, according to what I expect from the book, or like, what I want from the book.
The thing about Suicide is, if you're not familiar with the work or Leve already, it was a book Leve wrote about a friend of his who had committed suicide about 20 years before he wrote it. Trying to, I guess make sense of what had happened. And the thing is that 10 days after he submitted the manuscript to his editor, Leve killed himself. Which is why this book that seems to be mere speculation of what happened to another person becomes deeper. Because there must have been some sort of work going on in the pages too where Leve himself was grappling, coming to terms with the idea of his own suicide. That's how everyone seems to read it, that seems like something the translator of the book, Jan Steyn, wanted us to know via his postscript, and that was most definitely the perspective from which I was reading this book a year and a half ago.
But now that I'm over making meaning out of words and shit like that, I decided to just try and be genuinely curious about whatever I was curious about in the book. Just get whatever I could get, and what I wanted to get, this time around.
And I think what I got out of this reading is that, there was a lot more to Leve's friend (the "you" in Suicide) that I learned about. And at the same time I felt like, fuck, I didn't really know Leve. And I guess this wasn't a conclusion I came up with from just reading the book. Hear me out.
So you'll remember that I was talking about how when I read Suicide the first time, I read it from this perspective of, why did Leve's friend (ok I'm just going to refer to him as "You" from now on to make this simpler), "You", kill himself? But when I let go of that, trying to analyze every sort of antisocial, pessimistic tendency that he had and, oh my god I secretly shared him are we kindred spirits?, I actually saw that "You" was pretty interesting. Because then I was able to pay attention to what he liked doing while he was alive. He liked walking by the ocean, he liked walking alone in foreign streets. He got distracted by subtle tension or awkwardness in social situations. He was loyal to his wife. God I just remember he really liked walking by himself a lot. He had really funny sex dreams and really horrid castration nightmares. He had a really dark sense of humor. This twisted way of thinking about things that probably everyone's thought of once in their lifetime, like it sounds familiar, and yet the guy is adamant and proud of these contradictions he sees in life, almost wanting to hold onto it dearly, maybe as some sort of crutch.
I found myself laughing at his observations, his thoughts. And all the while I couldn't help but think, wow this guy lived a life. A short life no doubt. But a life full of wandering, of emotional abundance, of an astute self-consciousness. And I felt like, wow, all this was going on and I didn't really even care to look into it back then.
Leve even said it in the book itself, to quote:
The way in which you quit it rewrote the story of your life in a negative form. Those who knew you reread each of your acts in the light of your last. Henceforth, the shadow of this tall black tree hides the forest that was your life. When you are spoken of, it begins with recounting your death, before going back to explain it. Isn't it peculiar how this final gesture inverts your biography?
And I think what people who read Leve, including me two years ago, took this as sort of an excuse to say yes, yes I am one of those people you're talking about, Leve. I need to know, what happened? Why did you kill yourself?
But this time around when I read this passage, I felt like it could be a reason to be conscious of this unconscious thing I was doing, and to try and see "You" for the person he lived while he still did. And this isn't meant to be some sort of pedantic thing of, oh so you should see the bright side of every dead person's life kids. No I'm just trying to say that, this time around this is how I decided to read.
The other thing I was thinking about, and the main reason I said it felt like I "didn't know him at all", was because I realized I never got to see the basic things of Leve, like the basic things people get to know about someone when they first know about them. Like how he makes a living specifically, and maybe I'm just really interested in that because I feel like my idea of what my own career is supposed to shape out to be is pretty shaky at the moment. I think the other real source I had for that kind of stuff was Wikipedia, but even that wasn't extensive. Which is kind of, personally a shame, since it would be cool to live like Leve. Minus the killing himself part, he lived a pretty interesting artistic life with a lot of self reflection. Which sounds really nice. Went to business school too, like me. Maybe he worked corporate for a few years? All these questions.
Anyways yeah, just some thoughts I had. Might add to it later but that's what I have in store for thoughts on Leve.
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