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The Bathroom

Jean-Philippe Toussaint

3.63 · Rating details · 1,050 ratings · 109 reviews

First published in France in 1985, The Bathroom was Jean-Philippe Toussaint's debut novel, and it heralded a new generation of innovative French literature. In this playful and perplexing book, we meet a young Parisian researcher who lives inside his bathroom. As he sits in his tub meditating on existence (and refusing to tell us his name), the people around him—his girlfr ...more

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Hardcover, 128 pages

Published October 1st 1991 by Marion Boyars Publishers (first published 1985)

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Oct 21, 2012 Adam Dalva rated it really liked it

Terrific, strange little book - I'm a fan of Toussaint, particularly his Marie Tetralogy. This is his debut, so it's not quite refined in terms of formula (all his late books have micro arcs toward, always, three minor climaxes) and there is a bit of unnecessary showiness (pythagorean chapter sequencing), but the fun philosophizing and detached tone is very him .You'll fly through it.

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Apr 25, 2012 David rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: low-calorie

When a book is called The Bathroom and its back cover blurb suggests that it's about 'a young Parisian researcher who lives inside his bathroom,' I think I'm right in feeling cheated and betrayed when the protagonist leaves the bathroom on page six, never to return. Well, I'm sure he returns for practical visits, of course, but he no longer domiciles there.

I was actually looking forward to a short novel about living in a bathroom for the simple reason that the idea sort of appeals to me. Imagin When a book is called The Bathroom and its back cover blurb suggests that it's about 'a young Parisian researcher who lives inside his bathroom,' I think I'm right in feeling cheated and betrayed when the protagonist leaves the bathroom on page six, never to return. Well, I'm sure he returns for practical visits, of course, but he no longer domiciles there.

I was actually looking forward to a short novel about living in a bathroom for the simple reason that the idea sort of appeals to me. Imagine it... spending your leisurely days in a snug little windowless room with the steady hum of the overhead ventilation fan subsuming all noise from the outside world. It's a blissful and willful ignorance of the so-called real world. If you spend a long, indefinite period in a bathroom, you can be theoretically unaware if it's day or night, sunny or overcast, summer or winter—or even if some random variety of apocalypse has occurred while you were otherwise engaged, leaving only your tiny bathroom standing in a limitless horizon of charred ruins. A good bathroom bridles human awareness and brings its occupant into a richer communion with himself. (And please notice that I specified 'a good bathroom.' Not all bathrooms are good. Some, in defiance of all good taste and rationality, actually have windows, so that one can experience his utter smallness, smothered under the infinity of the sky, while dropping a deuce. Other bathrooms, sadly, lack fans—which speaks volumes of the builder's sadism, I think. I won't even dwell on those rare and wholly inadequate bathrooms that don't have locks on the doors. They are beneath proper consideration.)

Can you then imagine my great disappointment when I discovered that Jean-Philippe Toussaint's The Bathroom wasn't really about living in a bathroom at all? On the contrary, it's about some Belgian yahoo who spends much of his time doing banal things outside the bathroom and telling us about them in detail. I have a feeling this is all supposed to be very droll. (Or something.) This Buster Keaton-esque schmuck celebrates his own dullness and pointlessness in such a way that it should be ironic and (gag) whimsical. But let me ask you a question: Would you rather watch a Buster Keaton movie or read the belabored summary of one in a book? Keaton's humor is, by and large, derived from the visual. Toussaint tries to blend quirkiness and indolence to achieve a similar (written) effect, but all in all it just doesn't work. Even though the book is only (a large-printed, heavily-spaced) 102 pages, I shut the book in relief. Some short books are very, very long. ...more

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Aug 29, 2014 Josh rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: abandoned, 2015

A thought I must convey to the masses.

I have an affliction when it comes to towels. Hand towels, bathroom towels, napkins, paper towels, shop towels. What distinguishes a hand towel from a bathroom towel from any of the other? Is it the size? What if you're a small person and a bathroom towel is too big? What if you're a large person and only have a handful of hand towels? Do they become bathroom towels then? Dabbing large areas of drops off your skin, going through a few at a time, in those nic A thought I must convey to the masses.

