Deconstructing Edouard Levé with translators Lorin Stein and Jan Steyn
The Lab | 2948 16th Street | San Francisco, CA
Join Paris Review Editor Lorin Stein, translator Jan Steyn, and the Center’s Scott Esposito to explore the daring work of French writer Edouard Levé on Wednesday, November 5.
Written with a “strange combination of formal distance and emotional immediacy” (Slate), and filled with whimsy, dark humor, relentless experimentation, and crystalline prose, Levé’s books have become celebrated for their elegance, poetic beauty, and inventive ideas.
To delve into this remarkably original, diverse body of writing, we bring together two people with an intimate knowledge of Levé’s books—his English-language translators, Jan Steyn and Lorin Stein. They’ll be in conversation with the Center’s Scott Esposito, a certified Levé-ian and co-author of The End of Oulipo?
Levé’s book Autoportrait consists of a single, 100-page paragraph of observations about himself. His Works features 533 numbered ideas for artworks imagined by the author but never realized. The Guardian called it “a delight to read, so full of surprises, so many unexpected moments of laughter, reverie and delight.” And his final book, Suicide—handed into his publisher just days before Levé took his own life—is a look at the titular phenomenon unlike any other.
Edouard Levé was a French writer, artist, and photographer best known for his introspective and fragmentary style. He studied business at the elite École supérieure des sciences économiques et commerciales and was a self-taught painter and photographer. His first book, Oeuvres, is an imaginary list of more than 500 books by the author, although none were actually written at the time. Autoportrait, consisting of disconnected, unparagraphed sentences of the narrator’s thoughts,was shortlisted for the 2013 Best Translated Book Award. Levé’s final work, Suicide, was delivered to the publisher just days before he took his own life in 2007.
Lorin Stein is the editor of The Paris Review. Before taking the helm at the magazine, Stein worked as an editor at Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, where he edited Natasha Wimmer’s translations of Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives and 2666. He is also the translator of Edouard Levé’s Autoportrait.
Jan Steyn is a South African translator from French and Afrikaans to English. He is the holder of a Comparative Literature degree from Emory University, and his translations include Suicide and Works by Edouard Levé, Alix’s Journal by Alix Cleo Roubaud, and Orphans by Hadrien Laroche (translated with Caite Dolan-Leach).