Reclining nude with machete
Readying herself to enter the studio, she remembered the accessory the artist had requested she bring. Any object of your own choice, he’d said. The ironmonger had enveloped it in brown paper, binding it tightly with waxed twine so that its silhouette clearly identified what was within. Passerbys on the street had stared suspiciously at her, and the taxi driver who had driven her to the artist’s studio eyed her warily in the rearview mirror.
Picking the package up from where it lay on the toilet seat, she sniffed her armpits, raised her head, and in synchronous gestures of vanity and modesty drew in her tummy and shielded her pudenda with the package.
By Michael Loughrey.
You Know, Life — The Translated Novels of Jean-Philippe Toussaint
Who writes like Toussaint? And whom does Toussaint resemble? The latter, more easily approached, would include obvious Toussaint progenitors such as Samuel Beckett, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Maurice Blanchot, Georges Perec, Raymond Queneau, and Francis Ponge. Like Beckett’s characters, Toussaint’s nameless protagonists find humour in despondency. In Television, the scene in which the narrator attempts to hide the neglected fern he is supposedly looking after for his vacationing neighbours is a comic masterpiece. Beckett would have approved…
A short analysis by Steve Finbow.