The Birdcage Archives

Thursday 2 March 2023

Such Fine Boys

Hello Gentle Reader,

The literary career of Patrick Modiano begins with a bleak satire of the nationally held Gaullist legend of France’s resilience and resistance against the Nazi invasion and subsequent Occupation. Modiano exposed the rampant anti-Semitism that predated these events, tarnishing the readily held belief promoted by General de Gaulle that the French citizenry were allies of the Jews—and though it must be conceded that some certainly were—the collaboration of the regular French citizens, as Modiano so eloquently puts it, the explicit collaboration of the French authorities during the Occupation cannot be so easily dismissed as traitors or coerced collaborators, but were in fact regular French patriots, who engaged in the long standing tradition of acceptable anti-Semitism before the war and the Occupation. The gilded Gaullist legend and image was therefore cast into rusted ruin. Modiano’s days as satirist came to an end however, when his literary preoccupations moved towards his now famous grisaille portraits of Paris and his noir exploration of the inarticulate and dubious discourse of memory. Through each of his novels, Modiano has curated a truly ambient state that is both familiar to readers and citizens of Paris, while being continually unrecognizable or existing within the negative space within the recesses of the past. Modiano’s Paris is one of exhaustion. Wounded and weary, it’s a city of ghosts, intrigues, and secrets left to languish and be forgotten. Its citizens are always existing within a state of incognito. Lost within their own selfish lives, they seek to forge new identities and destinies for themselves. Their worlds existing on the perilous stages of superficiality, teetering on the edge of the abandonment and ruin. The exclusive boarding school: Valvert School for Boys, depicted within Modiano’s novel “Such Fine Boys,” is an anomaly within Modiano’s literary landscape. Valvert exists like a ship moored off of the coast, inaccessible and insular in its own existence, both fixture of a small community, while being separated from it. Valvert is merely the hostel and dumping ground of the young men of neglectful well-to-do parents or relative, who consumed and absorbed within their affairs, leave the education and rearing of their sons to others. A niche role that Valvert happily accommodates. The schools is run by the athletic ‘Pedro,’ Jeanschmidt, who takes instilling structure and education within his students seriously. There are rules, there are expectations, and there are privileges. Jeanschmidt is both commander and comrade to his student body, while being the nucleus of Valvert, both founder and foundation. The singular consistency within the institution. Under his charge is a roguish student body, who perhaps lacking in instilled familiar bonds, create their own fraternal bonds amongst each other. Intwining each other with the shared sense of despondency, while being susceptible to waves and bouts of melancholy. Always existing on the margins of the well to do, all the while being completely displaced and disposed.

“Such Fine Boys,” is a unique novel by Patrick Modiano, rather then being narrated and propelled by a singular questioning and questing individual, its an ensemble of voices calling out within the echoes of each other, resonating within the ley lines and undercurrents, the very faint threads of fate and circumstance, which both connects and intertwines their lives within each other. As Valvert as the catalyst and beacon of their shared lives, these voices depict the roguish gallery of characters who walked its halls, sat through one of its films, engaged in casual delinquency, and often participated in unsanctioned nightly excursions. Then there are those others, who found themselves expelled, unable to meet the requirements laid out by Jeanschmidt (so affectionally called Pedro) they are ceremoniously stripped of their standing with the school in a mock military fashion and removed from the school’s grounds, where they rejoin both the liberated and excommunicated. From there they spiral out into the world. Existing in an ephemeral state both lacking substance and depth. Its this predisposition for superficiality, which leaves them in a state of hollowness. Their existential dread fails to be communicated with properly or grappled with. From good time to good time, they exist within a purgatory of their own demise, still incapable of having meaningful life or relationships beyond appeasement or cuddling their insecurities. Members of the Valvert faculty, such as one aimless and washed-up chemistry professor, are equally lost after the school closes. Now cast out into the world he finds himself in the company of young men, which is never confirmed only insinuated, to have a certain intimate relationship with them. Despite cozying up with the youthful, he is still lost as he wades into the void of anonymity and oblivion. A chance encounter with a former student, now minor actor in a theatre troupe, allows this otherwise displaced chemistry professor to rise above the squander of he presents, and reminisce about those former days, those otherwise better days.

