It was the French magazine L’Obs which, in 2021, best captured the literary phenomenon that Deborah Levy has become, with a very apt title: “Deborah Levy, our prodigious friend”.
This nod to Italian writer Elena Ferrante, another literary phenomenon, also echoes the familiarity so many women have felt when reading Deborah Levy’s autobiographical trilogy (What I Don’t Want to Know, The Cost of life and inventory). Readers have recognized themselves in this woman in the middle of life who is trying to (re)define herself outside of the roles of mother and lover who have shaped her. Over the pages, Deborah has become our friend.
The South African-born writer, who first made a name for herself as a playwright, has managed to set an intimate tone that almost makes us feel like we know her. We are bored when we have read everything about her…
Les éditions du sous-sol have translated and brought together under the same cover scattered texts by Deborah Levy – chronicles, literary essays, texts published in collectives or written for exhibitions – published between 1998 and 2021. The result is a kind of scrapbook in which we discover snippets of Levy’s thought. It is as if she opened her personal treasure chest to introduce us to the authors and artists who inspire her.
Are all the texts exciting? No. Personally, I find that Deborah Levy is at her best when she talks about herself, that is to say when she uses the material of her life to reflect on universal themes such as art, love , family, creativity or friendship.
But Levy is also an excellent reader, and her literary analyzes are worth the detour. She manages to make us rediscover authors like Duras, Plath or de Beauvoir from different and original angles when so much has already been written about them.
His analyzes are stimulating and brilliant. Its introduction to a new edition of La Bâtarde by Violette Leduc alone is worth the detour.
Other texts, such as “The Itinerant Alphabet for Inner Voices” or “The Thinker and the Thinker” left me indifferent. Maybe other readers will find them great.
There is not necessarily a connection between all the texts in this collection, but there is a common point that connects them: the lively and irresistible intelligence of its author. For that alone, this book is worth a look.
