Patrick Modiano won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2014
for the body of his work which includes a couple of dozen novels and
"autofictions:" the Nobel citation says the prize was given "for the art
of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies
and uncovered the life-world of the Occupation. " Obviously there is a
lot of imaginative work here, because Modiano was born in July 1945,
just as the War was ending, and knew the Occupation only through the
memories of others.
Pedigree purports to be the truth behind his fictions, the story of his life up until the time he published his first, widely acclaimed novel, La Place de l’Étoile at the age of 23. The title of this work is a pun, referring both to the Paris landmark and to the wartime joke about the Jew who was asked where la Place de l'étoile was, and who pointed to the left side of his chest where Jews were supposed to display the yellow star that marked them for Nazi persecution.
What happened to one's family in the past is a question that many writers return to again and again. In Modiano's case finding out has required much sleuthing, and more than once he's prepared a partial answer. A case in point is La rue des boutiques obscures , which is almost surrealistic in its presentation of tantalizing hints about what the truth is. In Pedigree: A Memoir the portrait he paints of his dysfunctional family is damning. He suggests at one point that his mother cared more about her little, pedigreed lap dog than she did about her two sons. He reports near the end his father's heavy-handed machinations designed to get him to follow a conventional path. He chronicles the way he defied his father, and adds with only a little regret, that he wishes his father had lived to see his success.
But one person's obsessions, however strangely fascinating when encountered for the first time, can grow boring. Dany Laferrière, the Haitian-Québécois now a member of the Académie française, says his literary work is like a house that he has returned to many times, remodelling it and adding new rooms. In his case, I would advise reading The Enigma of the Return where his story is presented in its most poetic and searing version to date.
Similarly, Modiano seems trapped by his past and France's past. He writes well, but my advice would be to read this book and not to bother with his others.
Pedigree purports to be the truth behind his fictions, the story of his life up until the time he published his first, widely acclaimed novel, La Place de l’Étoile at the age of 23. The title of this work is a pun, referring both to the Paris landmark and to the wartime joke about the Jew who was asked where la Place de l'étoile was, and who pointed to the left side of his chest where Jews were supposed to display the yellow star that marked them for Nazi persecution.
What happened to one's family in the past is a question that many writers return to again and again. In Modiano's case finding out has required much sleuthing, and more than once he's prepared a partial answer. A case in point is La rue des boutiques obscures , which is almost surrealistic in its presentation of tantalizing hints about what the truth is. In Pedigree: A Memoir the portrait he paints of his dysfunctional family is damning. He suggests at one point that his mother cared more about her little, pedigreed lap dog than she did about her two sons. He reports near the end his father's heavy-handed machinations designed to get him to follow a conventional path. He chronicles the way he defied his father, and adds with only a little regret, that he wishes his father had lived to see his success.
But one person's obsessions, however strangely fascinating when encountered for the first time, can grow boring. Dany Laferrière, the Haitian-Québécois now a member of the Académie française, says his literary work is like a house that he has returned to many times, remodelling it and adding new rooms. In his case, I would advise reading The Enigma of the Return where his story is presented in its most poetic and searing version to date.
Similarly, Modiano seems trapped by his past and France's past. He writes well, but my advice would be to read this book and not to bother with his others.
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