Jean-Philippe Toussaint

Kurze Inhaltsangabe
Der namenlos bleibende Ich-Erzähler begleitet seine Freundin Marie nach Tokyo. Sie ist Künstlerin und Modedesignerin, in Tokyo wird sie eine Ausstellung zu ihren Ehren gestalten und eröffnen. Seit sieben Jahren sind die beiden zusammen, gefangen im Jetlag werden sie den ersten Tag und die erste Nacht in Tokyo erleben. Dort ist es kalt und regnerisch. Die Nacht im teuren Hotel wird schlaflos bleiben, von nicht vollendeten Annäherungen geprägt. Irgendwann in den frühen Morgenstunden werden die beiden zu dünn bekleidet durch den Schneeregen irren, ein kleines Erdbeben wird noch einen letzten „Liebes"akt unter einer Brücke provozieren - doch er hat Schluss gemacht. Der Erzähler flüchtet schon nach kurzer Zeit, während Marie sich auf die Räumlichkeiten zu konzentrieren beginnt. Er flüchtet weit, aus Tokyo, nach Kyoto. Dort war das Paar mal vor Jahren, und ein alter Freund wohnt immer noch da. Irgendwann wird er halbwegs genesen durch Kyoto wandern, und sie im Hotel anrufen. Das Gespräch hat starke Sogwirkung und abrupt bricht er wieder nach Tokyo auf.… (mere)

I think this is one of those tedious psychological novels that Borges was warning about. Well, let's count some commas.

Eyes closed and standing still, I was listening to Marie's voice coming from thousands of kilometers away, her voice which I could hear despite the countless lands that separated us, despite the steppes and immeasurable other plains, despite the expanse of the night and its gradation of colors spread across the surface of the earth, despite the mauve light of a Siberian dusk and the first orange streaks left by a sun setting on the cities of Eastern Europe, I was listening to Marie speaking faintly in the early evening sunlight of Paris, her frail voice reaching me, sounding more or less the same as ever, in the late night of the train, literally transporting me, as thoughts, dreams, and books can do, when, releasing the mind from the body, the body remains still and the mind travels, swelling and expanding, while gradually, behind our closed eyes, images are born, and other memories, feelings, and states of being surge into view, pains and buried emotions are reawakened, as well as fears and joys and a multitude of sensations - of coldness, of heat, of being loved, of confusion - while blood pounds in our temples, our heartbeats accelerate, and we feel ourselves shaken, as if a fissure had cracked the sea of tears frozen in each of us.

Right, I count 28 commas in that sentence. I wonder if it's the most in a sentence of this book, or not.

This is what I was thinking as I finished the book. Not exactly gripping, then.… (mere)

A dead cat floats in the harbor in the opening scene of this novella length parody/tribute to the noir genre. A black cat, naturally, as black clouds slowly move overhead, allowing pale moonlight to reveal the murder. For surely it was a deliberate killing, our narrator thinks, an act somehow connected to the fact that his old friend Biaggi, whom he has come to this village to see, though he is avoiding Biaggi now that he has arrived, has been stalking him through the village, keeping watch on him, even taking a room in the same little hotel.

Every minor event is drafted into the service of this suspenseful game of cat and mouse. Our narrator turns snoop, stealing Biaggi's mail, slipping into Biaggi's house
unseen. Or has Biaggi in fact been watching every one of these moves?

Perhaps all will become clear at the end, on a deserted beach in the pale moonlight, a lonely lighthouse flashing monotonously.… (mere)