I have an affliction when it comes to towels. Hand towels, bathroom towels, napkins, paper towels, shop towels. What distinguishes a hand towel from a bathroom towel from any of the other? Is it the size? What if you're a small person and a bathroom towel is too big? What if you're a large person and only have a handful of hand towels? Do they become bathroom towels then? Dabbing large areas of drops off your skin, going through a few at a time, in those nicely private spots, ticklish, making he-he ha-ha sounds...which leads up to my main affliction...re-using someone elses towels. Do any of you use another person's towel once they've used it before washing it? What a dilemma! "Oh, you can use this towel, I just used it earlier, it's clean because I took a shower, and hence I'm clean!" "Is that a hair poking out?" "Is that dirt or did you leave me a present?" Oh god, no! You're clean, but still I can't do it, I mustn't!"

So yeah, I have a problem with that.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Being from the Dalkey Archive, you sort of expect something more to your liking, something just for you. Toussaint's main character in The Bathroom is not Sæterbakken's Edwin. He leaves the bathroom when he’s not supposed to leave the bathroom; he is not sad or miserable, yet confused, a bit delusional and a bit eccentric, encountering things for which he doesn’t feel familiar.

"I put my face close to the window and, eyes against the glass, suddenly had the impression that all these people were inside an aquarium."

With this, it poses the question: Is the world just a wet-stained aquarium, waiting for someone to realize it?

"The rain had become a downpour, as though all the rain were going to fall: all."

When we expect the rain to stop, does it keep on going? Can we conceive it not ending?

Ok. I’m not serious. Honestly, I couldn’t finish this. I’m sure there’s some meaning to it, but this wasn’t for me.
...more

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Oct 22, 2008 Jim rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Having realized that he prefers reading in the tub, the protagonist of Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s The Bathroom decides to take up residence there, because, after all, “the bathroom was where I felt best.” This is a typical setup for the Belgian author of eight short but deliciously enigmatic novels: Toussaint puts his protagonist in an absurd position and describes it as if there’s nothing absurd about it at all. The author himself has characterized his work as being focused on the “not-interesti Having realized that he prefers reading in the tub, the protagonist of Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s The Bathroom decides to take up residence there, because, after all, “the bathroom was where I felt best.” This is a typical setup for the Belgian author of eight short but deliciously enigmatic novels: Toussaint puts his protagonist in an absurd position and describes it as if there’s nothing absurd about it at all. The author himself has characterized his work as being focused on the “not-interesting” and the “not-edifying.” This is especially true of his early novels, The Bathroom (1985) and Camera (1989), rereleased late last year by the Dalkey Archive Press (which has also published Toussaint’s Monsieur and Television). But what sounds like an exercise in navel-gazing pulses with a queer kind of intensity that makes reading Toussaint as easy as slipping into a warm bath.

Our hero has inexplicably received an invitation to a gathering at the Austrian Embassy. He insists it’s a mistake but cannot stop daydreaming about it. He spends his days in the bathroom, eating pastries, listening to soccer matches on the radio, staring at the walls. “One crack seemed to be gaining ground. I spent hours staring at its extremities, vainly trying to surprise it in action.” Fed up, his lover, Edmondsson, tries to lure him out with sex. “Make love now? I shut my book composedly, leaving a finger inside to keep my place.”

Toussaint traffics in a kind of slow-motion situation comedy. What makes the humor so effective is that he never appears to be going for the gag. His work is frequently compared to the silent comedies of Buster Keaton, but you won’t find anything as inelegant as a pratfall in Toussaint’s oeuvre. He doesn’t construct plots; rather, he devises pantomimes in which his reluctant heroes grapple with dilemmas largely of their own making. Whether it’s the decision to suddenly leave the bathtub — and Paris — for a decrepit hotel in Venice or insulting a dinner party host’s style of dress, seldom if ever do Toussaint’s characters reveal what motivates them to behave as they do.

Read an interview with Toussaint's translators here.

...more

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Aug 28, 2013 Jonfaith rated it really liked it

"Immobility is not absence of movement but absence of any prospect of movement."

