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سلالة: رواية في السيرة الذاتية
أكتب هذه الصفحات كمن يحرّر محضراً أو سيرة شخصيّة، بصفة توثيقيّة، ربّما للانتهاء من حياة لم تكن تخصّني. مجرّد شريط من الأحداث والأفعال. ليس لديّ ما أعترف به ولا ما أكشف سرّه، وأنا لا أشعر بأدنى ميل إلى التأمّل في النفس ومراجعة الضمير. بل على العكس، كلّما بقيت الأمور غامضة ومبهمة، ازداد اهتمامي بها. لا بل كنت أجهد في إيجاد سرّ لأشياء خالية من الأسرار. والأحداث التي سأنقلها حتّى عامي الحادي والعشرين، عشتها في «عرض خلفيّ»، تلك الوسيلة التي تقضي بعرض مشاهد على شاشة خلفيّة فيما يلازم الممثّلون أماكنهم في موقع التصوير في الاستديو. وددتُ لو أترجم ذلك الانطباع الذي أحسّ به كثيرون من قبلي: كانت الأحداث كلّها تتعاقب كأنّما على شاشة خلفيّة ولم يكن بوسعي بعدُ أن أعيش حياتي.
151 pages, Paperback
First published January 6, 2005
64 people are currently reading
1,228 people want to read
About the author
Patrick Modiano
123books2,044followersPatrick Modiano is a French-language author and playwright and winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature.
He is a winner of the 1972 Grand prix du roman de l'Académie française, and the 1978 Prix Goncourt for his novel "Rue des boutiques obscures".
Modiano's parents met in occupied Paris during World War II and began a clandestine relationship. Modiano's childhood took place in a unique atmosphere: with an absent father -- of which he heard troubled stories of dealings with the Vichy regime -- and a Flemish-actress mother who frequently toured. His younger brother's sudden death also greatly influenced his writings.
While he was at Henri-IV lycee, he took geometry lessons from writer Raymond Queneau, who was a friend of Modiano's mother. He entered the Sorbonne, but did not complete his studies.
Queneau, the author of "Zazie dans le métro", introduced Modiano to the literary world via a cocktail party given by publishing house Éditions Gallimard. Modiano published his first novel, "La Place de l’Étoile", with Gallimard in 1968, after having read the manuscript to Raymond Queneau. Starting that year, he did nothing but write.
On September 12, 1970, Modiano married Dominique Zerhfuss. "I have a catastrophic souvenir of the day of our marriage. It rained. A real nightmare. Our groomsmen were Queneau, who had mentored Patrick since his adolescence, and Malraux, a friend of my father. They started to argue about Dubuffet, and it was like we were watching a tennis match! That said, it would have been funny to have some photos, but the only person who had a camera forgot to bring a roll of film. There is only one photo remaining of us, from behind and under an umbrella!" (Interview with Elle, 6 October 2003). From their marriage came two girls, Zina (1974) and Marie (1978).
Modiano has mentioned on Oct 9, 2014, during an interview with La Grande Librairie, that one of the books which had a great impact on his writing life was 'Le cœur est un chasseur solitaire' (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter), the first novel published by Carson McCullers in 1940.
(Arabic: باتريك موديانو)
He is a winner of the 1972 Grand prix du roman de l'Académie française, and the 1978 Prix Goncourt for his novel "Rue des boutiques obscures".
Modiano's parents met in occupied Paris during World War II and began a clandestine relationship. Modiano's childhood took place in a unique atmosphere: with an absent father -- of which he heard troubled stories of dealings with the Vichy regime -- and a Flemish-actress mother who frequently toured. His younger brother's sudden death also greatly influenced his writings.
While he was at Henri-IV lycee, he took geometry lessons from writer Raymond Queneau, who was a friend of Modiano's mother. He entered the Sorbonne, but did not complete his studies.
Queneau, the author of "Zazie dans le métro", introduced Modiano to the literary world via a cocktail party given by publishing house Éditions Gallimard. Modiano published his first novel, "La Place de l’Étoile", with Gallimard in 1968, after having read the manuscript to Raymond Queneau. Starting that year, he did nothing but write.
On September 12, 1970, Modiano married Dominique Zerhfuss. "I have a catastrophic souvenir of the day of our marriage. It rained. A real nightmare. Our groomsmen were Queneau, who had mentored Patrick since his adolescence, and Malraux, a friend of my father. They started to argue about Dubuffet, and it was like we were watching a tennis match! That said, it would have been funny to have some photos, but the only person who had a camera forgot to bring a roll of film. There is only one photo remaining of us, from behind and under an umbrella!" (Interview with Elle, 6 October 2003). From their marriage came two girls, Zina (1974) and Marie (1978).
Modiano has mentioned on Oct 9, 2014, during an interview with La Grande Librairie, that one of the books which had a great impact on his writing life was 'Le cœur est un chasseur solitaire' (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter), the first novel published by Carson McCullers in 1940.
(Arabic: باتريك موديانو)
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February 19, 2025
THE YELLOW FOG THAT RUBS ITS BACK UPON THE WINDOW-PANES,
THE YELLOW FOG THAT RUBS ITS MUZZLE ON THE WINDOW-PANES...
CURLED ONCE ABOUT THE HOUSE, AND FELL ASLEEP.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Nobel Laureate Patrick Modiano’s books are like a postmodernist Mage’s intricate Chinese puzzles that have no apparent solution.
Yes, he had won the Nobel. But his mind was a haze of half-solutions, just like the blurred maze that was his memory.
But then, one day - a first clue -- then, miraculously, another one. He was on the track to REGAINING HIS PAST... Like Proust did.
This compelling memoir reveals a cryptic solution that has unlocked the great author’s own Secret Garden. He must have found his modicum of peace in it at last!
Is this garden blighted, though, perhaps?
Well, if you seek to unlock your parents� nightmares and dreams to defuse the nightmares and dreams beneath them - nightmares that have plagued you all your life and wiped out your past - prepare for a long lifelong Wrestle with an Angel: for such hidden things are not easily corrected.
So it was for Modiano - until Now.
