Urgency and Patience

by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Edward Gauvin (Translator)

Both a sense of urgency and a goodly amount of patience are required for any writer to produce a novel. Moving between these two poles, Jean-Philippe Toussaint presents a series of short essays on the art of writing, both his own and that of writers he has admired, such as Kafka, Beckett, Dostoyevsky, and Proust.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Essays, France

90 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2012

About the author

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. The 2006 book La mélancolie de Zidane (Paris: Minuit, 2006) is 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. An English translation was published in 2007 in the British journal New Formations. His 2009 novel La Vérité sur Marie won the prestigious Prix Décembre.

Reviews

[Lee Klein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bought this for $15 today at McNally Jackson and read it in about an hour in a park in Brooklyn before hanging with an old friend. It's fifty something pages but I got it because I wanted to see how he positioned/pulled-off three-page essays on Kafka, Beckett, Doestoevsky. It's a really short book, quicker than most #longreads online, but it has two stupendous Beckett-related LOLs worth the sticker price. Otherwise, he seems like a brother of the same mind, unblind, when it comes to thoughts on writing and reading, which is what this is -- a fine balance between the both, albeit such a slight publication I write it off in part as a donation to the supremely supportable charity known as Dalkey Archive

[Solange te parle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Collection de petites chroniques sur ce qui compose le devenir d'un écrivain. Souvenirs des bureaux où il a écrit, des fauteuils où il a lu. Ode à Beckett, Proust, Kafka, Dostoïeski... C'est tendre et parfois un peu rageant (on voudrait être à sa place), mais c'est surtout trop court !

[Lee Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy, casual essays, almost conversations. Enjoyed the insights on his development as a writer, the love for Beckett, the lasting effect of Crime and Punishment. Recommended and can be read in an afternoon.

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

C'est toujours intéressant de lire le témoignage d'un auteur. En revanche, il n'évoque pas suffisamment le processus d'écriture à mon goût.

[Romain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jean-Philippe Toussaint est un grand écrivain; voilà c'est dit. C'est peut-être aussi un grand réalisateur de cinéma mais je ne peux pas me prononcer car je n'ai pas vu ses films. Pour moi, il incarne les Éditions de Minuit. Son écriture est épurée, souple et agréable. Si je devais la caractériser de façon imagée, j'hésiterais entre deux visions qui pourraient paraître antinomiques. La première serait celle d'une mousse légère, aérienne bien qu'onctueuse. On prend plaisir à la savourer sans en subir la lourdeur. La deuxième serait celle d'un élixir, d'une boisson, peut-être d'un vin ou d’une eau-de-vie, quelque chose de travaillé, de distillé longuement. Il n'y en a pas beaucoup, on la déguste du bout des lèvres, par petite quantité, en la faisant rouler longuement dans sa bouche pour tenter d'en appréhender la complexité et la subtilité. Car l'une des choses que nous apprenons dans ce livre est qu'écrire ne s'improvise pas, il faut allier l'urgence et la patience.

Il faut, encore et toujours, préciser, couper, simplifier pour rendre fluides et aériens les blocs de texte déprimants que l'on a sous les yeux.[...]
L'idée, c'est de durcir toujours les conditions d'entraînement pour n'atteindre l'aisance que le jour venu, c'est s'entraîner à tirer des penaltys avec des chaussures de ski [...].

