Who is Jean-Philippe Toussaint?
Belgian writer, photographer and filmmaker, Jean-Philippe Toussaint is a creative mind never running out of ideas. His website reflects the kind of person he is: eclectic and a little quirky - in the most positive way. He is the author of nine novels and the winner of numerous literary prizes. His writing has been compared to the works of Samuel Beckett, Jacques Tati, Jim Jarmusch, and even Charlie Chaplin!
1. FOOTBALL
One cannot write about Jean-Philippe Toussaint without mentioning his passion for sports. As the magazine l'Equipe points out, he attended rugby matches in 'Cardiff, Twickenham, Clermont, Toulouse, dreams to write about the Olympic games for a newspaper, shot a movie with the Lithuanian ice hockey national team, and even wrote for a magazine on the 24 Heures du Mans car race without knowing anything about it nor having his driving licence.'
But football is his real 'thing'. It is about more than stadiums and international players. In his new book Football, translated by Shaun Whiteside and published in the UK this month by Fitzcarraldo Editions, Jean-Philippe Toussaint beautifully captures the links between football, childhood, writing and passion with his trademark humour, precision and elegance.
As he puts it himself, "This is a book that no-one will like, not intellectuals, who aren’t interested in football, or football-lovers, who will find it too intellectual. But I had to write it, I didn’t want to break the fine thread that still connects me to this world".
The book is followed by a short text entitled "Zidane's Melancholy", a poetic interpretation of the French football player's famous headbutt in the 2006 final. Watch him read an excerpt at New European Fiction, part of the 2010 PEN World Voices Festival :
Jean-Philippe Toussaint is coming to the London French Institute on Thursday 2nd June, to present this book in conversation with Shaun Whiteside (translator), Juliet Jacques (writer and blogger, best known for writing A Transgender Journey for The Guardian) and Philippe Auclair (journalist, TalkSPORT & France Football). Don't Miss It ! To book tickets > Click here
2. TETRALOGY
But Jean-Philippe Toussaint is also a romantic writer... His most famous work is probably his tetralogy revolving around the central character of Marie, published in France by Les Editions de Minuit. Three have been (or are about to be) published the United Kingdom by Dalkey Archive Press:
Running Away, Dalkey Archive Press, 2009, Translated by Matthew B. Smith
'A European man arrives in Shanghai, ostensibly on vacation, yet a small task given to him by his Parisian girlfriend Marie starts a series of complications. There is a mysterious Chinese man and a manila envelope full of cash. Later, he meets a woman at an art gallery and they agree to travel together to Beijing, yet when he joins her at the train station, the Chinese man is along. Events eclipse explanations, and soon he surrenders himself to the on-rush of experience.
Toussaint’s novel pulls the reader into a jet-lag reality, a confusion of time and place that is both particularly modern and utterly real. The Chaplinesque slapstick of his acclaimed early works The Bathroom and Camera is here replaced by an ever-unfolding fabric of questions, coincidences, and misapprehensions large and small. The mature Toussaint shows himself to be no less ingenious an inventor of existential dilemmas, but with a new, surprising tenderness, and a deepened concern for the inexpressible immediacy and sensuality of human experience.'
The Truth about Marie, Dalkey Archive Press, 2011, Translated by Matthew B. Smith
'Moving through a variety of locales and adventures, The Truth about Marie revisits the unnamed narrator of Toussaint’s acclaimed Running Away, reporting on his now disintegrated relationship with the titular Marie—the story switching deftly between first- and third- person as the narrator continues to drift through life, and Marie does her best to get on with hers. Like all of Toussaint’s novels, The Truth about Marie‘s plot matters far less than its pace and tempo, its chain of images, its sequence of events. From pouring rain in Paris to blazing fires on the island of Elba, from moments of intense action to perfectly paced lulls, The Truth about Marie relies on a series of contrasts to tell a beguiling, and finally touching, story of intimacy forever being regained and lost.'
Naked, Dalkey Archive Press, September 2016, Translated by Edward Gauvin
''To write of her that which has never been written of any other woman.' And with these words from Dante, Jean-Philippe Toussaint sets out once more to deepen and broaden his depiction of one of contemporary fiction’s most fully realized female characters: haute couturière Marie Madeleine Marguerite de Montalte. Having traced the ups, downs, ins, and outs of Marie’s relationship with the unnamed narrator through three previous novels, Toussaint brings his customary nuanced rumination and nimble wit to this concluding volume, which takes us back to the Tokyo of Making Love and the Elba of The Truth About Marie, through jealousy and comedy, irony and tenderness, and the meticulous accretion of details that engross and distract us even as life’s larger changes shift the assumptions by which we live.'
And in order to make these books live, Jean-Philippe Toussaint jumped on the stage of the famous Parisian theatre l'Odéon last April. The show mixed excerpts read by the author himself, with screenings of his own videos, wandering throughout Tokyo or Shanghaï, and live music by the electro-rock band Delano Orchestra. Take a look here!
3. LIVRE LOUVRE
In the most famous French museum, Le Louvre, Jean-Philippe Toussaint paid visual tribute to literature throughout different projects and very modern installation art. The Franco-German TV channel "Arte" offered a virtual tour of the exhibition on its website : read more (in French) here !
This is a book that no-one will like, not intellectuals, who aren’t interested in football, or football-lovers, who will find it too intellectual. But I had to write it, I didn’t want to break the fine thread that still connects me to this world. — Jean-Philippe Toussaint
In fact, he will attempt to reconcile both constituencies. He does so with his habitual lightness of touch and trademark deadpan humour, while also approaching his subject with a seriousness of intent. — Financial Times