Each chapter provides further voice and distinction to the novel, building on the legacy and incubation of Valvert in providing a sense of place and belonging to the hapless boys who found shelter beneath its roof. Perhaps stereotypically, like all boarding schools, Valvert took a keen interest in both the development of academic aptitude (if not understanding), as well as fostering and instilling a sense of sportsmanship in its pupils, while employing running or other cardiac activities as discipline measures, all of which in turn fosters a sense of athleticism. The physical education teacher, M Kovnovitzine (affectionally called Kovo) was regarded warmly by the students, though Kovo had a particular liking for an odd boy by the name of Bob McFowles, whose country and lineage was American by birth, but found himself stranded in Valvert as a son of equally aloof parents. McFowles, (like the others) is a tragic figure in his own right, but an accomplished sportsman, and the point of pride of Kovo. He is reintroduced as an adult in the beauty of Versailles, where he and his new wife Anne-Marie have taken up honeymooning. Their honeymoon was overseen by a hot and sunny August, which the honeymooners took full advantage of. They sunbathed on the lawn of the Trianon, where McFowles embraced his youth further, wearing what is described as a leopard print bathing suit, which the narrator digresses to reflect on this style’s popularity in relation to Tarzan during their time in Valvert. Perhaps due to the heat, or sun exposure, McFowles grows increasingly longing for the sea, going so far as to have a break down over its absence in Versailles. In line with all tragedy, McFowles, young and full of life, dies in the vanity of youth. McFowles is that special Modiano character, one who has a thirst for life, a reminder and martyr of youthful abandonment and carefree displacement. McFowles finds himself immortalized in his small leopard print swimsuit, sunbathing on the lawn of Trianon, a portrait of summer and youthful splendor.

One of the best chapters from this novel is also one of its longest. In fashion and inline with much of Modiano’s bibliography, this chapter recounts the life from the periphery and the distance. Like a spectator at the zoo or aquarium, an alumni of Valvert recounts his time as tutor of a kindred spirit, a neglected child by the name of Little Jewel, who is a starring child actress in a film that is repeatedly screened on campus. This Little Jewel is one and the same from the same titular novel. To quote J.M.G le Clezio from his introduction of “Such Fine Boys,”:

“The passages of Such Fine Boys in which Modiano describes the tender bond between the youthful narrator and Little Jewel, who has been abandoned and abused by her overambitious mother, are among the loveliest pages written in the French language in the second half of the twentieth century.” 

This chapter of “Such Fine Boys,” is best described as a guided tour into what kind of world and lives Patrick Modiano’s characters inhabit. Each of them presents an almost noncommittal almost nomadic existence. There’s the bleak casual disregard of Francis Jansen, who no longer exists within a lived reality, but instead resigned himself to the afterimage of life, the negative imprint left behind. The haunted and despondent Ingrid Rigaud, whose suicide in Milan, is both casual tragedy and the catalyst for the Modiano narrator Jean, who is not only content with the thought of disappearing himself, but fascinated by sanitizing all traces of himself from memory. Then there are more abstract characters, such as Little Jewel’s mother, whose identity shifts within the soft yellow light, with a flash she’s the Countess; in the backroom she’s Sonia; to another she’s Odette. Through each name she changes both airs, personality, but also function. The life of the Countess (or Sonia O'Dauyé or Odette) was an illusion, riddled with glamour and glitter, it existed in the most hollowed halls of someone else’s charity, and even than its generosity comes at the expense of other favours. The description of the Countess and Little Jewel’s apartment strikes the note at just how despondent and immaterial their lives are. The apartment is scantly furnished. There is little evidence to give way for habitation or life within it. It’s a flop flat. Faded squares were pictures and painting hang are distinguishable in the low yellowed light. Rooms are vacant. What little furniture there is, is only piled together for the sake of one person or a couple of people. All of which comes in complete contrast to the projected image of the Countess, the otherwise high-class socialite, is merely the faded glitter of times gone by, whose whole visage is supported by an intricate scaffolding of appearances. Yet the good times always come to an end, free lunches in turn get invoiced, and the scaffolding too falls away.

The novel is filled with many other voices. Legends and alumni of Valvert School for Boys. The otherwise lost and forgotten or inconvenient sons of the wealthy. They become in their adult years tragic and displaced figures. Some die in blaze and glory; others move on with their unexciting and uneventful lives; there are those who become vagrants, so abandoned by their neglectful parents; while others fail to grow up entirely, living in a state of gentrified infantilism; then there are those, who seek to shed their skin, their identity, their pasts, and start over, living that life they themselves were so cheated, even if it means the contemplation of homicide. “Such Fine Boys,” is a marvelous novel, truly one of Modiano’s more unique and best works, encompassing a collective narrative and ensemble to provide a unique portrait of those roguish and amorphous beings that are the hallmarks of Modiano’s fiction. “Such Fine Boys,” is a euphoric and harmonic orchestrated novel, a lament of lost youth and childhood, while shifting cadence to a dirge of the unknown.  A compelling departure in form, while maintaining all the quintessential elements of Modiano’s style and themes.  

Thank-you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read

M. Mary

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