Camera: 0 - Brossura

Toussaint, Jean-Philippe

Brossura

ISBN 10: 156478522X ISBN 13: 9781564785220

Casa editrice: Dalkey Archive Pr, 2008

Riassunto

In this improbable "love story," Toussaint creates-- as in his other novels-- a lazy character who is completely obsessed with himself: how he does things and all the ways he might have done them, how he thinks, why he thinks the way that he thinks, how he might do or think otherwise. He does nothing all day long but take driving lessons, go grocery shopping, and spend endless hours with one of his driving school instructors, who later becomes his lover. All of this adds up to a character who doesn't really do anything. He is removed, aloof, but surprisingly very funny as he gets torn and twisted amid his uncanny ability to miss the point again and again. This character is fleshed out in Toussaint's remarkable style: we know him intimately and yet know almost nothing about him.

"An original and significant writer, whose fiction can be as engaging as it is surprising." -The Times Literary Supplement

"Toussaint is a genuinely funny writer . . . small erotic moments are captured perfectly . . . makes me long for more by Toussaint." -Kirkus Review

"The combination of the absurd and the conscious intellect recalls such other French-language writers as Raymond Queneau in a style that is elegant, erudite, and joyously superficial." -Publishers Weekly

Su questo libro

L'autore:

Simply put, Jean-Philippe Toussaint is one of the most original novelists working today, and will almost undoubtedly go down as one of the great comic writers of our era. Toussaint has been likened to some diverse artists (Jim Jarmusch, Samuel Beckett, Nicholson Baker), but perhaps the most apt comparison is to Charlie Chaplin, for a few reasons. 1) Like Chaplin, he turns regular-life situations into comedy by the slightest and subtlest exaggerations; 2) He loves “stills,” moments when our attention freezes on some detail of everyday life and it strikes us as ridiculous; 3) His stories move from scene to scene with often only the flimsiest excuse for an over-reaching plot, although what we come away with is not just a patchwork of set pieces but rather a surprising feeling of melancholy. Toussaint’s contemporary existentialism is as poignant as it is funny. As the narrator of Toussaint’s novel Monsieur says in his closing line: “Life, mere child’s play, for Monsieur.”

Product Description:

Unusual book

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Dalkey Archive Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2008
• ISBN 10: 156478522X
• ISBN 13: 9781564785220
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 122