Jean-Philippe Toussaint évoque son métier d'écrivain et quelques-uns de ses « trucs » et de ses petites manies. Il ne prend pas de notes ou très peu :« Il me semblait en effet qu'une idée, aussi brillante fût-elle, n'était pas vraiment digne d'être retenue si, pour simplement s'en souvenir, il fallait la noter. »
Il évoque également la genèse de sa vocation suite à une lecture de Crime et Châtiment lors de laquelle il a été ensorcelé et émerveillé par les prolepses (sauts en avant dans le temps, brèves incursions dans le futur) maniées avec dextérité par Dostoïevski : « Cette brève intrusion de l’avenir dans le présent induit pour le personnage un sentiment de prémonition, et implique, pour l’auteur, une idée de destin.» Ce n’est pas la seule lecture qu’il mentionne, il nous parle de Proust et de Beckett — autre auteur emblématique des Éditions de Minuit — qu’il a rencontré et qu’il admire. Il en parle avec justesse et réussi l’essentiel, nous donner envie de lire et de découvrir des livres importants qui compteront dans notre vie : « Les meilleurs livres sont ceux dont on se souvient du fauteuil dans lequel on les a lus. »
Enfin, le tout est saupoudré d’anecdotes, de petits moments qui, racontés avec tant de simplicité et tant de charme sont un régal. Tout amateur de littérature se souviendra longtemps du fauteuil dans lequel il aura lu ce petit livre inclassable. http://www.aubonroman.com/2012/03/lur...

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Longer review to come in time, but for now, anyone who has read Toussaint will like this brief book (only 57 pp. in the ARC), and enjoy his encounters with his first publisher and with Beckett. Highly recommended. Typical easy-going humour as found in some of his novels.

Added, this longer review:

http://winnipegreview.com/2016/01/fir...

[Mireya · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Les meilleurs livres sont ceux dont on se souvient du fauteuil dans lequel on les a lus." Maravilla!!!

[Kristi A]

Parimad raamatud on need, mille kohta mäletane, millises tugitoolis neid lugesime.
Kirjutamise juures on alati mängus tung ja kannatlikkus. Tung on otsing, territoorium, kuhu jõutakse pärast pikka teekonda, kannatlikkusega. Põgus, habras, hootine.
Kuidas on sarnased matemaatika ja kirjandus ning bioloogia ja kino?

[Leo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tout ce qu'on a toujours voulu savoir sur Toussaint et qu'on n'a jamais osé lui demander.
Une sorte de confession littéraire, magnifique et émouvant.

[Anthony Lacroix · Rating 2 out of 5]

Juste, bien ecrit, drole, mais oh combien narcissique. Un peu comme la litt francaise contemporaine dans le fond

[World Literature Today]

This book was featured in the Nota Benes section of the January/February 2016 issue of World Literature Today Magazine.

http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2...

[Clark Knowles · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fine and wise and concise book about reading and writing and living a literary life.

[Andrea Muraro · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Al di là del linguaggio, cosa resta, allora, in un libro, se si prescinde dai personaggi e dalla storia? Resta l’autore, resta una solitudine, una voce, umana, abbandonata.”

Consigliatomi da uno scrittore che teneva un corso di scrittura creativa, questo piccolo saggio di Jean Philippe Toussaint è anche e soprattutto un’autobiografia del proprio lavoro e un pamphlet sulla scrittura. Molto semplice, diretto, affascinante, “L’urgenza è la pazienza” si legge tutto d’un fiato e ha il pregio di tralasciare i classici precetti su come scrivere bene, concentrandosi piuttosto su quale sia lo spirito che deve animare chiunque intenda accingersi a scrivere. Non tanto a scrivere il best seller, ma a scrivere di sè, per sè innanzitutto.
Il titolo, che deriva da un capitolo del libro, è illuminante: l’urgenza e la pazienza sono i due poli che dovrebbero contraddistinguere il lavoro dello scrittore. Ma in che modo? L’urgenza rappresenta la volontà di potenza di chi impugna la penna per mettere giù ciò che pensa, che sente, che vuole comunicare, tralasciando le regole grammaticali, testuali e pure sociali; la pazienza invece costituisce la parte razionale, la meditazione che è richiesta prima e dopo la stesura di un brano, la lentezza predicata anche da Calvino, la razionalità. Ogni scrittore deve coltivare entrambi questi lati, secondo Toussaint, perché ognuno di essi porta con sè dei doni e ognuno di essi compone “un’alchimia”, che è poi la voce e lo stile dello scrittore.
Nella biblioteca di un talento, Toussaint non dovrebbe mancare.

