Television

The self-possessed protagonist and narrator of Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s novel is an acedemic on sabbatical in Berlin. He plans to write a groundbreaking study of Titian, but after a couple of months, all he’s completed is ＂When Musset.＂ He blames his obsession with watching TV for preventing him from writing more, so he decides to stop watching television all together (after the end of the Tour de France, of course). Still unable to write his book, he is haunted by television, from the video surveillance screens in a museum to a moment when it seems everyone in Berlin is tuned in to Baywatch. One of Toussaint’s funniest antiheroes, the protagonist of Television turns daily occurrences into comic nightmares about the influence of television on our lives.