A book must contain both darts and philosophy, bowling and metaphysics.
-Jean-Philippe Toussaint (Riker 2008)
Abstract
This paper examines the use of sports and games (soccer, tennis, scrabble, and darts) as poetic and thematic devices in Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s La Salle de bain. The spaces of sports and games (be they playing fields, dart boards, tennis courts, etc.) not only situate the narration (including the location and time of narration), but also gesture towards a community that the narrator is not fully capable of joining. The first part of this paper posits that sports and games in the form described by Toussaint’s novel are not the socializing activities that play theory imagines them to be, but rather serve to show the narrator’s isolation. The second part of this paper explains the relationship of ludics and literary history in Toussaint’s work as anti-ludic; the novel toys with the highly regulated/rule-bound novels of predecessors such as Nabokov, Robbe-Grillet and the members of OULIPO (Ouvroir de la littérature potentielle). In the conclusion, the essay posits that this anti-ludic tendency might be extended in order to posit the “post-ludic” as an important component of the contemporary novel in France and around the world.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ammouche-Kremers, M. (1994). Entretien avec Jean-Philippe Toussaint. In M. Ammouche-Kremers & H. Hillenaar (Eds.), Jeunes auteurs de Minuit (pp. 27–35). Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Bertho, S. (1994). Jean-Philippe Toussaint et la métaphysique. In M. Ammouche-Kremers & H. Hillenaar (Eds.), Jeunes auteurs de Minuit (pp. 15–25). Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Bessard-Banquy, O. (2003). Le roman ludique: Jean Echenoz, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Eric Chevillard. Paris: Septentrion.
Bourmeau, S. (2006). “La Mélancolie de Zidane.” Les Inrockuptibles, 7 Nov.
Bresnan, M. (2008). The work of play in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Critique, 50(1), 51–68.
Caillois, R. (2001). Man, play, and games (M. Barash, Trans.). Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
Caldwell, R. (1995). Jean-Philippe Toussaint. In W. Thompson (Ed.), The contemporary novel in France (pp. 369–382). Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Camus, A. (1942). L’Étranger. Paris: Gallimard.
de Man, P. (1989). The mask of Albert Camus. In L. Waters (Ed.), Critical writings: 1953–1978 (pp. 145–152). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Echenoz, J. (2008). Courir. Paris: Minuit.
Ehrmann, J. (Ed.). (1968). Game, play, literature. New Haven: Yale French Studies.
Glasco, S. (2006). Textual games, intertextual readings: Ludic dimensions in story and style in the works of Jean-Philippe Toussaint. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
Gray, M. E. (1997). Pascal in the bathtub: Parodying the pensées. Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, 51(1), 20–29.
Huizinga, J. (1955, re-print). Homo ludens: A study of the play-element in culture (R.F.C. Hull, Trans.). Boston: Beacon Press.
Hutchinson, P. (1983). Games authors play. London: Methuen.
Jameson, F. (1992). Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press.
Lesmesle, M. (1998). Jean-Philippe Toussaint: Le retour du récit? Oeuvres et critiques, 23(1), 102–121.
McCarthy, T. (2010). Stabbing the Olive. London Review of Books, 32(3), 26–28.
Morissette, B. (1968). Games and game structures in Robbe-Grillet. In J. Ehrmann (Ed.), Game, play, literature (pp. 159–167). New Haven: Yale French Studies.
Motte, W. F. (1995). Playtexts: Ludics in contemporary literature. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Motte, W. F. (1999). Small worlds: Minimalism in contemporary French literature. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Motte, W. F. (2007). Introduction. In W. F. Motte (Ed.), OULIPO: A primer of potential literature (pp. 1–22). Champaign, IL: Dalkley Archive Press.
Murakami, H. (2008). What I talk about when I talk about running (P. Gabriel, Trans.). New York: Knopf.
Nabokov, V. (1990). The Luzhin defense. New York: Vintage.
Riker, M. (2008). Fourteen questions for Jean-Philippe Toussaint. The Quarterly Conversation (13). http://quarterlyconversation.com/Jean-philippe-toussaint-interview. Accessed 16 Oct 2012.
Stump, J. (2006). Jean-Philippe Toussaint, unfinished. SubStance, 35(3), 95–112.
Toussaint, J.-P. (1985). La Salle de bain. Paris: Minuit.
Toussaint, J.-P. (2000). Autoportrait (à l’étranger). Paris: Minuit.
Toussaint, J.-P. (2005). Le théorème de Pythagore. www.jptoussaint.com/documents/f/f5/Forum_de_février_2005_La_Salle_de_bain.pdf. Accessed 1 Sept 2011.
Toussaint, J.-P. (2006). La Mélancolie de Zidane. Paris: Minuit.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Poniewaz, K.A. The Poetics of the Red Card: Ludics in Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s La Salle de bain . Neophilologus 97, 481–495 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-012-9336-y
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-012-9336-y