The French writer and photographer Edouard Leve killed himself in 2007, well before his publisher had even typeset the galleys for his final book, Suicide. Leve's bizarre demise—he hanged himself at home just after turning in a manuscript written in the second-person to a young man who killed himself at home—contains all of Leve's signature artistic motifs: meticulous stagecraft, elaborate gestures void of emotion, and whispers of droll absurdity. French readers, of course, have long appreciated the art of suicide as an act of self-determination in a cruel world—Antonin Artaud, for example, exalted suicide as "the fabulous and remote victory of men who think well." Suicide has just been published in English by Dalkey Archive and we can only hope translations of Leve's previous three books will soon follow.
Leve was a biz-school grad who decided to become an artist. Two of Leve's photographic series, Pornographie and Fictions, illustrate his predilection for the frozen contortions of human intercourse. His contemporary tableaux are classical in structure and playfully evocative of grander eras and themes in art by, say, Jacques-Louis David or Nicolas Poussin.
Certainly, while you're reading Suicide, you are flooded with an inherent trust in the author, merely because you do not have to even doubt for a moment that he knows his subject. (In the case of suicide, the advice to "write what you know" is a challenge.) There are insights here that veil and unveil possible conclusions—
"Your life was less sad than your suicide might suggest."
"Dead, you make me more alive."
"The sheer number of things you didn't do is dizzying, because it throws light on the number of things we will ourselves be stripped of."
Sensitive, intellectual, atheist types will find it hard to resist the temptation of tallying the pros and cons: Does longevity alone guarantee a happier life? Does suicide ever make sense? "Your suicide was scandalously beautiful." Leve's simple queries and declarations to an unnamed "you" have a chilly exterior but they are also tricky and gentle and they pile up like steps leading up or down—the direction is up to you.
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