[Christine Biloré - Lectures cannoises · Rating 3 out of 5]

Je ne connais pas Jean-Philippe Toussaint en tant qu’auteur mais j’avais cet essai sous la main et j’ai pensé qu’il serait intéressant d’en savoir plus sur le processus d’écriture.

📝 J.P. Toussaint raconte son rapport à l’écriture entre l’urgence de saisir une idée et l’impulsion créatrice d’un côté, et la patience nécessaire à la réflexion et au peaufinage du texte de l’autre. son essai rassemble des réflexions personnelles et des anecdotes donnant accès aux coulisses de la création littéraire.

L’auteur partage avec sincérité et simplicité ses expériences, ses hésitations et son rapport au temps dans l’écriture. Il y décrit ses manies, ses lieux de rédaction et ses outils ainsi que quelques-unes de ses références littéraires. J’ai bien aimé le chapitre sur « Crime et châtiment » par exemple.

💬 C’est un beau texte très accessible et intéressant, tant pour le lecteur que l’écrivain. le style est fluide et le propos impliqué et crédible sans tomber dans une vision trop autocentrée.
J’ai choisi un extrait qui m’a interpelée car ce qui y est dit peut s’appliquer à mon travail de traduction. La traduction étant une (ré)écriture, il est également nécessaire d’avoir cet « œil neuf » une fois le travail réalisé.

[Alice Rovani · Rating 3 out of 5]

Une panoplie d'hommages (Proust tu as enfanté tant d'hommes) et de situations d'écriture, mais que très peu d'idées littéraires ou scripturales. D'autant plus que les chapitres avaient été publiés çà et là - au nombre bien défini de onze - et les regrouper en fait déjà exalter des redondances.

[Peeter Talvistu · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think it is 3.5

Overall I liked it (without having read anything by Toussaint before), but, at times, I got a nagging feeling that the author was trying to show off (what? his skills?). It's an easy and quick read, there are some really good ideas and it is quite witty.

[Piret Pert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haarav ja kohati vaimukas. Täpselt nii mulle meeldibki. Huvitav on teada saada, mis ja kes inspireerib kirjanikku kirjutama. Soovitan.

[Katri Kuus · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Kõige paremad raamatud on need, mille kohta me mäletame, kus tugitoolis me neid lugesime." lk 31

[Aurélie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un bel essai sur l'écriture et sur l'amour de la littérature. Un grand plaisir de lecture.

[Charles-Étienne Groleau · Rating 3 out of 5]

Y'a des pures pépites là-dedans! Y'a aussi des bouttes qu'on s'en fou un peu je suis désolé Jean-Philippe. Breeeefffffff

[Jeroen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think the easiest way to capture Toussaint as a writer is that in his case, an essay called “Reading Proust” is in fact much more about the act of reading Proust than about Proust himself, and moreover that a putative essay of his called, simply, “Proust”, would no doubt suffer the same pleasantly narcissistic treatment. But of course, you realise halfway through that this memoirish piece captures Proust perfectly, in its meticulous reconstruction of a semi-fictitious past. One is left wondering whether Toussaint set out to talk about Proust and drifted off, or set out – rather ridiculously, I admit – to talk about armchairs and zeroed in on the (or, should that be, an) essence of Proust.

Perhaps it is all fair enough that a memoir on reading should situate the meaning of literature in the act of reading it. Every so often when I open a book and I feel a slight disconnect to the words - or even, it seems sometimes, to the very fact of words - I think of a David Berman poem which defiantly starts: “It is too nice a day to read a novel set in England.” And off I go, excused by poetry, bumbling off to idle about in the faint sunlight (Berman himself concludes, somewhere halfway through: “On a day like today, […] we're too busy getting along.”)

Which is just to state the obvious – that the act of reading is contingent on the armchair as much as the book, that the room is the words and the words are the room.