Let’s go back to the early nineties, a time when my wife and I used to watch the highly literate Bernard Pivot (O, how the mighty are fallen!) on Bouillon de Culture of a Sunday, a venue in which a previously unknown master from France who couldn’t sit still - Modiano - revealed himself to me as my psychologically long-lost Double. A mystery to himself - but first, a break.
***
OK. We’re gonna go back even further, now, to Modiano’s early novel, Missing Person. Here’s a guy - Guy is also his name - who, with the help of his former mentor, emerges from Eliot’s metaphorical Yellow Fog and finds IDENTITY:
“This man had meant a lot to me. Without him... I wonder what would have become of me... when I was struck by amnesia and was groping about in a fog. He had been moved by my case and... had even (procured) me a legal identity record.�
“There, " he said.
Your name is ‘Guy Roland� now.�
You see, don’t you? Modiano’s novel, like others, is richly and symbolically AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL.
And like Guy, when his mentor retires, Modiano leaves the daily business of life (work in a detective agency) to RESEARCH, AND THEREBY UNCOVER, HIS BURIED PAST.
Sure, he now has a provisional identity. But he wants more.
He wants to descend to the end of his mental labyrinth for Cold, Hard Facts. The facts that will enable him to slay the grisly Minotaur that haunts the dreams and nightmares of his daily life!
***
And nothing but hard facts will satisfy Modiano, either. For concurrently with writing such amazing stories as Missing Person, he burrows into the FACTS of his unknown past - BENEATH the yellow fog. As Bernard Pivot found out.
What does he discover? Well, get this: his Dad was a wartime gangster with endless meddlings in the Parisian Black Market. His Mom was an easy come, easy go Bohemian woman.
And, naturally, many more grim facts about their shared life followed.
Which Modiano, as a kid, naturally BLOCKED OUT of his mind - Scotomized them. And became a missing person. Largely (by force of traumatic circumstance) Amnesiac. It was too much for him, at first.
But such subterranean digging into his past unearthed wonders. That happened to me in my post-retirement ruminations: I was enormously lucky when, six years later I joined ŷ and had a chance to share my thoughts and memories of my rediscovered past.
In the same way Modiano was freeing himself.
With this memoir, then, Modiano lays bare his own past for the first time, (therein revealing the raison d’être of his novels) and finds peace.
But, more importantly, he discovers his True Self -
For he had murdered his personal Minotaur. Its brute face was only the face of wartime moral shortcuts. His parents were only caught under its spell, merely for the sake of survival. They were, in their helpless way, innocent.
And so this great writer inherits a new and unsullied life - freed from his past - in the Pure Present.
What a weight has been lifted from his shoulders!
For writing liberates.
THE YELLOW FOG THAT RUBS ITS MUZZLE ON THE WINDOW-PANES...
CURLED ONCE ABOUT THE HOUSE, AND FELL ASLEEP.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Nobel Laureate Patrick Modiano’s books are like a postmodernist Mage’s intricate Chinese puzzles that have no apparent solution.
Yes, he had won the Nobel. But his mind was a haze of half-solutions, just like the blurred maze that was his memory.
But then, one day - a first clue -- then, miraculously, another one. He was on the track to REGAINING HIS PAST... Like Proust did.
This compelling memoir reveals a cryptic solution that has unlocked the great author’s own Secret Garden. He must have found his modicum of peace in it at last!
Is this garden blighted, though, perhaps?
Well, if you seek to unlock your parents� nightmares and dreams to defuse the nightmares and dreams beneath them - nightmares that have plagued you all your life and wiped out your past - prepare for a long lifelong Wrestle with an Angel: for such hidden things are not easily corrected.
So it was for Modiano - until Now.
Let’s go back to the early nineties, a time when my wife and I used to watch the highly literate Bernard Pivot (O, how the mighty are fallen!) on Bouillon de Culture of a Sunday, a venue in which a previously unknown master from France who couldn’t sit still - Modiano - revealed himself to me as my psychologically long-lost Double. A mystery to himself - but first, a break.
***
OK. We’re gonna go back even further, now, to Modiano’s early novel, Missing Person. Here’s a guy - Guy is also his name - who, with the help of his former mentor, emerges from Eliot’s metaphorical Yellow Fog and finds IDENTITY:
“This man had meant a lot to me. Without him... I wonder what would have become of me... when I was struck by amnesia and was groping about in a fog. He had been moved by my case and... had even (procured) me a legal identity record.�
“There, " he said.
Your name is ‘Guy Roland� now.�
You see, don’t you? Modiano’s novel, like others, is richly and symbolically AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL.
And like Guy, when his mentor retires, Modiano leaves the daily business of life (work in a detective agency) to RESEARCH, AND THEREBY UNCOVER, HIS BURIED PAST.
Sure, he now has a provisional identity. But he wants more.
He wants to descend to the end of his mental labyrinth for Cold, Hard Facts. The facts that will enable him to slay the grisly Minotaur that haunts the dreams and nightmares of his daily life!
***
And nothing but hard facts will satisfy Modiano, either. For concurrently with writing such amazing stories as Missing Person, he burrows into the FACTS of his unknown past - BENEATH the yellow fog. As Bernard Pivot found out.
What does he discover? Well, get this: his Dad was a wartime gangster with endless meddlings in the Parisian Black Market. His Mom was an easy come, easy go Bohemian woman.
And, naturally, many more grim facts about their shared life followed.
Which Modiano, as a kid, naturally BLOCKED OUT of his mind - Scotomized them. And became a missing person. Largely (by force of traumatic circumstance) Amnesiac. It was too much for him, at first.
But such subterranean digging into his past unearthed wonders. That happened to me in my post-retirement ruminations: I was enormously lucky when, six years later I joined ŷ and had a chance to share my thoughts and memories of my rediscovered past.
In the same way Modiano was freeing himself.
With this memoir, then, Modiano lays bare his own past for the first time, (therein revealing the raison d’être of his novels) and finds peace.
But, more importantly, he discovers his True Self -
For he had murdered his personal Minotaur. Its brute face was only the face of wartime moral shortcuts. His parents were only caught under its spell, merely for the sake of survival. They were, in their helpless way, innocent.
