Jean-Philippe Toussaint

[Stewart]

Jean-Philippe Toussaint (born 29 November 1957, Brussels) is a Belgian prose writer and filmmaker. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages and he has had his photographs displayed in Brussels and Japan. Toussaint won the Prix Médicis in 2005 for his novel Fuir. His most recent book is La mélancolie de Zidane (Paris: Minuit, 2006), a lyrical essay on the headbutt administered by the French football player Zinedine Zidane to the Italian player Marco Materazzi during the 2006 World Cup final in Berlin.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• La Salle de bain (1985) [Eng: The Bathroom]
• Monsieur (1986)
• L'Appareil-photo (1989) [Eng: The Camera]
• La Réticence (1991)
• La Télévision (1997) [Eng: Television]
• Autoportrait (à l'étranger) (2000)
• Faire l'amour (2002)
• Fuir (2005) [Eng: Zidane's Melancholy]

RELATED LINKS

• Jean-Philippe Toussaint on Wikipedia
• Trilingual Toussaint site (French, German, and English)

[Stewart]

As I mentioned elsewhere, I bought Monsieur last week and will read it soon. But I've all of a sudden started noticing his name in book stores, usually because of Television. Now I see that Dalkey Archive has a couple more coming out at some point: The Bathroom and The Camera. I hope he shares all his imagination for the prose as it doesn't look like he's using it for his titles.

[fausto]

[Stewart]

Originally Posted by fausto

Hey, what do I know? I've not read him yet.

Have you any experience of his works in the original French? Thoughts?

[fausto]

The rolling eyes were directed at your dig at his titles. I find them perfectly fine and quite adequate.

[JPS]

Some (actually, many) years ago, when a certain publishing house was in the process of bringing out a novel of mine I was asked to read a handful of French titles for $100 apiece and write readers' reports on them as to whether the company should consider them or not.

The first book I was sent was indeed La Salle de Bain--The Bathroom. I loved it, thought it was witty, more droll than funny, a philosophical work at its best, and hardly the title that would earn the company back its initial investment. I passed on it with regrets.

It was snatched up by another publisher, and ever since then I've been a faithful reader of Toussaint's novels as Minuit publishes them. Some are of course better than others, but at his best he does occupy a singular niche in French fiction.