History & Criticism
![Jesse Ball - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_a_jesse_ball.jpg)
Autoportrait
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-remembered 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.
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-remembered 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.
Editorial Reviews
"Jesse Ball is a writer of formal mysteriousness and neon moral clarity . . . His language is spare, strange, and evocative . . . His themes are human savagery, often state-sanctioned, and human kindness, a thin thread of resistance . . . The final section [of The Divers' Game] is breathtaking." -The New Yorker
"Jesse Ball ("Census") levels a steely gaze at the very concept of humanity in this three-part novel that introduces the lower-class "quads" and the rich "pats," who treat those below them with impunity. When a group of pats conceals the grisly fate of a young quad girl behind an elaborate festival, you may start to wonder just how different this dystopian world is from our own." -The Washington Post
"Jesse Ball's Autoportrait, you might say, is all voice . . . Evocative and bright." -Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune
"The pleasure, here, is in errancy and velocity . . . Ball's text leans into cold wonder, flirting with a Francis Ponge-like poetry of the mundane and highlighting his predilection for the absurd, the diffuse, the simply odd . . . Much of the strange delight of reading this book is found in teasing out the precise nature of Ball's writerly persona, variously warm and cold, aloof and sincere." -Bailey Trela, Frieze
"Jesse Ball's memoir, inspired by the memoir Édouard Levé wrote shortly before his death, has been called ‘frank and intimate' but I imagine its greatest strength is the clear and somewhat unsettling way in which Ball-as he does in his many novels-is able to pinpoint the best and worst of everyday life, of the basic situation of simply being alive, and make it strange and slightly absurd." -Emily Firetog, A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of the Year
"Ball turns the autobiography on its head . . . Ball makes compelling work of it, slabbing the matter of his life together like a Dadaist sculptor . . . An unconventional memoir that speaks to the power of elusiveness." -Library Journal
"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 . . . A hypnotic personal reflection penned with clockwork ...
"Jesse Ball ("Census") levels a steely gaze at the very concept of humanity in this three-part novel that introduces the lower-class "quads" and the rich "pats," who treat those below them with impunity. When a group of pats conceals the grisly fate of a young quad girl behind an elaborate festival, you may start to wonder just how different this dystopian world is from our own." -The Washington Post
"Jesse Ball's Autoportrait, you might say, is all voice . . . Evocative and bright." -Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune
"The pleasure, here, is in errancy and velocity . . . Ball's text leans into cold wonder, flirting with a Francis Ponge-like poetry of the mundane and highlighting his predilection for the absurd, the diffuse, the simply odd . . . Much of the strange delight of reading this book is found in teasing out the precise nature of Ball's writerly persona, variously warm and cold, aloof and sincere." -Bailey Trela, Frieze
"Jesse Ball's memoir, inspired by the memoir Édouard Levé wrote shortly before his death, has been called ‘frank and intimate' but I imagine its greatest strength is the clear and somewhat unsettling way in which Ball-as he does in his many novels-is able to pinpoint the best and worst of everyday life, of the basic situation of simply being alive, and make it strange and slightly absurd." -Emily Firetog, A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of the Year
"Ball turns the autobiography on its head . . . Ball makes compelling work of it, slabbing the matter of his life together like a Dadaist sculptor . . . An unconventional memoir that speaks to the power of elusiveness." -Library Journal
"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 . . . A hypnotic personal reflection penned with clockwork ...