And so this great writer inherits a new and unsullied life - freed from his past - in the Pure Present.
What a weight has been lifted from his shoulders!
For writing liberates.
August 4, 2022
يفتش موديانو في الذاكرة ويبحث في الماضي عن سلالة ينتمي إليها ويرتبط بها
سيرة ذاتية غير مترابطة يحكي فيها ذكرياته عن حياة حزينة ومُهمَلة
بدون أي رعاية أو اهتمام من والديه المشغولين دائما بحياتهم المزدحمة فقط
حياة تتوزع بين المدارس الداخلية والقراءات المتنوعة ولقاءات بائسة مع الوالدين
مجرد حياة لم يرتبط بشخصياتها وأحداثها يرى مشاهدها من بعيد وكأنها لا تخصه
وتنتهي الذكريات وعمره 22 عام بقبول أول عمل أدبي له يُعلن عن ميلاده الحقيقي
سيرة ذاتية غير مترابطة يحكي فيها ذكرياته عن حياة حزينة ومُهمَلة
بدون أي رعاية أو اهتمام من والديه المشغولين دائما بحياتهم المزدحمة فقط
حياة تتوزع بين المدارس الداخلية والقراءات المتنوعة ولقاءات بائسة مع الوالدين
مجرد حياة لم يرتبط بشخصياتها وأحداثها يرى مشاهدها من بعيد وكأنها لا تخصه
وتنتهي الذكريات وعمره 22 عام بقبول أول عمل أدبي له يُعلن عن ميلاده الحقيقي
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December 17, 2024For those of us who suspect Patrick Modiano of drawing on his own life for many episodes in his novels, and especially for the atmosphere of shady dealings and mysterious doings he often includes, this short memoir from 2014 is a very satisfying confirmation of our suppositions. It reads almost like a statement to the police, very matter-of-fact and unadorned, just the details of his life up to the age of twenty-one as he remembers them from the distance of sixty years, the events he experienced, the things he witnessed, the many people and places that were part of his life back in the late forties, fifties, and early sixties, the mother and father who were more absent than present, and the many different minders he had as a child, some of whom were wanted by the police.
With such a background it's no wonder he became a novelist—though not everyone with such a background could compose it the way he has done.
Félicitations, Patrick Modiano. You've used your life well.
With such a background it's no wonder he became a novelist—though not everyone with such a background could compose it the way he has done.
Félicitations, Patrick Modiano. You've used your life well.
August 15, 2024
درحقیقت پدر و مادر من به هیچ طبقه اجتماعی خاصی تعلق نداشتند. همه� چیز درباره� آن دو آنقدر به� هم� ریخته و نامطمئن است که من باید بسیار تلاش کنم تا ردی از آنها در این شن روان پیدا کنم. صفحه� ۱۳ کتاب
اسامی روزی بعد از مرگ بالاخره از آدمه� جدا میشون� و در خاطر ما به ستارههای� تبدیل میشون� که از دور چشمک میزنن�. صفحه ۲۰ کتاب
یادم هست به مدرسه که میرفت� این جمله� لئون بلوآ را نوشته بودم: «گوشههای� از قلب آدمی هست که هنوز به وجود نیامدهاند� اما غم درونشان میخز� و بدینسا� آن گوشهه� هست میشون�.» صفحه� ۷۷ کتاب
زندگی ادامه داشت بدون اینکه ما بفهمیم در این لحظه� خاص چرا اینجا هستیم، با این آدمها� به� جای اینکه با دیگران باشیم در جای دیگری. آیا این نسخه� اصلی فیلم است یا یک کپی از آن؟ صفحه ۹۳ کتاب.
۱۴۰�/۰۵/۲۵
اسامی روزی بعد از مرگ بالاخره از آدمه� جدا میشون� و در خاطر ما به ستارههای� تبدیل میشون� که از دور چشمک میزنن�. صفحه ۲۰ کتاب
یادم هست به مدرسه که میرفت� این جمله� لئون بلوآ را نوشته بودم: «گوشههای� از قلب آدمی هست که هنوز به وجود نیامدهاند� اما غم درونشان میخز� و بدینسا� آن گوشهه� هست میشون�.» صفحه� ۷۷ کتاب
زندگی ادامه داشت بدون اینکه ما بفهمیم در این لحظه� خاص چرا اینجا هستیم، با این آدمها� به� جای اینکه با دیگران باشیم در جای دیگری. آیا این نسخه� اصلی فیلم است یا یک کپی از آن؟ صفحه ۹۳ کتاب.
۱۴۰�/۰۵/۲۵
December 4, 2018
Oddly minor memoir, essentially a list of people and addresses from Modiano's (400-Blows level of french negligence) childhood. I wanted to like this - I like Modiano - but the book itself has a weird habit of complaining that it exists, often stating how badly it wants to end. This eventually rubs off on the reader. The maddening thing is that the plot is incredible, with WW2 luminaries, black marketing, horrible parents, doomed affairs. So much of it in the background, taunting us. The one exception is when (SPOILERS COMING) his relative dies. There is a paragraph so beautiful that I can't resist putting it down here. It doesn't represent this book; it represents all that Modiano is capable of.
"Apart from my brother, Rudy, his death, I do not believed that anything I will relate here truly matters to me. I am writing these pages the way one compiles a report or a resume, as documentation and to have done with a life that was not my own. It's just a simple film of deeds and facts. I have nothing to confess or elucidate and I have no interest in soul-searching or self-reflection. On the contrary, the more obscure and mysterious things remained, the more interesting I found them. I even looked for mystery where there was none. I lived through the events I'm recounting, up to the age of twenty-one, as if against a transparency- like in a cinematic process shot, when landscapes slide by in the background while actors stand in place on a soundstage. I would like to translate this impression, which many others have felt before me: everything paraded by like a transparency and I could not live my life."
"Apart from my brother, Rudy, his death, I do not believed that anything I will relate here truly matters to me. I am writing these pages the way one compiles a report or a resume, as documentation and to have done with a life that was not my own. It's just a simple film of deeds and facts. I have nothing to confess or elucidate and I have no interest in soul-searching or self-reflection. On the contrary, the more obscure and mysterious things remained, the more interesting I found them. I even looked for mystery where there was none. I lived through the events I'm recounting, up to the age of twenty-one, as if against a transparency- like in a cinematic process shot, when landscapes slide by in the background while actors stand in place on a soundstage. I would like to translate this impression, which many others have felt before me: everything paraded by like a transparency and I could not live my life."
