Toussaint's
novel is essentially a shaggy dog story. A man arrives in a seaside town with
his son and settles into a rhythm of paranoia and fantasy. His thoughts are
conveyed with stream of consciousness, reminiscent of Bernhard and Bolano. A
slim 130 pages, it should probably be read in one sitting, although I read it
in four. It’s one of those novels which relies on the implication of
menace. The game is trying to figure out whether there’s any substance to the
narrator’s musings or whether he’s just deranged.
Descendant
of the Nouvel Romain, it has to be said that Reticence is ultimately
underwhelming. This is acutely apolitical writing. An exercise in
epistemology, it deals exclusively in the act of perception. (What little I’ve
read of Nicholson Baker would be another point of reference). The word ‘political’
is one that has many variations to its understanding. In this context it
perhaps means that it seeks to talk ‘of’ something. Toussaint’s novel
approaches the stage before we can even talk ‘of’ anything. It addresses the
acts of perception and interpretation humans engage in before they can get
anywhere near the act of assertion. The world is a blizzard of data (even
though this book was written in ’91). How can anything be asserted when we can’t
even establish what the signifiers look/ smell/ sound like?
No comments:
Post a Comment