The art of doing nothing

When I picked up Jean-Philippe Toussaint's Making Love, I also picked up another short novel by him - Television - and had thought I'd read one or the other, depending on which one I like more. Having started the former and loving the 20-odd pages I have read so far, I should have returned the latter along with some other books this weekend. However, instead of reading the two books I have already started (Making love and Mogador), I started reading Television last night.

The premise of the book is that an academic, on sabbatical in Berlin, decides to shut off his TV to concentrate on writing about the painted Titian (Tiziano Vecelli, initials: T. V.), only to become "hyper-attuned to the medium's pervasiveness. " (quote from Publishers Weekly, © Reed Business Information)

In the first few pages, he leads us through his recent routine of watching the French Tennis Open from afternoon to nightfall, which left him "nauseated and numbed mind empty, legs limps, eyes bleary." He writes:

Apart from that I did nothing. By doing nothing, I mean doing nothing impulsive or mechanical, nothing dictated by habit or laziness. By doing nothing, I mean doing only the essential, thinking, reading, listening to music, making love, going for walks, going to the pool, gathering mushrooms. Doing nothing, contrary to what people rather simplistically imagine, is a thing that requires method and discipline, concentration, an open mind.

Later, in writing about his daily routine of going for a leisurely swim (more about that in the next post), he writes:

"But high performance isn't my goal."

And that, I say, is in itself a noble mighty goal. :)