Hello Gentle Reader,
In Patrick Modiano’s short novella, “Afterimage,” the elusive, fading, and willfully transparent photographer, Francis Jansen admits his favourite punctuation mark are ellipses. Those three elusive periods trailing off into nothing. They are the incomplete punctuation. The cliff hanger; the hang man. Ellipses lack the finality of the period; the engaged and curious nature of the question mark; the excitement and enthusiasm of the exclamation mark. Each of these previous punctuation marks strike the border, carving out a defined end of a sentence. They conclude with authority. Ellipses, however, lack an ending. Rather than strike down with gavel assurance they trail off. For ellipses its not a matter of the end of the line, rather the track was never installed. They fade into the incomplete and the unknown. Dissolving into nothingness. They are the evaporating transparent ending. Perfectly fitting for Francis Jansen who seeks to continually pursue a state of invisibility, an ambition and trait shared by so many of Modiano’s characters. Sublimation is a particular Patrick Modiano literary quality. Fixed nodal points and individuals inevitably vanish as if sublimated to a vaporous state. Despite their vapid departure they linger in shadow, cutting haunting figures as grey ghosts. They are spectral and phantasms existing in the unreliable recesses of memory; summoned forth by happenstance, chance, and circumstance. Existing in the vague recess between lamplight and shadow, incorporeal and incoherent.
Patrick Modiano is often compared to fellow countrymen and writers Marcel Proust and Alain-Fournier for his dedication to the theme of memory, loss, absence, incomplete romances – if one can call them that. Yet, Proust’s exploration of memory was gilded and luxurious. The famous madeleine scene showcases Proust’s extravagant and sensuous sensibilities cascading in an uncontrolled torrent of sensations as reminisces and memories stir from their hibernation and incarceration whereby, they are inspected like fine china or silver in need of a polish, but whose values are more then obvious to the beholder. Proust’s madeleine experience is the gateway to the essence of memory, the involuntary and unfiltered impressions invoked by unknown ritual and ceremony, whereby they bubble to the surface containing experiences and sensations. For Proust involuntary memory retained a sense of unembellished purity and naturalness; free from the adulterations and manipulations of willfully recalled or intellectual produced memories, and by being unburdened by any editorial contextualization, embody the essence of the past in all its wistful and ungraspable longing. For Proust memory was the process of rebuilding a gilded and golden chateau. Elaborate and luxurious, an otherwise romantic ideal, safe from the corrosive acid wash of reality. Inconsequential details or unsavoury veracities are left behind at the gates. Remembrance, regardless of how its produced, inevitably will align itself with convivences and personal narratives. For Modiano, memory is less a rebuild of times past, as it is the recovery of faded photographs and film scenes salvaged from the banks of the river oblivion. Incomplete registers, diaries, address books, newspaper articles and phonebooks, are the only souvenirs and evidence of a bygone era, cataloguing a new dissolved city and world lost within the inevitabilities of progress and time marching forward. A netherworld and purgatory that plunges Modiano’s characters, personas, and pseudo stand-ins into continually delving into an aimless and inarticulate search of the past.
Some writers are accused of covering the same ground within their work. Their literary themes and preoccupations developed and ingrained. In the case of Patrick Modiano, its not a matter of a writer returning to the same old haunts, it’s the writer writing the same novel in different variations. The entirety of Modiano’s bibliography is best described as a Yayoi Kusama infinity room, where the gleam and sparkle of light reflects and ripple over and over again in a mesmerizing designed illusion. So too are Modiano’s novels. While each one is independent in scope, they all inevitably cross and crisscross the same ground. Some critics have described Modiano’s novels as mere chapters within a larger tome. Each one a celestial body within the vague ether of space. Names and characteristics are recycled and reused throughout the bibliography adding to the delirium and continued sense of déjà vu. This explains why critics implore readers to sample a variety of Modiano’s novels in order to gain a robust understanding of the authors output, whereby readers are enveloped in the distinct gossamer prose, coming across familiar names, situations, and streets. Retrospect is yet another significant component of Modiano’s bibliography, as youth is described best in his novel, “Out of the Dark,” in all of its vagrant incompleteness:
“We had no real qualities, except the one that youth gives to everyone for a very brief time, like a vague promise that will never be kept.”