August 15, 2021
Cuốn sách này, đúng như Modiano nói, là một bản liệt kê mà ông liên tục phải xin lỗi độc gi� vì s� nhàm chán khiến chính ông lắm lúc cũng phát điên lên. Một dạng lý lịch kê khai v� cuộc đời xa m� như không phải của mình.
Với ai lần đầu đọc Modiano, nhất là với mác Nobel Văn học, đây chắc chắn là một s� thất vọng hoàn toàn. Những s� là một cảm xúc hoàn toàn ngược lại như trường hợp của tôi: là một người yêu văn Modiano t� lâu và có ít nhiều đồng cảm. Càng ngày tôi càng thích kiểu văn học không có chút gân gợn nào như vậy. Và đặc biệt, đặc biệt là những cuốn sách viết v� nỗi đau cuộc đời mình bằng một giọng văn thanh thản tới vậy (dù thật ra có đôi lần thoáng chua chát).
Có một điều mà ít năm gần đây tôi mới nhận ra: Niềm hạnh phúc khi có một tuổi thơ bi kịch. Suốt thời thanh thiếu niên, nó có th� gây ra s� uất hận, thậm chí tr� thù đời. Nhưng một khi đã vượt qua được, nó thật s�, thật s� là điều tuyệt vời của cuộc đời. Nếu có con, tôi cũng mong nó s� va vấp và đau kh� như tôi. Tất c� những nhà tư tưởng lớn s� đều nói cho bạn tầm quan trọng của những nỗi đau, dù là do hoàn cảnh gây ra hay t� mình gây ra. Nó giúp ta, như Modiano nói trong sách, m� ra những ngõ ngách mà bình thường không xuất hiện.
Điều d� thấy nhất là nếu không có tuổi thơ này s� không có Modiano mà ta biết hiện nay. Và hãy nhìn khuôn mặt Modiano: một tuổi tr� đẹp trai phiêu diêu và một tuổi già hiền hậu dịu dàng. Tôi tin đó là thành tựu của việc vượt qua nỗi đau, một thành tựu mà chắc chắn ta s� không đạt được nếu không có nỗi đau.
Như Oscar Wilde nói: Sai lầm là đặc quyền của tuổi tr�. Và như Tolstoy nói: Mọi gia đình hạnh phúc đều hạnh phúc giống nhau nhưng mỗi gia đình bất hạnh lại bất hạnh theo một kiểu khác nhau. Hãy trân trọng những trải nghiệm đau thương, hỡi các bạn =)))
Với ai lần đầu đọc Modiano, nhất là với mác Nobel Văn học, đây chắc chắn là một s� thất vọng hoàn toàn. Những s� là một cảm xúc hoàn toàn ngược lại như trường hợp của tôi: là một người yêu văn Modiano t� lâu và có ít nhiều đồng cảm. Càng ngày tôi càng thích kiểu văn học không có chút gân gợn nào như vậy. Và đặc biệt, đặc biệt là những cuốn sách viết v� nỗi đau cuộc đời mình bằng một giọng văn thanh thản tới vậy (dù thật ra có đôi lần thoáng chua chát).
Có một điều mà ít năm gần đây tôi mới nhận ra: Niềm hạnh phúc khi có một tuổi thơ bi kịch. Suốt thời thanh thiếu niên, nó có th� gây ra s� uất hận, thậm chí tr� thù đời. Nhưng một khi đã vượt qua được, nó thật s�, thật s� là điều tuyệt vời của cuộc đời. Nếu có con, tôi cũng mong nó s� va vấp và đau kh� như tôi. Tất c� những nhà tư tưởng lớn s� đều nói cho bạn tầm quan trọng của những nỗi đau, dù là do hoàn cảnh gây ra hay t� mình gây ra. Nó giúp ta, như Modiano nói trong sách, m� ra những ngõ ngách mà bình thường không xuất hiện.
Điều d� thấy nhất là nếu không có tuổi thơ này s� không có Modiano mà ta biết hiện nay. Và hãy nhìn khuôn mặt Modiano: một tuổi tr� đẹp trai phiêu diêu và một tuổi già hiền hậu dịu dàng. Tôi tin đó là thành tựu của việc vượt qua nỗi đau, một thành tựu mà chắc chắn ta s� không đạt được nếu không có nỗi đau.
Như Oscar Wilde nói: Sai lầm là đặc quyền của tuổi tr�. Và như Tolstoy nói: Mọi gia đình hạnh phúc đều hạnh phúc giống nhau nhưng mỗi gia đình bất hạnh lại bất hạnh theo một kiểu khác nhau. Hãy trân trọng những trải nghiệm đau thương, hỡi các bạn =)))
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July 17, 2019"I’m a dog who pretends to have a pedigree."
As I started reading this memoir I was struck by how bland the writing is. However, it soon became clear why:
“Apart from my brother, Rudy, his death, I do not believe that anything I will relate here truly matters to me. I am writing these pages the way one compiles a report or résumé, as documentation and to have done with a life that was not my own. It’s just a simple film of deeds and facts. I have nothing to confess or elucidate and I have no interest in soul-searching or self-reflection."
"I lived through the events I’m recounting, up to the age of twenty-one, as if against a transparency–like in a cinematic process shot, when landscapes slide by in the background while the actors stand in place on a soundstage."
"I will keep on reciting these moments, without nostalgia but in a rush. It’s not my fault if the words jumble together. I have to move quickly, before I lose heart.�
Relating a childhood punctuated by neglect and abandonment Mr Modiano deliberately chooses this detached style. How often, even in childhood, when upset we say ”I don’t care� when in fact we care very much. This memoir is all the more poignant for being so bland and detached.