The above observation lies three-quarters of the way through The Bathroom, just before the quasi-authorial ruminations break forth, escaping the previous three room stage design. A change of locale occurs. Not to disclose much, but it is a change of nation as well. The insular goes on the lam. In fact, the section abroad distills the almost static gestation of the earlier salvos. The novel's only act of violence (exc ...more

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Oct 18, 2014 Jeroen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recently, more and more, I have been vouching for slowness. Slowness in movement, slowness in thought; slowness as a form of rebellion. But what I call slow isn't really that slow; it's a return to human speed. The speed of our feet, not our wheels.

Jean-Philippe Toussaint in this novella wants to go beyond that. Or perhaps you could say he wants something entirely different. For isn't immobility qualitatively different from movement, even slow movement? Toussaint clearly distinguishes between th Recently, more and more, I have been vouching for slowness. Slowness in movement, slowness in thought; slowness as a form of rebellion. But what I call slow isn't really that slow; it's a return to human speed. The speed of our feet, not our wheels.

Jean-Philippe Toussaint in this novella wants to go beyond that. Or perhaps you could say he wants something entirely different. For isn't immobility qualitatively different from movement, even slow movement? Toussaint clearly distinguishes between the immobile chess piece, flush with potential movement, and true immobility: the Mondrian painting that is immobile even in its immobility. Toussaint's unidentified protagonist is similarly inflicted as Bartleby: he “would prefer not to” do anything.

Whatever he does do has to hold the promise of an ending. Like the raindrop that he follows to the ground, the darts he starts obsessively throwing are poised for a full stop. They make it possible to “imagine that the essential tendency of motion, however lightning-swift it may appear, is toward immobility and that, however slow it may sometimes seem, it is continuously drawing bodies toward death, which is immobility.” What is death if not the perfection of stillness?

If you are anything like me – a little absurdly inclined – this novella's cover blurb of “a young Parisian researcher who lives inside his bathroom” should be enough to reel you in. And indeed, if Toussaint were more famous, I could see “leaving the bathroom” become idiomatic of going into the world again. What would be specific about this idiom is the reasoning behind it, which is hardly sound. It might not be so healthy, our young researcher argues, to spend life in a bathtub. Sounds fair, but if health were the main issue, I would like to point out to him that it is usually life that kills us, more than anything. The absence of life might be the best way to stay afloat.

While I find Toussaint's fondness for “the quietude of my abstract life” endearing, it is ultimately rather preposterous. Well-considered, the abstract life is meaningless. In fact, conversely, our protagonist actually insists on things whose meanings are more secure and unwavering, like sports scores, and the eternal mark he leaves on his girlfriend's forehead. To his wit it “added to her charm”, probably because it reminds him of a perfect singular act, or, as he mentions somewhere else: “one blazing movement.”

There is a sense of the infraordinary in The Bathroom. Whereas Toussaint spends pages on the dissection of an octopus for dinner, the big decisions get one line: “I decided to go back to Paris.” I like this. It creates a rhythm that to me seems more true to modern life. The actual events puncture the story like gong strikes, ringing on indefinitely. Most of life, however, is mundanity, so why should fiction be exempt (and yes, I know your arguments for this, but I deem them inadequate). Pretending life can be overtly meaningful all the time just seems naive to me. After all, “there is something suspicious about the need to be diverted,” as our Parisian researcher has it. In an interview I read that Toussaint, when pressed, says he writes “infinitesimal novels”, and that probably does sum it up best. It's a word that suggests both the minimal and the maximal; both the singular act that synecdochically portrays a life, and the tedious, repetitive target practice that lives it. ...more

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Jul 26, 2012 Kathy rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: everyone who loves to ponder over life and death

Shelves: novel-and-literature

There is a 27-year-old man who loves to stay in the bathtub and ponder over life for the whole afternoon every day. He does not have a mental problem, yet, he is a mere reflection of our anxiety in this 21st-century modern bustling world. He represents the helpless and desperate attitude towards life yet no one can resist such desperation.

