An Interview with Jean-Philippe Toussaint
Jean-Philippe Toussaint is coming to America. The Belgian author of Television, Camera, and The Bathroom has had his work translated into more than twenty languages, and he has recently won the prestigious Prix Decembre in France. Known for a spare style often referred to as “infinitesimal,” Christopher Byrd in the The New York Times describes “Toussaint’s truncations [as] an admirable rebellion against a world that’s submerged in too much information and too little beauty.” A more detailed appreciation of Toussaint’s writing recently appeared in The London Review of Books, and his forthcoming Self-Portrait Abroad will be available from Dalkey Archive in May, 2010. And he’s funny.
This spring, Toussaint’s whirlwind American tour will include stops in San Francisco, Chicago, Raleigh, and New York City. Crowds at his readings are known to rival the size and intensity of European football matches; indeed, his fans can leave the literary arena concussed and broken. In such a delusion state, they are prone to compile top-ten lists in appreciation of his novels and theorize non-places in university classrooms. I thank Jean-Philippe Toussaint for taking time from his schedule to respond to these questions.
Jean-Philippe: First of all I’d like to apologize for answering a bit late. I’m now with John Lambert (who translated three of my books) in Berlin, which explains the excellence of my English.
Alex: Until I read your first novel, The Bathroom, Yuri Olesha’s Envy was my indisputable first choice for novels that begin in the bathroom.
Jean-Philippe: Are you sure you mean bathroom? What a strange place. I’ve never heard of another book that started in a bathroom.
Alex: Your anti-hero protagonists remind me of others from Russian novels such as Gogol and Dostoevsky. Do you consider the Russian novelists to be an influence for your own work?
Jean-Philippe: One summer long ago after reading Crime and Punishment I began to write. I don’t know if there’s a direct link, a perfect cause and effect relationship, who knows, a theorem (people who read Crime and Punishment start writing a month later), but in my case that’s how it was: one month after finishing Crime and Punishment I started writing — and I’m still writing (John’s just typing).
Alex: The bathroom, including the bathroom joke and scatological humor, has been dear to my heart for some time. One thing I note in your first novel, The Bathroom, is the lack of such “low” humor. I am finished the story, and I do not recall even a faint odor emitting from the text’s favored room. The humor, to me, takes place in the kitchen, the bedroom, and the trip to Italy. Was it a conscious decision on your part to avoid the “poopy joke”?
Jean-Philippe: Maybe there’s a difference here between French and English. (John explains: toilet in French is the WC; in French a bathroom often doesn’t have a toilet in it). Whereas the mere word toilet or WC evokes a certain stupid smile in French, the bathroom remains untouched by any poopy connotations. White, virginal, the bathoom is immaculate in this respect. To each his own poop. In fact there’s not even any slang word for bathroom in French. It’s a room where you wash, shave or put on your make up (as the case may be), where you look at yourself in the mirror. You can close the door and remain undisturbed. It’s as if time stopped in the bathroom while it passes in the other rooms of the apartment. It’s a metaphysical location, in fact. (John adds that in his view a lot of funny things in the novel take place in the bathroom, but not in a poopy sense (and I agree)). But the striking thing about the bathroom is that it’s a novelistic location. Being in other peoples’ bathrooms is like being in a novel. I like this intimate, secret dimension. In Other People’s Baths, that’d be a great book title.
Alex: In Camera, a man steals and he does confess although perhaps not in the way we would be accustomed to expect. Were you thinking of any of the great dramas of crime and justice—Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Kafka’s The Trial, Camus’s The Stranger, or Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter—when you composed this novel? How would you approach the kind of readers who would demand justice—i.e. “throw him in jail”—or at least the kind who would demand greater resolution to this “crime”?
