Autoportrait

Jesse Ball, 1978-

Book - 2022

A work of unflinching honesty, Autoportrait is a hypnotic memoir of reflection, loss, and everyday joy from one of America's best contemporary novelists. Jesse Ball has produced fourteen acclaimed works of deeply empathetic absurdism in poetry and fiction. Now, he offers readers his first memoir, one that showcases his "humane curiosity" (James Wood) and invites the reader into a raw and personal account of love, grief, and memory. Inspired by the memoir Édouard Levé put to paper shortly before his death, Autoportrait is an extraordinarily frank and intimate work from one of America's most brilliant young authors. The subtle power of Ball's voice conjures the richness of everyday life. On each page, half-remembere...d moments are woven together with the joys and triumphs--and the mistakes and humiliations, too--that somehow tell us who we are, why we are here. Held at the same height as tragic accounts of illness or death are moments of startling beauty, banality, or humor: "I wake in the morning, I sit, I walk long distances. If there is somewhere to swim, I may swim. If I have a bicycle, I will ride it, especially to meet someone. There is no more preparing for me to do, other than preparing for death, and I do that by laughing. Not laughing at death, of course. Laughing at myself." An extraordinary memoir that reminds us what is possible and builds to the kind of power one might feel reading Anne Carson's Glass Essay, or Joe Brainard's I Remember. Autoportrait will leave you feeling utterly invigorated, inspired, and a little afraid.

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Subjects
Genres
Autobiographies
Biographies
Published
New York : Catapult [2022]
Language
English
Main Author
Jesse Ball, 1978- (author)
Physical Description
xiii, 143 pages ; 21 cm
ISBN
9781646221387
Contents unavailable.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Modeled on French writer Édouard Levé's work of the same title, this slender and innovative work from novelist Ball (Census) reflects on the vagaries of love, loss, and life in a single, unspooling paragraph. As he oscillates from one musing to the next without regard for chronology or resolution, Ball ruminates on having "no musical talent" ("when I try to play, my dogs howl until I stop"); his two marriages; his brother's trip to the hospital in 1990 that rendered him quadriplegic; and a falling out with the proprietors of a favorite Chinese restaurant. Readers will not learn much about either wife, how his brother was injured, or the reason Ball and the restaurateurs parted ways. Though his writing implies a stream-of-consciousness approach, it may not be a coincidence that Ball, a self-identified absurdist, often recounts violence or tragedy, then swiftly changes the subject; a typical non sequitur: "Once, some years ago I was mean to my mother and she cried. I never wear watches." While jarring, such punches mimic the ruthlessness of life. It's a somewhat depressive affair, but Ball skillfully molds it into a rich self-portrait that evokes wonder at odd passions (cooking with strangely named spices, drawings of dead babies) and delightfully idiosyncratic opinions. Fans of Matias Viegener's 2500 Random Things About Me Too should take note. (Aug.)

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Review by Library Journal Review

Absurdist poet and novelist Ball (The Divers' Game) turns the autobiography on its head with his latest memoir. Following writer Édouard Levé's nontraditional take on personal narrative, Ball writes in a series of un-paragraphed, largely unrelated sentences. Ball explains that this approach "does not raise one fact above another but lets the facts stand together in a fruitless clump, like a life." Biographic traditionalists may find this technique disjointed (several passages read like random lists) but as a whole, Ball makes compelling work of it, slabbing the matter of his life together like a Dadaist sculptor. His writing is straightforward and conversational. Addressing the unconventional nature of his work, he writes, "I believe a text should be elusive…should overflow its borders, demonstrating the complicity of our consciousness with the coloring of our surroundings and the supposed sequentially of events." It is through this kind of text, Ball believes, that a reader becomes "conscious of the life they are living." Whether or not this belief is universal this memoir certainly paints a multilayered picture of the author and reminds readers that "we are always in the moment after something has happened." VERDICT An unconventional memoir that speaks to the power of elusiveness. Recommended.--Megan Duffy

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Expanding his surreal oeuvre of tricky fiction and poetry, Ball finally tackles autobiography in an unexpected stylistic shift. While the author's previous books challenge literary conventions in dreamy, riddling prose, this book plays it straight. With mechanical simplicity, Ball composes his self-portrait with terse, confessional fragments rattled off in a trancelike deadpan. They quickly jump among ideas and, without paragraph breaks, amass into a tower of personal facts and reflections--e.g., "One of my shoulders stands higher than the other. My left hand is quicker than my right, but weaker. When I played soccer for my high school, I scored goals with both feet." Despite its rigidity, the narrative is enjoyably personable and curiously mundane. Ball invites readers into a meditative engagement with the text and suggests that perhaps the best way to understand a person is to sift through their mental clutter. Koan-like moments hum throughout: "I like the rain, but I don't like for my things to be wet"; "I like to leave windows open, but am concerned about insects coming into rooms"; "I don't like to cheat at games, but I am not incredibly angry when I discover other people have cheated." Ball takes his cue from a book of the same name by Édouard Levé, a French writer and visual artist who notoriously took his own life 10 days after delivering the manuscript for a book called Suicide. Ball explains in the foreword that he admires how Levé's Autoportrait approaches biography in a way that "does not raise one fact above another, but lets the facts stand together in a fruitless clump, like a life." While Levé's book is difficult and cathartic, Ball's is gentler and more considerate of readers. "I think it is important," he writes, "to read something and to take it entirely into your body and find yourself changed by its company." A hypnotic personal reflection penned with clockwork discipline. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.