He is not a loser, instead, he is somehow a thinker or a philosopher. One day, he took a book someone left in the cafe in Venice. The book was the English vers There is a 27-year-old man who loves to stay in the bathtub and ponder over life for the whole afternoon every day. He does not have a mental problem, yet, he is a mere reflection of our anxiety in this 21st-century modern bustling world. He represents the helpless and desperate attitude towards life yet no one can resist such desperation.

He is not a loser, instead, he is somehow a thinker or a philosopher. One day, he took a book someone left in the cafe in Venice. The book was the English version of "Pensées" written by Blaise Pascal. He was fascinated by the quotation about death and desperation. From my point of view, all of his mentality and actions throughout the whole novel actually represent us, as modern citizens in this modern world, as well as our deepest fear: what are we exactly doing in our lives while we are all going to die one day? What to do with our short and desperate lives that are doomed? We cannot change anything because we are so small.

This little book may be plotless, yet it contains a lot of meanings and philosophy. There are few times that the narrator comes really close to offering the reader a reason for his bathroom behaviour. However, he can never be able to complete the sentence. This is because he does not, and will not, and cannot know the answer. He is hopeless. I think Toussaint is trying to reveal our fear of death and uncertainty by using a very relaxing, slow and peaceful tone. He talks about death and the hopeless feeling without fear. He also mentions a little about love as well by including Edmondsson in the story.

The narrator loves Piet Mondrian's paintings very much because he thinks they reflect a very still and immobile state. This immobile moment is very abstruct yet bears the state of death (not even dying because it is already still, it is not a movement at all). The Bathroom is itself a painting of Piet Mondrian. This little book is a representation of literary abstructionism. This book has a very abstruct story just like the abstruct lines in Piet Mondrian's paintings, yet it bears a very peaceful and still state and mentality just like the feelings Mondrian's paintings give you. Both Toussaint and Mondrian want to express the immobile moment which represents hopelessness and death with a very peaceful and calm depiction.

This is really a lovely book which can make you think. This book can make you feel very peaceful and calm yet somehow a little sad at the same time. After reading this book, you see how helpless and hopeless you are in your life but you will accept this fate peacefully without fear.

I strongly recommend this beautiful little book to you. ...more

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Jan 10, 2015 Amelia rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: in-translation, fiction

spoiler alert: he leaves the bathroom.

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Mar 31, 2013 Martyn rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: experimental, fiction, novellas, 2013, à-l-origine-en-français

Hey, it's French, it's experimental, it's funny and it had post-modern, bijou chapterettes - it's my thing man.

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Apr 07, 2013 Emmett rated it it was ok

This is a slim novel that's also slight. Third-rate Beckett, second-rate Barthelme, full of "postmodern" playfulness with nothing at stake. The worst kind of "experimentalism". Toussaint is a funny writer, and I've got time for his later work, but his early novels just aren't very good.

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Feb 14, 2016 jennifer rated it it was amazing

Lovely. I only wish I had this version, where "bathroom" is hyphenated.

This was written three years after (even) I was born, yet still retains the tinge of the somewhat enterprising/somewhat upcoming/somewhat avant garde.

Now to go live in the bathtub for a bit.

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May 21, 2011 Nathanimal rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: dalkey-archive, from-the-french

Moral: Don't bug a guy when he's playing darts.

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Apr 08, 2018 Charlie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

he leave the bathroom tho

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Apr 05, 2019 Guttersnipe Das rated it really liked it

On the back cover, a blurb from French magazine /Le Point/ raves, “An exception, a marvel: the budding of an incomparable, a perfect writer.” Pardon? Book reviewers, like myself, are known to be a highly excitable bunch. We may safely assume that espresso was involved in the writing of this review, though amphetamines cannot be ruled out. My personal theory is that when this book appeared, in 1985, after the very, very strenuous joys of the noveau roman and the French experimental fiction that f ...more

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Jan 16, 2019 Justin Evans rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Apparently this is important for literary historical reasons, but then, lots of solid but not great books are. What's good here can be found more fully in Toussaint's later work, and, mercifully, what's bad here (numbered paragraphs for no reason, for instance, as well as silly juvenile rebellions) is not. Great cover, though.

