Understanding Nobel Prize Winner Patrick Modiano

[@richardlee4730]

Modiano is my favorite contemporary author and I have read all of his books in print in English at least twice. I agree with the points in the video and would add: Modiano is looking back at a time when he escaped annihilation or vanishing into obscurity like all the other characters in his books. In virtually all his books, he is a survivor of a trauma or some incident that left a deep impression, and the writer has only recently dared to look back at this time of his past. The problem is, the threads of memory have mostly been severed, there are only a few remaining, and those are often not necessarily reliable. He does not talk about himself much in the books, except in relation to others, usually he is concerned with a woman he had a relationship with (often she is a little older and the relationship is vaguely romantic), and the characters (usually, older men who are peripheral to that relationship, morally ambivalent and mean to exploit the protagonist's naivete).As in typical noir style, the woman in question is also often morally ambivalent. A lot is made of Modiano's commentary on human memory, and while that is true, my take is that he is mostly concerned with identity and attempts to use memory to try to create a narative throughline from his past to his present. The stories are about how these attempts always fail despite his research, gathering in documents, notebooks, birth certificates, old phone books, etc. even as the documents seem to provide less assurance than they seem to mock his attempts to constuct an identity by such things. The books always end with the protagonist unsatisfied; he has stirred up the past and what has he to show for it? Actually, I think more than the protagonist seems to realize. He has had a certain amount of success in repairing some severed threads (certainly not as many as he'd like) by returning to the "scene of the crime". He has, albeit imperfectly, recalled the incident responsible for severing the memories. I think that's why he's forgotten so much of the period, it was his mind protecting him from the pain of this period in his life that he can now - from the comfort of an apparently routine, uneventful existence as a writer - recreate a portion of the past. The problem remains that although he has added many more pieces to the puzzle than existed previously, the picture is still incomplete. Finally, I'd argue that what Modiano is really up to is pointing out that the individual of modernity is doomed to obscurity because - and he never states this - we no longer live as we have the vast majority of our existence as humans - in tribes grounded in tribal mythology - but as individuals in nuclear families within large societies governed by impersonal bureaucracies and so we attempt to find meaning in our individual stories which are mostly severed from our ancient human past. I can't say that I have evidence that Modiano feels this way, it is only my interpretation.

[@icebergtheoryx]

Patrick Modiano is one of my all-time favorite writers. He can be an acquired taste, though. I hope this gives you a sense of what you're getting into with Modiano's work.

[@air.filmss]

beautiful video, you definitely captured the essence of modiano in a concise yet appreciative fashion

[@jimstan23]

I read Missing Person a few years ago and thought it unbelievably slight for a Nobel winner. I read that you have to read the body of work as a whole to truly get it. I read La Place De L'Etoile earlier today. Incendiary stuff. You can see where Houellebecq gets his schtick from.

[@abooswalehmosafeer173]

I wonder whether Mofiano suffers from some sort of Memory phenomenon that through his literary talents enables him to write such uncanny events that his books portray.Proust too for that matter has become a person of deep interest to psychology and psychoanalysis. ""Jetais la oui,non jetais labas,cest si cest ca oui oui...."