The Truth about Marie

Jean-Philippe Toussaint, The Truth About Marie. Champaign, IL: Dallcey Archive Press, 2011. 160pp. $12.95A quarter of a century and nine novels by Belgian writer Jean-Philippe Toussaint separate the following scene descriptions:The rain had become a downpour, as though all the rain were going to fall: all. Cars slowed on the drenched roadway; sheaves of dead water rose on each side of the tires.... I was looking for a sweater. Was there no sweater anywhere?Outside the sky was dark, black, immense, invisible, and an unbroken sheet of rain falling through the yellow light of the streetlamps blocked the horizon. I threw myself straight into the downpour, my jacket's collar raised.Rain is rain, but the change in style will be apparent even to readers who have not followed Toussaint's prolific career in English translation from Dalkey Archive Press- from his debut novel, The Bathroom (French 1985; English 2008), to the latest, The Truth About Marie (2009; 2011). (Since 2007, there have been seven novels: Television [1997; 2007]; Monsieur [1986; 2008]; Camera [1989; 2008]; Running Away [2005; 2009]; and Self-Portrait Abroad [2000; 2010] ). It's a change from a writer who once delighted in using a dry, dispassionate, almost scientifically precise narrative voice (water rose on each side of the tires) to a writer unashamedly sentimental, loquacious, even verbose.Dispassion has been more than just a narrative voice for Toussaint- it is an entire milieu, with its own version of morality. The nameless narrator of The Bathroom decides to move himself, books and all, into his bathroom, in order to combat a general, unnamed malaise. This premise offers Toussaint the chance to poke fun at social graces and personal foibles in a light comedy of manners: the narrator hosts his visiting mother in the cramped space and exchanges verbal spars with two house painters his girlfriend hires to paint the kitchen. Here is the typical denouement of a wild episode in which the painters offer their hosts an octopus for lunch (and spend hours on the kitchen floor trying unsuccessfully to cut it up):He told how he'd spent the night playing chess in the back room of a cafe and made friends with his tablemate, a young fellow who, when the bar closed, had dragged him to Les Halles, where they bought a crate of octopus which they'd divided at dawn in the Invalides metro station. I looked at him, of something else.Much of The Bathroom reads like a tale of utter disinterest, like the narrator (or Toussaint) is constantly just thinking of something else- or merely offering the preamble to a real story to come. Mechanical descriptions of mundane activities- eating, shaving, picking clothes out of a drawer- overexplain each discrete step while refusing to elaborate on or evaluate their significance.Toussaint increases the psychic distance and the comedy by casting another early novel, Monsieur, in the third person. We follow insouciant Monsieur, a commercial director for Fiat France in Paris (and a dead ringer for Jacques Tati's clueless Mr. Hulot), as he spends his days doing unexciting things with uninteresting people. Like the narrator in The Bathroom, Monsieur moves in a child's world of simple pleasures and pains, inscrutable motivations, and general inconsequence. The story's premise is that Monsieur needs a suitable place to live: he moves back and forth between rented rooms, adjusting chairs, trying to avoid nuisances while being one himself. But few real problems appear, few solutions are found, and no one grows or changes. The narrative is cursory with abrupt transitions. Dialogue is reported and indirect, creating an awkward distance that lends itself to situational irony. Without access to Monsieur's interior motives or thoughts we cannot identify or sympathize with him. But this is part of the fun. And although events do in fact occur in Monsieur, more striking are the innumerable plot opportunities Toussaint cheerfully denies. …

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