[These Possible Lives] demonstrate[s] her ongoing nihilistic streak, her penchant for nothing ... Jaeggy is a master of the short form; her essays are charged with a nearly combustible vitality ... Long after the pleasure of reading is over, their little hooks tug ... vibrant and unforced, shimmering with the complexity of reality. As in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, the juxtaposition of the biographies accentuates their common characteristics, and from this triptych a survey of genius, mysticism and intoxication emerges.
Enigmatic narratives in which lives do not emerge or elapse with biographical regularity, but instead emanate and hover, swing like ballasts, and collide in the margins and gutters. This is the space of Fleur Jaeggy’s These Possible Lives, three spare and telegraphic essays about Thomas De Quincey, John Keats, and Marcel Schwob, in which each account is self-contained and exquisitely precise, capturing the arc of a whole life with filigreed economy ... Figures — peers, foes, lovers, family members — come and go with indeterminate immediacy, lingering in brief and vivid portraits haunted by peculiar details ... The essay itself becomes a form of possibility ... Jaeggy includes many details of the lives in question that would be familiar to most readers — from childhood beginnings, to furiously productive interior lives, and, finally, to haunting scenes of death ... Jaeggy’s essays possess the cool, inevitable horror of fairy tales.
These are haunting books, both with narrators struggling to retrieve a past that exists only in their memory and through notes and photographs ... they depict the mind in a holding pattern, circling around subjects that, being absent, can never be reached ... That same abyss is visited with a lighter heart and more graceful wit in These Possible Lives, a collection of three biographical essays, lyrically translated by Minna Zallman Proctor ... Brilliant, associative and short, Jaeggy’s essays have the beauty and economy of poems but the souls of portraits.
...eloquent, whimsical ... The book is compact yet expansive in its content, with three poetic essays focusing on the respective lives of three enigmatic writers ... Her narrative beautifully mimics the logic of dreams, seamlessly digressing from the main subject into unexpected territory, only to return back again ... Each essay treats its subject matter tenderly and moves forward with the cadence of a meticulous and lyrical language.
Three sensuous minibiographies in light and shade ... This thin, almost pamphletlike book consists of three mesmerizing profiles of Thomas De Quincey, John Keats, and the French symbolist writer Marcel Schwob ... Reading each brief essay is like taking a small wafer into your mouth and letting it dissolve so you can savor the flavor of the words, the images, and the moody atmosphere ... One of the only drawbacks of this book is its shortness. It would have been ideal if the publisher could have added additional essays ... Enjoy these short, meditative pieces slowly; Jaeggy is addictive.