March 25, 2016
Modiano’s terse memoir contains a kind of shadow book. Behind the story of how he became a writer, beneath the sad, and often bitter recollections of his childhood, are traces of the other stories he has felt compelled to write: stories in which he seems to imagine himself alive during the Occupation, implicated in his father’s shady black market dealings, his mother’s wartime liaisons with influential people � Belgian collaborators, German officers � whom she cultivated in the hopes of advancing her acting career.
It’s all here, in shorthand, if you know your history.
The world in which Modiano’s father circulated, he notes a few pages later, included
It goes without saying that Modiano’s sympathies reside not with his father’s associates, “people on whom you can’t dwell at length. Shady travelers at best,� as he puts it, “passing through a train station concourse without my ever knowing their final destination, supposing they even had one,� but with the Jews and Résistants rounded up and murdered by the Nazis. Still, he can’t resist sharing a few details, the interesting coincidence of his father’s Ford, for example,
Modiano aims for a dispassionate tone in this short narrative, but he cannot keep the disdain from his voice. Here’s how he introduces his mother:
If you’re familiar with Modiano’s work, you’ll find the source of some of his recurring motifs in Pedigree. The ubiquitous Black Maria. A pastel-colored bumper car (“Street carnivals: the one in Versailles with bumper cars painted mauve, yellow, green, navy blue, pink . . .�), one of the last happy times he shared with his younger brother, who died when Modiano was twelve.
Writing enabled him to surmount his family history, the taint of his parents� associations. On the afternoon in June when he learned, at age twenty-one, that they’d accepted his first book, he announces on the last page,
It’s all here, in shorthand, if you know your history.
Genviève Vaudoyer and her father, Jean-Louis Vaudoyer, were the first French bourgeois family to invite my mother to their home. Genviève Vaudoyer introduced my mother to Arletty, who also lived on the Quai de Conti in the building next door to number 15. Arletty took my mother under her wing.Arletty, if you didn’t know, was a renowned French actress. She was luminous in Marcel Carnés (1945), considered by many critics the best French film of the twentieth century. After the war she was tried for treason, owing to her romance with a German Luftwaffe officer. (“My heart is French but my ass is international,� she said in her defense.)
The world in which Modiano’s father circulated, he notes a few pages later, included
the actress Dita Parlo, who had starred in L’Atlante, and her lover Dr. Fuchs, one of the directors of the so-called Otto Bureau, the most important of the black market “purchasing services,� located at 6 Rue Adolphe-Yvon in the 16th arrondissement.Just to expand a bit, the Otto Bureau specialized in buying up from black market dealers the property of Jews who had been deported and selling it at a profit in Germany. One of the largest buyers was the Abwehr (German Intelligence) and at the height of the Occupation, the Otto Bureau employed some 400 people.
It goes without saying that Modiano’s sympathies reside not with his father’s associates, “people on whom you can’t dwell at length. Shady travelers at best,� as he puts it, “passing through a train station concourse without my ever knowing their final destination, supposing they even had one,� but with the Jews and Résistants rounded up and murdered by the Nazis. Still, he can’t resist sharing a few details, the interesting coincidence of his father’s Ford, for example,
which he’d stashed in a garage in Neuilly. [It] had been commandeered in June by the Vichy militia, the Milice, and it was in that Ford, its bullet-riddled body impounded as evidence by the investigating detectives, that Georges Mandel had been assassinated.Called “the first resister� by Winston Churchill, who would have preferred him to Charles de Gaulle as the leader of the Free French, Mandel had chosen to continue the fight against the Germans from North Africa (as opposed to London) after the Fall of France. Arrested with several others in Morocco in 1941, he was deported to a German concentration camp and subsequently returned to Paris as a hostage. The Milice got hold of him during a transfer from one prison to another and executed him in the Forest of Fontainebleau in 1944.
Modiano aims for a dispassionate tone in this short narrative, but he cannot keep the disdain from his voice. Here’s how he introduces his mother:
She was a pretty girl with an arid heart. Her fiancé had given her a chow-chow, but she didn’t take care of it and left it with various people, as she would later do with me. The chow-chow killed itself by leaping from a window. The dog appears in two or three photos, and I have to admit that he touches me deeply and that I feel a great kinship with him.His father hung out on the Boulevard Saint Michel in the Latin Quarter, but he was not a student. “His Latin Quarter was the one of Violette Nozière. He must have run across her many times on the boulevard.� Violette Nozière was a dissolute schoolgirl in the 1930s who supported herself and her ne’er do well boyfriend through prostitution and petty thefts. Her parents caught on, so she poisoned them, but somehow managed to avoid the guillotine and ultimately married and raised a family. Claude Chabrol made a film about her, Violette, starring Isabelle Huppert.
If you’re familiar with Modiano’s work, you’ll find the source of some of his recurring motifs in Pedigree. The ubiquitous Black Maria. A pastel-colored bumper car (“Street carnivals: the one in Versailles with bumper cars painted mauve, yellow, green, navy blue, pink . . .�), one of the last happy times he shared with his younger brother, who died when Modiano was twelve.
Writing enabled him to surmount his family history, the taint of his parents� associations. On the afternoon in June when he learned, at age twenty-one, that they’d accepted his first book, he announces on the last page,
I felt unburdened for the first time in my life. The threat that had weighed on me for so many years, kept me on edge, had dissolved in the Paris air I had set sail before the worm-rathe wharf could collapse. It was time.
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March 7, 20238/10
At first glance, this memoir seems like an arid list of names and addresses, but like all of Modiano's work, it takes barely a scratch to get to the heart of the matter and pulls his entire work for me, into one beautiful tapestry -- but a tapestry which we nonetheless see in reverse: where the threads are pulled, and where the seams join.
I started this book earlier this afternoon, and now, only a little later in the afternoon, I'm finished. Inhaled it in one sitting.
Truth
... But names end up becoming detached from the poor mortals who bore them and they glimmer in our imaginations like distant stars.
And Fantasy
I'm writing these pages the way one compiles a report or résumé, as documentation and to have done with a life that wasn't my own. It's just a simple film of deeds and facts. I have nothing to confess or elucidate and I have no interest in soul-searching or self-reflection. On the contrary, the more obscure and mysterious things remained, the more interesting I found them. I even looked for mystery where there was none. ... I'd like to translate this impression, which many others have felt before: everything paraded by like a transparency and I could not yet live my life.