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Mar 11, 2020 Donia Al-Issa added it · review of another edition

With my limited understanding of french, here is a review. This is a book about a man who decides to live in his bathroom contemplating life, death and his toenails, and the colour of the bathroom wall. His girlfriend and family seem unbothered by it.

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Jun 07, 2017 Owen Prum rated it really liked it

lala!

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Mar 28, 2018 erika purrington rated it did not like it · review of another edition

most tiresome for what's 100 pages or so

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May 08, 2019 Antonia rated it really liked it

"I ought to take some risk, I said, looking down and stroking the enamel of the bathtub, the risk of compromising the quietude of my abstract life for ... I did not finish my sentence."

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Jan 25, 2016 Colin Cox rated it liked it · review of another edition

This is the second Toussaint novel I've read in the last few weeks, and I am equally charmed and befuddled by him. The Bathroom is a short, meandering book that attempts to understand and conceptualize the relationship between mobility and immobility. These terms are used loosely and don't necessarily signify a single, particular idea (for example, Toussaint isn't specifically writing about social mobility). By this unnamed narrator's estimation, mobility is the inevitable trek toward immobility This is the second Toussaint novel I've read in the last few weeks, and I am equally charmed and befuddled by him. The Bathroom is a short, meandering book that attempts to understand and conceptualize the relationship between mobility and immobility. These terms are used loosely and don't necessarily signify a single, particular idea (for example, Toussaint isn't specifically writing about social mobility). By this unnamed narrator's estimation, mobility is the inevitable trek toward immobility. He suggests early in the novel:

When one is at home, there are two ways to watch rain fall from behind a pane of glass. The first is to keep one's gaze fixed on a particular point in space and observe the succession of raindrops passing the chosen spot; this is restful to the mind but gives no conception of the ultimate goal of the movement. The second, which requires greater agility of vision, consists in following, with the eyes, the fall of a single raindrop at a time, from its intrusion into the field of vision to the dispersal of its water on the ground...the essential tendency of motion, however lighting-swift it may appear, is toward immobility and that, however slow it may sometimes seem, it is continuously drawing bodies toward death, which is immobility. (25)

The question of mobility and immobility, discomfort and comfort, is a central preoccupation of Toussaint. But rarely are these ideas explored and articulated in an elongated rumination. These ideas are suggested and alluded to, which is perhaps one of the book's strength.

Yet, Toussaint's unnamed narrator (perhaps not unlike Salinger's Holden Caulfield) is petulant in ways that are woefully unbecoming. I don't mean to sound draconian or prudish, but there's a particular moment of misogynistic violence near the end of the book that while thematically interesting, is ultimately unsuccessful and, to some degree, spoils the book.

I intend to read more Toussaint. By my estimation, his work is best experienced holistically. So I may revise this review once I have more familiarity with his work, but for now, I am left feeling a little underwhelmed. ...more

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Mar 10, 2020 Fernanda Amis rated it it was amazing

Awesome counter-culture novel

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May 30, 2010 Stephen Durrant rated it really liked it

This small Toussaint novel engages the reader for reasons hard to explain. The narrator is something of a loser who sets forth a whole series of strange and sometimes quite humorous events in a flat, direct style. Moreover, an exact repetition of several lines (p. 16 & 131 in this edition), plus an entirely unbelievable event towards the end of the novel, in which the narrator embeds a dart in his girlfriend's forehead, raises the likelihood that the entire central section of the novel is really ...more

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Jun 28, 2009 Brad rated it liked it

I bought this book expecting something funny. I, instead, found a story broken into numbered paragraphs about a gloomy Austrian who spends most of the book sitting around a hotel in Venice. The time is unclear, the exact reasons he heads to Italy are unclear and the exact nature of the relationship the narrator shares with Edmondsson (his wife) is also unclear. The story seems to be about peaceful meditation, albeit masquerading as a story about a depressive researcher searching for something (h ...more

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Dec 20, 2008 Tim added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2008

Toussaint's getting a lot of attention lately because Dalkey just reissued three of his novels. This was Toussaint's debut, in 1985, and it's a quick entertaining read about the desire toward inaction. I liked it more than I remember liking Toussaint's Television, which I remember thinking was kinda meh (though I might like it more now, having enjoyed The Bathroom a lot).