In this regard, Patrick Modiano’s characters are always silhouettes. Mere traces and impressions left behind. Outlines and shapes dissolving away. They exist in a translucent state of transience, whereby they slip further away. Their fates always unknown, but they leave an aftertaste of menace and melancholy, components of guilt and mystery.
“Scene of the Crime,” folds back—imperfectly, slanted, and angled of course—on an earlier Modiano novella, “Suspended Sentences.” “Scene of the Crime,” should not be described as a sibling, child, or offshoot of “Suspended Sentences.” Nor is it a spiritual successor. The notion of successorship is best abandoned. The events of “Suspended Sentences,” haunt and linger within “Scene of the Crime,” as details are salt and peppered throughout the narrative: a house on Rue du Docteur-Kurzenne (previously incarnated as Rue du Docteur-Dordaine in “Suspended Sentences,”), overgrown gardens, the house of the immortally famous Dr. Guillotine, a cast of characters concealing an incoherent darkness. Even the protagonist of “Scene of the Crime,” Jean Brosman is yet another Modiano iteration, repurposed and remerging in a new independent light from his previous incarnations. Yet these facts and facets do not align. They’ve been altered and reconfigured. Patrick Modiano further pathologizes and questions the veracity and reliance on memory and recollection of events as ordained fact. What emerges from the stagnant bog of memory and the imperfect shores of oblivion, is the dread and menace that haunts, lingers, and quietly tortures Modiano’s characters. In the case of Jean Brosman, it’s the vague events of his childhood. Virtually abandoned by his parents, his mother is referenced as an actress touring and his father merely absent, he is left in the custody of friends. While referenced as affectionate if albeit distant surrogates in “Suspended Sentences,” they’ve taken on a more menacing phosphorescent glow. In typical Modiano fashion, Bosman is reintroduced to this world once again by coincidence and chance, by both a song and spying a luxurious American watch. In turn, the enigmatic Camilie Lucas, a bookkeeper who is endearingly referred to as “Deathmask,” for her inscrutability:
“Right from their first meeting, he had noticed that Camille was very good at keeping quiet. Usually people talked way too much about themselves. But he had understood pretty quickly that she would always remain silent about her past, her relationships, her doings and perhaps her accounting work. He did not blame her. You like people the way they are. Even if you might not fully trust them.”
Re-introduces Bosman to a world of shifting shadows, whereby recollections and childhood memories are brought reawakened but brittle and incomplete:
“He only had to think about those two people to become all the more sensitive to the dust, or rather smell, of time.”
A certain Guy Vincent who
maybe Roger Vincent from “Suspended Sentences,” haunts the “Scene of the Crime,”
like a low hanging fog. The name Rose-Marie Krawell repeats through the novel
like an incantation, leaving readers to wonder if she is Annie from “Suspended
Sentences.” Modiano never clarifies or confirms. Just as Jean Bosman gropes and
fumbles through his own memories, readers are equally left in the dark with a sense
of mystery that never quite materializes or is solved. Of course one does not
read Patrick Modiano for plot, narrative, or suspenseful attempt at solving the
case. To read a Modiano novel is the pleasure of being engulfed within the elegiac
atmosphere populated by shadows and devious ambiguous threats, whereby the verity
of memory is always in a state of questioning. “Scene of the Crime,” is no
different then any of the previous Patrick Modiano novels, another chapter
within his repetitious bibliography of existential noir novels. What separates “Scene
of the Crime,” from other Modiano novels is its apparent insinuations of
kinship between itself and “Suspended Sentences,” without aligning in any
coherent fashion reinforcing the questioning nature of memory. “Scene of the
Crime,” in turn distances itself further, as Jean Bosman looks back at the
events of his life in a spectrum of time, with each recollection casting more
doubt over the preceding events. In turn as a protagonist, Jean Bosman is more
antagonistic and bolder then Modiano’s usual characters who drift through the
novels in a daze. Bosman gives the impression of delighting in his flirtations
with the threats that stalk him, all the while resigning himself to pursuit of
becoming silent. As in the case of Francis Jansen, Modiano’s novels fade into
ellipses unresolved and the sense of being incomplete. “Scene of the Crime,” is
no different. Jean Bosman reviews the dubious events of his childhood without
coming to any clear understanding of the stakes at play. Bosman’s retrospective
operates in that vague borderline between memory and fabrication, with Bosman
showing neither interest or concern with clarifying dreamed events to that of
fact.
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
M. Mary
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