In writing we are always negotiating these two "seemingly irreconcilable notions," writes the French novelist Jean-Philippe Toussaint: urgency and patience. We can't write without drive, without the feeling that we need to finish what we're saying while we still have time - and yet we know from experience that we can't rush it, or we'll ruin it. I think anyone who makes things will appreciate Toussaint's thoughtful investigation of process and creation.
— Lauren Elkin (author of Flâneuse)Both a sense of urgency and a goodly amount of patience are required for any writer to produce a novel. Moving between these two poles, Jean-Philippe Toussaint here collects a series of short essays on the art of writing, both his own and that of writers he's admired, for example Kafka, Beckett, Dostoyevsky, and Proust. As Toussaint himself has said, It's only natural for writers... to say a word about how they write and what they owe to great authors.