Incidentally, it took me less than two hours to read this book, but in that time two people looked hard at the cover (by Nicho ...more

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May 19, 2009 Stephen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009

I read a description (somewhere) of Toussaint being something of a French Jarmusch and since then, I've had a difficult time trying to avoid imagining "Broken Flowers" era Bill Murray as the protagonist of each of Toussaint's novels - especially this one. He doesn't fit the character - who tells us he is twenty-seven going on twenty-nine - but it's really, really hard for me to escape this.

Contrary to some opinions, a lot happens in Toussaint's novels; most of the time, though, it's not typicall ...more

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Jun 03, 2010 Emilia rated it it was ok · review of another edition

When I began to spend my afternoons in the bathroom, I had no intentions of moving into it; no, I would pass some pleasant hours there, meditating in the bathtub, sometimes dressed, othertimes naked.

12. Images without sounds are powerless to express horror. If the last few seconds of life of the ninety billion humans who have died since the earth was formed could be filmed and shown in succession in a movie theater, the spectacle would, I think, soon pall. If on the other hand the final osunds ...more

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May 03, 2008 Adam rated it liked it

Shelves: dalkey-archive

Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s first novel is a good example of the quirky, whimsical, mostly-plot-free narrative he’s known for. I’m not especially blown away by Toussaint’s stories, so what is it about this guy? Well, I think you really read Toussaint for the unexpected laughs that he pulls out of you on a regular basis. And the books are so short, which, I’m sure, is key to this type of writing. Oh, and this novel has one shocking moment in it that’s unlike anything in later Toussaint books.

An enj ...more

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Nov 08, 2013 Jeremy rated it really liked it

Shelves: novels

A very funny book about a man who prefers to live in his bathroom, or as he says in his own words "the bathroom was where I felt best". The theme of mobility and immobility is key here. In the beginning the narrator decides to live in the bathroom in Paris but then contrarily he moves to Venice only to confine himself to another limited space: his Venetian hotel. The humour is mostly deadpan, but a dart thrown in the heat of the moment provided me with the best laugh. Another highlight is the fr ...more

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Sep 28, 2007 Michael rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: kafka, beckett fans

Shelves: alive

a pretty fun book. A man wants to stay in his bathroom. There are some Polish artists painting his kitchen and trying to prep an octopus for dinner. Then the man moves to Venice and buys some underwear and tennis balls and hangs out and has slightly bound up sex in his room.

I think it's the point, but I wish there was something more pulling the story along than the ridiculously 'French' voice. I loved it, the voice is so immediate and fun, but didn't race through. Made me want to read Televisio ...more

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Feb 16, 2010 Saxon rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Story about a weird, gloomy Austrian who spends most of his time either in the bathroom of his Paris apartment or in a decrepit Venice hotel. Nice premise, boring story. I laughed a few times and I get the subtle Jacques Tati-esque humor that attempts to play off the absurdities of modern life but, I wasn't feeling it. Toussaint's writing(or the translation of his writing) is so simple and plain that it becomes easily forgettable rather than the effectual interplay it attempts with the themes of ...more

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About Jean-Philippe Toussaint

Jean-Philippe Toussaint

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Jean-Philippe Toussaint (born 29 November, 1957, Brussels) is a Belgian prose writer and filmmaker. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages and he has had his photographs displayed in Brussels and Japan. Toussaint won the Prix Médicis in 2005 for his novel Fuir. The 2006 book La mélancolie de Zidane (Paris: Minuit, 2006) is a lyrical essay on the headbutt administered by the ...more

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Quotes from The Bathroom

“...we had long silences together over the line. I liked those moments. With my ear close to the receiver, I'd try to hear her breath, her breathing. When she broke the silence, her voice became more important.” — 0 likes

“In the street, asked a running man the way to the post office. I've always enjoyed asking people in a hurry for information.” — 0 likes

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