Urgency and Patience - Jean-Philippe Toussaint

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Urgency and Patience

by
Jean-Philippe Toussaint

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

Title:	Urgency and Patience
Author:	Jean-Philippe Toussaint
Genre:	Non-fiction
Written:	2012 (Eng. 2015)
Length:	57 pages
Original in:	French
Availability:	Urgency and Patience - US
	Urgency and Patience - UK
	Urgency and Patience - Canada
	L'urgence et la patience - Canada
	L'urgence et la patience - France
	Die Dringlichkeit und die Geduld - Deutschland
	L'urgenza e la pazienza - Italia

French title: L'urgence et la patience
Translated by Edward Gauvin

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Our Assessment:

B+ : very slim but strong short pieces

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
NZZ	.	7/2/2013	Ingeborg Waldinger
Nouvel Observateur	.	1/3/2012	Jérôme Garcin
Die Welt	.	27/10/2012	Tilman Krause

From the Reviews:

"(E)in mitreissender assoziativer Reigen (.....) Toussaint versteht es trefflich, des Lesers Interesse zu schüren, für sein eigenes Werk wie für das seiner Idole" - Ingeborg Waldinger, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

"Sans se prendre au sérieux (d'autres que lui eussent rédigé de pompeux Mémoires), Toussaint joue ici au Scrabble de sa vie." - Jérôme Garcin, Nouvel Observateur

"Und das ist immer intelligent und gut formuliert, ohne dass sich irgendein Finger ehrgeizig, bärbeißig in die Lüfte stemmen würde." - Tilman Krause, Die Welt

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

Urgency and Patience collects eleven short and essentially autobiographical pieces by Jean-Philippe Toussaint -- beginning with one titled: 'The Day I Began to Write'. It is a collection on reading and writing, with an overlap among the pieces: the first one reveals that reading Crime and Punishment was decisive in leading him to try to write for himself, for example, while in 'I Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov' he focuses more closely on that reading-experience as inspiration, as the book: "opened my eyes to the power literature could have, its force , its fascinating possibilities" (after he had previously not been much of a reader).
There is a sense of continuity and connection, as Toussaint observes, for example: "There are hotels in almost all my books" (in explaining 'How I Built Certain of My Hotels'), or considers how Proust's great work is: "a book that accompanies us throughout our lives". Indeed, much of his reflection is at least colored by the overlap of memory and experience: re-reading a text, or recalling the experience of reading it -- not just the text itself but the circumstances and locales of of reading (or writing) it. So, too, he suggests:

The best books are the ones where you remember the armchairs you sat in while reading them.

There are also some nice short reminiscences of Samuel Beckett -- the wonderful anecdote opening For Samuel Beckett pretty much worth the cover cost -- and the great publisher Jérôme Lindon.
The title is taken from Toussaint's suggestion and then elaboration on the idea that:

Two seemingly irreconcilable notions have always been at play in writing, I think: urgency and patience.

It makes for a nice, tight, spare collection, Toussaint boiled down to the essentials, with no wasted words or thoughts -- and yet also with a comfortable ease to the writing (it's not forcibly compressed, either). It is also revealing, offering some insight into the author, and his becoming an author -- a welcome glimpse behind the fiction.

- M.A.Orthofer, 15 July 2015

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Links:

Urgency and Patience:

Dalkey Archive Press publicity page
Les Éditions de Minuit publicity page
FVA publicity page
Edizioni Clichy publicity page
For Samuel Beckett - excerpt

Reviews:

Jean-Philippe Toussaint:

Official site
Jean-Philippe Toussaint site
Reading Jean-Philippe Toussaint by Warren Motte at Context
Fourteen Questions for Jean-Philippe Toussaint by Martin Riker at The Quarterly Conversation

Other books by Jean-Philippe Toussaint under review:

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of French literature
Other books from Dalkey Archive Press under review
See Index of Literary Essays

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About the Author:

Jean-Philippe Toussaint was born in Brussels in 1957.

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