Hello Gentle Reader,
There is a quote from Patrick Modiano’s novel “Out of the Dark,” which attempts to capture the essence of many of Modiano’s narrators and characters, who have, in a myriad of ways, been orphaned by time and having been left untethered and unmoored within a liminal space, one whose temporal nodal points have yet to be delineated in any chronological construct outside of the understanding they exist within the wake of ominous events and periods; specifically in these cases, the dog eared era known as “The Occupation,” and “Vichy,” both during and after, whose shadows underpin a France – and more specifically Paris – whose eagerness to change their wartime narrative, is not only a nationalistic point of concern but an existential one, which can only be achieved through demolishing the reminders of this humiliation and disgrace, and reconstruct a new one to fit their preferential image of: underground resistance, everyday subterfuge and the unyielding principles and ideals that are unmistakably French: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity; while simultaneously erasing or denying any testimony, testament or evidence to the contrary, that is, competing discourse, which brings to light or gives air to the notion that France or its citizens, complied, aided, abetted, or worst of all: collaborated with the occupying forces; and so Paris and France during this interlude become shapeless and shifting, completely emancipated from time, which extends into these postwar periods, populated by Modiano’s characters and narrators: amnesiac drifters, disillusioned writers and filmmakers, questioning detectives and investigators, directionless youth, vagabonds, petty criminals and other dubious and disgraced shadows; who Modiano writes:
“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.”
Youth unto itself is not a subject or theme specified in the novels of Patrick Modiano. Rather it is a state. A piece of the novels landscape. A feature employed to provide some definition of narrator or the subsequent characters, in addition to placing them within some context of time. Modiano’s eternal themes are far more compelling beyond the transient mercurial period of youth; memory, its mechanics and unreliability; time, both its passage and its caustic disintegrating touch; identity, both its shifting nature and the search for it, having been obsoleted by the passage of time, erased by amnesia, or reconfigured and reinvented; all of which is wrapped up in Modiano’s signature style: unadorned atmospheric prose, a reserved language caked with dust, perpetually distant veiled by a layer of gauze obscuring any sense of clarity or elucidation. It is difficult to imagine sunlight in Modiano’s world, which instead finds itself coloured in sepia tones or the black and white portraits of the mid-century postwar noir world. Sunlight in the world of Modiano exists simply to frame, pose, texturize and characterise the shadows. Conversely, it will become such an overwhelming substance it bleaches and erases the world into a whiteout of nothingness. As a writer, Patrick Modiano is not concerned with illuminating or enlightening. Rather, Modiano is a writer compelled with asking questions, strolling through obscured boulevards, retracing a lost landscape on the verge of being redeveloped, displacing the ghosts, the memories, the evidence of ones past or their connection to it. Phone books, address books, personal notebooks – another staple of Modiano’s fiction – become the portable archives capturing this evaporating and evolving urbane world, desperate to transform itself into something new and modern, something with soft lighting and vogue products, be it clothes, purses, hats, perfumes. Whatever it is, just make it luxurious. Do away with the old dim garages with their enduring smell of petrol. The operation itself one which celebrates the notion of being perpetually: ‘in transit.’ The state of transience is the cornerstone of the conditions for back door dealings and black markets. Just imagine then, the back offices glowing behind opaque windows. Who knows what questionable business agreements took place back there. The records having been thrown into various fires. The documentation, corroboration and confirmation of all those suspicions is expelled from the chimneys in plumes of ubiquitous smoke. The means to get the conviction, and if not conviction then the ratification, of what took place have all but disappeared, having been destroyed. There is a misguided notion that this would stamp authenticity to one’s memories, affirming their sense of time and place in addition to veracity. Never forget, in a Patrick Modiano novel resolution including confirmations, affirmations, ratifications, do not take place. Conclusions are too neat, too clean. Modiano never ends in certainty, but fades further into the inarticulate incompletion of ellipses.