At first glance, this memoir seems like an arid list of names and addresses, but like all of Modiano's work, it takes barely a scratch to get to the heart of the matter and pulls his entire work for me, into one beautiful tapestry -- but a tapestry which we nonetheless see in reverse: where the threads are pulled, and where the seams join.
I started this book earlier this afternoon, and now, only a little later in the afternoon, I'm finished. Inhaled it in one sitting.
Truth
... But names end up becoming detached from the poor mortals who bore them and they glimmer in our imaginations like distant stars.
And Fantasy
I'm writing these pages the way one compiles a report or résumé, as documentation and to have done with a life that wasn't my own. It's just a simple film of deeds and facts. I have nothing to confess or elucidate and I have no interest in soul-searching or self-reflection. On the contrary, the more obscure and mysterious things remained, the more interesting I found them. I even looked for mystery where there was none. ... I'd like to translate this impression, which many others have felt before: everything paraded by like a transparency and I could not yet live my life.
October 26, 2015
As ot the tenth page, we understand that Modiano was not a wished child, his father was a dubious buisnessman, his mother not maternal. Modiano does not save any details to us. It is deeply tiedous.
On page 50, I seriously thought of given up.But it is a short novel, so I armed myself with courage.
Nietzsche said «All great philosophy is a confession.» By estension, all great litterature is thus autobiographical. The problem is that I do not see much litterature.
Modiano tells us he lived his life like spectator until 21th years. The Rimbaud's «Je est un autre».At this âge, he is fold out with his father.
End of the book.
Sigh of relief.
On page 50, I seriously thought of given up.But it is a short novel, so I armed myself with courage.
Nietzsche said «All great philosophy is a confession.» By estension, all great litterature is thus autobiographical. The problem is that I do not see much litterature.
Modiano tells us he lived his life like spectator until 21th years. The Rimbaud's «Je est un autre».At this âge, he is fold out with his father.
End of the book.
Sigh of relief.
December 3, 2024
¿Puede la lectura de una guía telefónica llegar a resultar conmovedora? Si esa guía está escrita por Patrick Modiano, la respuesta es afirmativa. En Un pedigrí, el autor transforma una lista interminable de nombres y acontecimientos dispersos en una reflexión íntima y conmovedora sobre la memoria y la identidad. Modiano utiliza estos fragmentos de la realidad, que parecen aislados e intrascendentes, como piezas que, al unirse, dan forma a una comprensión más profunda y dolorosa del pasado.
Un pedigrí es un ejercicio autobiográfico del ganador del Nobel de literatura, en el que bucea en algunas de sus vivencias de infancia y adolescencia hasta que alcanzó la mayoría de edad y publicó su primera novela. Veintiún años marcados por la amargura de haber vivido de forma casi clandestina.
Hijo no deseado de un hombre de negocios más bien turbios, de origen italiano, y de una actriz belga de segunda fila, Modiano narra la difícil relación que mantuvo con sus padres, quienes nunca se ocuparon de él. La estructura de Un pedigrí se aleja de la narración lineal en favor de una serie de flashes, recuerdos dispersos que se presentan como fragmentos inconexos. Modiano no construye una historia coherente; más bien ofrece fotogramas aislados de su vida que parecen no llevarnos a ninguna parte. Esta técnica crea una sensación de caos, ya que el lector se enfrenta a una profusión de nombres y personajes sin una trama clara que los conecte. Estos personajes, que pasan por la vida del narrador casi de forma accidental, son una suerte de sombras que nunca terminan de consolidarse, lo que refuerza la idea de una memoria fragmentada e inestable. El lector no debe buscar una narrativa convencional, sino intentar encontrar algún significado en esos destellos del pasado que, aunque parezcan desordenados, sirven como piezas de un rompecabezas de identidad y tiempo. En lugar de intentar seguir una trama lineal, la obra invita a aceptar la naturaleza desorganizada de la memoria, esa que no sigue un orden lógico y, por lo tanto, se escapa constantemente a la comprensión plena.
El lector pronto comprende, sin embargo, que no es en los personajes en quien deberá fijarse (ejercicio de antemano condenado al fracaso), sino que Modiano utiliza a esos personajes cuyas identidades parecen diluirse en la niebla de los recuerdos, a pesar de estar cargados de nombres y apellidos, como excusa para dibujar una época, la que va de la postguerra mundial a los albores del mayo del 68, donde conviven los viejos tics del periodo de entreguerras y se adivina el cambio que está por llegar, con esa “bocanada de aire fresco� que le parece experimentar.
A pesar de que Modiano pretende distanciarse de su propia narración, lo cierto es que en determinado momento le da al lector la clave al confesar la urgencia que siente por terminar de contarnos la historia, como si los recuerdos le dolieran aún cuarenta años más tarde:
La aparente frialdad de la narración en Un pedigrí podría interpretarse como un ejercicio de distanciamiento, pero en realidad refleja un dolor profundo que Modiano intenta controlar mediante la escritura. Su tono desapasionado no busca negar los recuerdos, sino protegerse de ellos, transmitiendo, paradójicamente, el peso de una vida marcada por la soledad y el desarraigo. Este estilo, cargado de silencios y ausencias, convierte la obra en un acto de supervivencia emocional, más enfocado en dar cuenta de lo irremediable que en nombrarlo directamente.
Un pedigrí es una novela que puede intimidar al lector por la abrumadora cantidad de nombres de personajes que deambulan por sus páginas casi sin dejar huella perceptible. Sin embargo, esta proliferación de figuras efímeras encarna el caos y la fragmentación de una vida desarraigada. Más que protagonistas, estos nombres son ecos, reflejos de un pasado que Modiano intenta ordenar sin lograr fijar del todo. La aparente intrascendencia de estas presencias refuerza la sensación de un tiempo roto y de relaciones fugaces, trazando un mapa emocional tan elusivo como la memoria misma.
