Sunday with Books: Missing Person
In October of 2014, Patrick Modiano got a phone call from his daughter informing him that he’d just won the Nobel Prize in Literature. While Modiano himself couldn’t believe the news, the rest of the French literary community had seen it coming for years.
East of the Atlantic, he’s something of a god, often compared favorably to Marcel Proust for his preoccupation with time and memory. Meanwhile, in the States, Modiano’s life and work are still a bit of an enigma; the “awards and honors” section of his wikipedia page dwarfs his biography. Only a few of his titles have been translated into English, and - despite a short-lived influx of readership in 2014 - copies are increasingly difficult to come by.
Luckily for us, his magnum opus Missing Person received an English reprint a few back via Penguin’s “Modern Classics” series, which means it’s found at least some footing in mainstream consciousness. The book is told from Guy Roland, an amnesiac detective on a quest for self-clarity in the fog of post-occupation Paris.
““I am nothing. Nothing but a pale shape, silhouetted that evening against the café terrace, waiting for the rain to stop.””
The language is spare, consisting mostly of observation and dialogue, which - if you’ve been paying attention to these posts - you know we love. But half the fun is the overall vibe: memory, time, loss, amnesia, oblivion, Paris-by-night… Modiano isn’t afraid to flex his noir-muscle, and he’s never flexed it harder than he is here. —Jackson Todd
[first photo by Brassaï]