It is also, though, a way of pinning down a particularly popular modern pastime, namely the act of not-reading. Toussaint himself has pointed out that “if your goal is to write, not writing is surely at least as important as writing”, and I think it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to apply this idea to writing's counterpart. I recall a scene in Seinfeld where George sets down to read Breakfast at Tiffany's in a long sequence of preparatory motions that recalls Calvino's famous opening paragraph in If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (spoiler alert: “of course, the ideal position for reading is something you can never find”), only to then swiftly put the book down and leaf through the TV Guide instead. Let's call that the Art of Not Reading. When Toussaint discusses Proust, he calls In Search of Lost Time “one of the rare books I've read less often than re-read, […] no longer really knowing, ultimately, if I've already read at least once before certain passages I'm now re-reading.” Surely only in an age of not-reading can we see the value of re-reading books we've never read, the value of re-reading over reading, in other words. While I don't want to put words into Toussaint's mouth, I think that we can safely surmise this order of importance:

1) re-reading
2) reading ex aequo not-reading

Surely, we can agree that distraction is the muse of the not-reader. It is therefore not surprising that Toussaint, the not-writing writer, is great at distraction. In the essay “Literature and Cinema” here, he introduces the topic by claiming to have given “a good dozen” lectures with that exact name (“Literature and Cinema”), only to go on and not talk at all about the content of these lectures. In fact, when he comes near the subject of the lectures, he writes that he will spare [us] the content “to avoid too obvious a mise en abyme.” Mise en abyme: an image within its own image. This, of course, is ingenious, for it tells us that the real subject of “Literature and Cinema” is not literature and cinema, nor is it the dozen or so lectures by Toussaint called Literature and Cinema (for if it was, there would be no mise en abyme), but rather the circumstances of a dozen or so lectures by Toussaint called Literature and Cinema (or, even, his thoughts on the circumstances, etc.). What it implies, really, is that the very fact of the text being an essay necessarily changes its subject from what it is about to what the author thinks it is about. Of course, Toussaint wouldn't be Toussaint if this paratextual approach wasn't then again reflected upon in the text itself, with interjections such as “and here, we are drawing ever so slowly closer to my point”, etc.

Of course, too, in the end Toussaint does somehow – and at this point one could say rather incredulously – manage to get to the essence of the curious symbiotic relation between literature and cinema, and the reader is left wondering whether they've been taken for a ride, knowing full well at the same time that the digression was always going to be part of the point. But I can say this much: of this little 50-page booklet, about 40 pages are probably digression, and yet that still leaves more astute and wise observations than most books manage in about ten times the space. That's gotta be an impressive feat of some sort.

[Tõnu Laanemäe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Head raamatud pidavat olema need, et mäletad tugitoole millel(s) neid lugesid. Mina mäletan rohkem voodeid ja palavust, mis ühe hingetõmbega läbilugemisega kaasneb, oimetust. Veidi mugavam ja mõnusam, nartsissistlik suhtumine lugemisse tuletab meelde seda, et lugemine ei ole mingi tükitöö tegemine, et peab nagu pakust end läbi raiuma. Kirjutamisega peaks samamoodi olema, või võiks.

[CharlieC · Rating 4 out of 5]

En toute simplicité, Jean-Philippe Toussaint nous livre ses expériences de lecteur, d'apprenti-écrivain et il nous dit quelque part que beaucoup de choses sont possibles avec, ou à travers les livres. C'est un essai qui prend diverses formes mais qui toujours pousse à la lecture (Beckett, Proust, Dostoïevski,...) mais aussi à l'écriture.

[Nathalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Après la lecture de ce petit ouvrage, on n'a qu'un désir, écrire, ou qu'un regret, celui de ne pas être capable d'écrire. Et puis très très envie de lire, encore et encore, et se laisser bercer par la beauté des mots.

[Abeka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Toussaint essayiste, Toussaint romancier, Toussaint mémorialiste, peu importe: Toussaint écrivain livre son art poétique, du pur petit-lait.

[Brooks Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I now want to write a book.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Toussaint is an author that I will read everything he publishes. He has been extremely influential on my own writing. But reading these essays just made me angry. because they reminded me of what I hate about his stories. they are full of this almost conceited transcontinental hopping. I wish he had given more of his self and less of his hotel rooms.