Al leer Un pedigrí, me encontré con una obra que, más que contarnos una historia completa, nos invita a adentrarnos en los silencios del autor, en esos espacios vacíos que se escapan de las palabras. No es sencillo acercarse a un texto que no ofrece respuestas claras, pero quizás esa sea precisamente su fuerza: desafiar al lector a enfrentarse con lo que queda fuera de la narrativa, lo que no se puede nombrar. La historia de Modiano me recordó que la memoria no siempre sigue un camino lineal; a veces, la comprensión no está en los detalles que se pueden hilvanar, sino en lo que permanece sin resolver, en lo que sigue latiendo dentro de nosotros mismos.
En lugar de presentarnos una historia de superación personal, Modiano nos ofrece una crónica de sombras, de personajes anónimos que se desvanecen en un mundo indiferente. La verdadera fuerza de la novela reside en lo que omite, en los silencios que deja intencionadamente en su relato. Lejos de seguir la estructura de una autobiografía convencional, el autor despoja su historia de cualquier intento de grandeza o reconstrucción heroica. Al no llenar esos huecos con explicaciones o recuerdos completos, Modiano permite que el lector se enfrente a la falta de un relato coherente que lo complete todo. Así, son los momentos no narrados y los recuerdos incompletos los que configuran realmente la identidad del protagonista. Esta laguna, lejos de restar valor a la obra, la impregna con una tristeza sutil y penetrante, transformando el acto de narrar en un intento por lidiar con lo irremediable. La ausencia se convierte, entonces, en la clave de la obra, lo que finalmente deja al lector profundamente conmovido: no tanto por lo que Modiano cuenta, sino por lo que ha decidido callar.
“Que el lector me disculpe por todos estos nombres y los que vendrán a continuación. Soy un perro que hace como que tiene pedigrí.�
Un pedigrí es un ejercicio autobiográfico del ganador del Nobel de literatura, en el que bucea en algunas de sus vivencias de infancia y adolescencia hasta que alcanzó la mayoría de edad y publicó su primera novela. Veintiún años marcados por la amargura de haber vivido de forma casi clandestina.
“Y van sucediéndose acontecimientos mínimos que le resbalan a uno sin dejarle demasiadas huellas. Uno tiene la impresión de que todavía no puede vivir su vida de verdad y de que es un pasajero clandestino. Me vuelve el recuerdo de algunos retazos de esa vida de contrabando�.
Hijo no deseado de un hombre de negocios más bien turbios, de origen italiano, y de una actriz belga de segunda fila, Modiano narra la difícil relación que mantuvo con sus padres, quienes nunca se ocuparon de él. La estructura de Un pedigrí se aleja de la narración lineal en favor de una serie de flashes, recuerdos dispersos que se presentan como fragmentos inconexos. Modiano no construye una historia coherente; más bien ofrece fotogramas aislados de su vida que parecen no llevarnos a ninguna parte. Esta técnica crea una sensación de caos, ya que el lector se enfrenta a una profusión de nombres y personajes sin una trama clara que los conecte. Estos personajes, que pasan por la vida del narrador casi de forma accidental, son una suerte de sombras que nunca terminan de consolidarse, lo que refuerza la idea de una memoria fragmentada e inestable. El lector no debe buscar una narrativa convencional, sino intentar encontrar algún significado en esos destellos del pasado que, aunque parezcan desordenados, sirven como piezas de un rompecabezas de identidad y tiempo. En lugar de intentar seguir una trama lineal, la obra invita a aceptar la naturaleza desorganizada de la memoria, esa que no sigue un orden lógico y, por lo tanto, se escapa constantemente a la comprensión plena.
El lector pronto comprende, sin embargo, que no es en los personajes en quien deberá fijarse (ejercicio de antemano condenado al fracaso), sino que Modiano utiliza a esos personajes cuyas identidades parecen diluirse en la niebla de los recuerdos, a pesar de estar cargados de nombres y apellidos, como excusa para dibujar una época, la que va de la postguerra mundial a los albores del mayo del 68, donde conviven los viejos tics del periodo de entreguerras y se adivina el cambio que está por llegar, con esa “bocanada de aire fresco� que le parece experimentar.
“Dejando aparte a mi hermano Rudy y su muerte, creo que nada de cuanto cuente aquí me afecta muy hondo. Escribo estas páginas como se levanta acta o como se redacta un currículum vitae, a título documental y, seguramente, para liquidar de una vez una vida que no era la mía�.
A pesar de que Modiano pretende distanciarse de su propia narración, lo cierto es que en determinado momento le da al lector la clave al confesar la urgencia que siente por terminar de contarnos la historia, como si los recuerdos le dolieran aún cuarenta años más tarde:
“Voy a seguir desgranando esos años sin nostalgia, pero con voz presurosa. No tengo la culpa de que las palabras se me apelotonen. Tengo que darme prisa o se me acabará el valor�.
La aparente frialdad de la narración en Un pedigrí podría interpretarse como un ejercicio de distanciamiento, pero en realidad refleja un dolor profundo que Modiano intenta controlar mediante la escritura. Su tono desapasionado no busca negar los recuerdos, sino protegerse de ellos, transmitiendo, paradójicamente, el peso de una vida marcada por la soledad y el desarraigo. Este estilo, cargado de silencios y ausencias, convierte la obra en un acto de supervivencia emocional, más enfocado en dar cuenta de lo irremediable que en nombrarlo directamente.
Un pedigrí es una novela que puede intimidar al lector por la abrumadora cantidad de nombres de personajes que deambulan por sus páginas casi sin dejar huella perceptible. Sin embargo, esta proliferación de figuras efímeras encarna el caos y la fragmentación de una vida desarraigada. Más que protagonistas, estos nombres son ecos, reflejos de un pasado que Modiano intenta ordenar sin lograr fijar del todo. La aparente intrascendencia de estas presencias refuerza la sensación de un tiempo roto y de relaciones fugaces, trazando un mapa emocional tan elusivo como la memoria misma.
Al leer Un pedigrí, me encontré con una obra que, más que contarnos una historia completa, nos invita a adentrarnos en los silencios del autor, en esos espacios vacíos que se escapan de las palabras. No es sencillo acercarse a un texto que no ofrece respuestas claras, pero quizás esa sea precisamente su fuerza: desafiar al lector a enfrentarse con lo que queda fuera de la narrativa, lo que no se puede nombrar. La historia de Modiano me recordó que la memoria no siempre sigue un camino lineal; a veces, la comprensión no está en los detalles que se pueden hilvanar, sino en lo que permanece sin resolver, en lo que sigue latiendo dentro de nosotros mismos.