The surreal duality of life under the occupation as cited by the Swedish Academy in the Nobel Prize citation, is finally presented and given some tangible shape in Patrick Modiano’s Nobel Lecture:
“That Paris of the occupation was a strange place. On the surface, life went on ‘as before’ – the theatres, cinemas, music halls and restaurants were open for business. There were songs playing on the radio. Theatre and cinema attendances were in fact much higher than before the war, as if these places were shelters where people gathered and huddled next to each other for reassurance. But there are bizarre details indicating that Paris was not at all the same as before. The lack of cars made it a silent city – a silence that revealed the rustling of trees, the clip-clopping of horses’ hooves, the noise of the crowd’s footsteps and the hum of voices. In the silence of the streets and of the black-out imposed at around five o’clock in winter, during which the slightest light from windows was forbidden, this city seemed to be absent from itself – the city ‘without eyes’ as the Nazi occupiers used to say. Adults and children could disappear without trace from one moment to the next, and even among friends, nothing was ever really spelled out and conversations were never frank because of the feeling of menace in the air.”
“Young
Once,” takes place in the afterimage of the occupation; but this time casts a
long deep shadow, particularly through the repetitive mention of the Vélodrome
d'Hiver, where Louis’s father was a bicycle racer of some noticeable renown.
For the uninitiated, however, the Vélodrome d'Hiver – colloquially styled Vel’
d’Hiv – was employed by the French police during the occupation, who under the
orders of the occupying Nazi forces, rounded up Jewish people throughout the
city to be held at the stadium, before being transferred to death camps such as
Auschwitz. The majority of those being arrested and interned were women and
children. This event became infamously known as the “Vel' d'Hiv roundup.”
Modiano’s casual disclosure and inclusion of the name: Vel’ d’Hiv or Vélodrome
d'Hiver, and leaving it to linger in the text with the implied menace and
venom, ensures readers who are not familiar with the scandalous history will be
inclined to look into it. Patrick Modiano, is a writer who does not spell it
out for his readers. In this instance, it’s an implied understanding that they
know; if they don’t, they’ll hunt for the information. There is some
appreciation for Modiano to allow the barbs and shards of the facts to settle.
What originally passed as an innocuous detail suddenly transforms into
horrifying reminder of the past Paris and its wartime activities.
Regardless, “Young Once,” does not linger over the atrocities or claustrophobic horrors of the occupation. Its presence is atmosphere, summoned forth by such facts as the mention of Vel’ d’Hiv; or the notes in a police file; ultimately it exists within the context of memory. The novel itself, is told from the reminiscing perspectives of Louis and Odille, who at the novels opening, are set to turn 35, whereby both are resolute and resigned in their understanding this is the age which they say farewell to their youth, while embarking on something else. Maturation perhaps? Settled fruition? They never clarify what is next; all the while, they do not mourn the end of their supposed youth. The same youth, best encapsulated by the earlier quote from “Out of the Dark,” when Louis and Odille were but two abandoned youths, discarded in the world, whereby they were circled by otherwise more menacing figures. In the case of Odille, the term menace should be replaced by cruel or more fittingly, down right deranged and corrupted. Being used as bait by the police in a sting operation to capture a violent sex offender; then there are the routine sexual advances of a club owner, and a series of disingenuous apologies and regrets from music record executives, who would love to help, but Odille’s voice just isn’t in music fashion at the moment. Louis, while not assaulted or sexually exploited, finds himself under the wings of one of Modiano’s stock archetypes, the vaguely ambiguous criminal, or possibly criminal, whose crimes are never quite brought to light. They’re merely rumbling accusations. Echoes from the past.
“Young
Once,” continues in the same vein and trope of Modiano’s work, by continuing to
obscure, obfuscate, and vaguely circle the insinuations of something abhorrent
or rotten at the centre, without every quite settling on it or revealing it.
Patrick Modiano is a writer whose novels continue to explore what has become
the endless liminal space of the occupation and the immediate postwar period.
The vague grouping in the dark for answers which will never reveal themselves,
is the pinnacle of Modiano’s style. Readers, who enjoy Modiano though, come
back for the atmospheric qualities. The delight in being for a brief period
disoriented and discombobulated in the unreliability of memory. “Young Once,”
is yet another brush stroke in this grisaille canvas of incomprehensible ghosts
and absence, or another chapter in a novel mapping out the endless hallways,
doors and rooms of an archive, complete with filing cabinets and bookshelves
spilling over, a deluge of undiluted chaos of mementos, both remembered and
fabricated.
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
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