Summary Synopsis
A young man in Paris began attending driving school to get a driver’s license. He met Pascale Polougaïevski, the driving school’s office employee. They fell in love immediately and unconsciously, and they lived an ordinary but boring life with Mr. Pascal and Pierre, Pascale’s daughter. They also took two aimless but hurried trips to England.
Upon returning to Paris, on a ferry, the young man picked up a Kodak Instamatic camera, and he took photos consecutively, going up and running down the stairs, to finish and remove the film cartridge…
Book Review
Jean-Philippe Toussaint superficially describes the mundane, boring, and trivial, yet humorous, daily life of Parisians in The Camera (L’appareil-photo). This novel captures a moment or a period of the narrator’s life. The message and the essence of this novel exist in the narrator’s thoughts, which are described somewhere, and in the philosophy that this narrative fully expresses.
The theme of this novel is the passage of time, movement and stillness, ordinary life, banality and chance, as well as the meaning of life and its futility. Driving a car, flying, and traveling are elements of movement. Photography, a gas cylinder, and rain, on the other hand, are immobile or motionless elements. Thus, the deep theme and essence are the sensitivity of the passage of time, the contradiction between movement and stillness, and the meaning that exists between movement and stillness. Humans exist in the place and time between movement and stillness.
We advanced irresistibly, and I felt myself advancing too, cleaving the sea effortlessly and without forcing, as if I were gradually dying, as I was perhaps living, I didn’t know, it was simple and I couldn’t do anything about it, I let myself be carried away by the movement of the boat in the night and, staring fixedly at the foam that spurted against the hull with a lapping sound that had the quality of silence, its softness and its amplitude, my life moved forward, yes, in a constant renewal of identical foam. (pp. 95 – 96)
This description is the heart of The Camera, and the link between the narrator’s thought and the narrative.
The narrator acted well, but he did nothing. He did not perform any significant or grand actions. Nor did the characters have any specific goals. This is the life of our reality, after all.
This novel describes the common contingency and incomprehensible meaning of daily life. All people experience and know these things in the life of contemporary society in developed countries. We experience this subtle, potential, and subconscious lightness and sadness. But, despite this banality and boredom, daily life is a precious and sweet thing.
The camera is a tool and a method for capturing moments of each life. It captures and fixes a succession of a person’s actions, or time, life, and existence.
This novel itself is a series of photos that capture the narrator’s being and movements, and his life. It is boring and ephemeral, yet this novel is beautiful, sweet, and eternal.
Details of the Book
L’Appareil-photo
Jean-Philippe Toussaint
Les Éditions de Minuit, Paris, France, (initialement publié en 1989)
128 pages, €5.50
ISBN 978-2707320056
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