Jean-Philippe: You know I’m not a great fan of resolutions. I like solutions, but I prefer problems to problem solving. When I wrote Camera it didn’t bug me to be provocative, leave everything open and propose no solutions whatsoever. In Reticence (John: I just translated it for Dalkey, coming out next spring) by contrast because there’s a real enigma I didn’t want to leave everything up in the air and tried at least to suggest a solution. About morals, I don’t care.
Alex: The last line is the last word of Camera; as you know, the word is “Living.” I am wondering if by chance that was the first word you wrote for this novel, or what you understood to be the main idea before you began writing, and also, if at any point during the composition of the text, you flirted with ending with “life,” “dying,” or even “death” itself. I apologize if you feel this question imposes a morbidity upon the interview, the novel, or the promise of good local weather.
Jean-Philippe: Believe it or not when I wrote Camera I started with the beginning (“ j’avais commencé au commencement, figurez-vous, comme un vieux con” – Molloy, Beckett). I began with the first paragraph which is very programmatic. I explain that I will speak about two things that taken by themselves are uninteresting and taken together are unfortunately unrelated. Now that’s what I call literature. And about the good local weather, what are you talking about, we’re in Berlin here.
Alex: In your interview with Martin Riker, you name your five favorite writers: Kafka, Proust, Faulkner, Nabokov, and Beckett. It is a great list of great writers, but when I read your Television, I think first of Italo Svevo’s Zeno’s Conscience, and the first section on Zeno’s quitting smoking. Do you have any favorite writers or stories that focus on the folly and exhaustion of addiction?
Jean-Philippe: No. (Neither does John).
Alex: Back to your favorite writers, say you are Oprah Winfrey—yes, you have been so transmogrified—and you run the largest book club in the world although it is dominated by middle-aged, middle-class American women. Choosing only from the five you name, which novel, novella, or short story would you first choose to be read and why?
John: no doubt Beckett’s Endgame.
Jean-Philippe: Well… (Jean-Philippe’s thinking).
Alex: I have read that Fuir takes place in China, and I know you are a master of the comic moment, paragraph, or entire page. To what extent do you see the Chinese as an essentially comic people or China as a comic nation? Can they compete with American national buffoonery, German uptightness, English prudery, or the French effete as a comic type? (Please forgive me if my generalizations seem crass or debatable.)
Jean-Philippe: I wouldn’t say the Chinese are particularly funny or comic. But because the narrator doesn’t understand the language he has to read the world around him, he’s in the same position as an author. He’s got to read it and decipher it. This makes his surroundings more strange than comical.
Alex: The English translation of Fuir will be called Running Away, and at one point during your interview with Martin Riker, you describe the artist’s role in society as “to run away.” Do you see the artist as participating in a project of moving away from the group so that the “self” or the “individual” might survive? If I may ask, to what extent is this possible? I am thinking in part of American culture where the idea of artist on the run and fighting against society can be romanticized and even commercialized as a Hollywood screenplay. (It seems relevant to our national myths of “self reliance,” our suspicion of government, unions, and organizations in general, our highly self-oriented economy, capitalist culture, and our romanticized sense rugged individualism.) It is very hard—if not impossible—to escape from a society that so effectively co-opts and commodifies its outsiders. I feel I am fighting through this question and looking for an escape in your response.
Jean-Philippe: Sorry, can’t help you. But good luck.
Alex: I believe there is a surprisingly large group of bright, young Americans who would enjoy your books. They have been raised on TV shows “about nothing,” they are cynical about American politics and business practices, they are bored with their scholastic routines, they prefer shorter to longer novels, and they are looking for a good laugh. (I think you provide a great one.) What would you say to this potential audience as a way of encouraging them to read your books?
Jean-Philippe: I don’t want to discourage anyone but my last books aren’t quite as short or as funny as the first. I’m getting less and less funny.
Alex: Oh no… (sheds single virtual tear). I hope America provides a chuckle or two and that you leave our country with a smile on your face. Thank you for your time, Jean-Philippe.
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Thanks for this- I shall give him a go.
I recommend Television. So to speak.