En lugar de presentarnos una historia de superación personal, Modiano nos ofrece una crónica de sombras, de personajes anónimos que se desvanecen en un mundo indiferente. La verdadera fuerza de la novela reside en lo que omite, en los silencios que deja intencionadamente en su relato. Lejos de seguir la estructura de una autobiografía convencional, el autor despoja su historia de cualquier intento de grandeza o reconstrucción heroica. Al no llenar esos huecos con explicaciones o recuerdos completos, Modiano permite que el lector se enfrente a la falta de un relato coherente que lo complete todo. Así, son los momentos no narrados y los recuerdos incompletos los que configuran realmente la identidad del protagonista. Esta laguna, lejos de restar valor a la obra, la impregna con una tristeza sutil y penetrante, transformando el acto de narrar en un intento por lidiar con lo irremediable. La ausencia se convierte, entonces, en la clave de la obra, lo que finalmente deja al lector profundamente conmovido: no tanto por lo que Modiano cuenta, sino por lo que ha decidido callar.
February 8, 2022
PEDIGREE (2005) is a short, sombre, very sad memoir. Modiano reflects on his childhood, a childhood marred by deprivation and the neglect and indifference of his parents. His memoir ends when he is aged 21.
Presumably he was an unwanted child. His mother was a Flemish actress, and not a successful one. However, she was absent most of the time, whether she was on tour or because she felt like it. Modiano and his younger brother Rudy (who died aged 10 of leukemia) were left in the care of acquaintances or neighbors for months at a time. The author describes her like this:
"She was a pretty girl with an arid heart. Her fiancé had given her a chow-chow, but she didn’t take care of it and left it with various people, as she would later do with me. The chow-chow killed itself by leaping from a window. The dog appears in two or three photographs, and I have to admit that he touches me deeply and that I feel a great kinship with him."
His father was a scheming "businessman", always involved in shady deals with villainous people. He was slightly more involved in the life of his son (until he remarried), however, as soon as was feasible, he placed his son in low rent boarding schools and forgot about him as much as he could.
PEDIGREE is a stark chronicle of a penurious childhood narrated in a matter of fact, cold tone, a chilling story of deprivation and vulnerability unlike any other.
Presumably he was an unwanted child. His mother was a Flemish actress, and not a successful one. However, she was absent most of the time, whether she was on tour or because she felt like it. Modiano and his younger brother Rudy (who died aged 10 of leukemia) were left in the care of acquaintances or neighbors for months at a time. The author describes her like this:
"She was a pretty girl with an arid heart. Her fiancé had given her a chow-chow, but she didn’t take care of it and left it with various people, as she would later do with me. The chow-chow killed itself by leaping from a window. The dog appears in two or three photographs, and I have to admit that he touches me deeply and that I feel a great kinship with him."
His father was a scheming "businessman", always involved in shady deals with villainous people. He was slightly more involved in the life of his son (until he remarried), however, as soon as was feasible, he placed his son in low rent boarding schools and forgot about him as much as he could.
PEDIGREE is a stark chronicle of a penurious childhood narrated in a matter of fact, cold tone, a chilling story of deprivation and vulnerability unlike any other.
November 7, 2014
At one point in his short autobiography "Un pedigree," Patrick Modiano, the winner of this year's Nobel Prize for Literature, says, "I will continue to mark those years, without nostalgia but with a hasty voice. It is not my fault if the words jostle one another. I must act quickly or I will not have the courage for it" (p84). The years Modiano is marking are those of his youth. The autobiography ends when he reaches twenty-one and formally breaks with his father. There is no reason for nostalgia for a time when he felt like a dog (hence the title) not really loved nor even wanted by a father, who mostly just wished to be rid of him, or a mother, who only gave him attention when she thought he could provide her with money. Neither parent wanted young Patrick to disrupt their raher insignificant lives. In fact, Modiano's father, who is really at the center of this work, remains a mystery, a sort of prototype of so many characters in Modiano's novels. He has a wide-range of somewhat shady associates and moves from place to place in Paris with considerable energy and apparent purpose, but neither the autobiographer nor the reader ever figures out exactly what he is up to. It does take courage to narrate all this precisely because Modiano's sense of hurt and vulnerability peaks through, even though he turns quickly from one surface detail to another--names, addresses, dates--as a way of distracting himself from distress about a childhood that was in an important sense never really his.
May 16, 2015
"Ma la vita continuava senza sapere bene perché in un dato momento uno si trovasse insieme a certe persone piuttosto che ad altre, in un certo luogo piuttosto che altrove, e se il film fosse una versione originale o doppiata. Oggi non me ne restano in testa che brevi sequenze. "
Posso riassumere con questa frase il breve romanzo del premio Nobel per la letteratura del 2014. Non sono in grado di dire se mi piaccia o meno, è troppo poco per affezionarmi allo scrittore o per non amarlo. Oltretutto questa è una autobiografia, non un vero e proprio romanzo, e parlare di sé stessi non è certo come scrivere un’opera di finzione. Ciò che colpisce è la capacità dello scrittore di raccontare i suoi primi ventun anni di vita da lui vissuti da lontano, come fosse uno spettatore che guarda un film davanti ad uno schermo. E' di certo un modo peculiare di vedersi e parlare di se', toccante ma anche difficile da comprendere. E� come se la scrittura gli servisse da rimozione della sofferenza patita dalla nascita fino al momento della svolta, l’inizio della sua vita da scrittore, una strada parallela alla prima, dalla quale egli idealmente si volge indietro e guarda “il film� della sua vita precedente. Un film fatto di una serie di immagini che passano veloci, persone che entrano ed escono, nomi in sequenza che nulla dicono, si fermano un momento accanto a lui e scompaiono, come in una stazione, come in un quadro di Edward Hopper.
Posso riassumere con questa frase il breve romanzo del premio Nobel per la letteratura del 2014. Non sono in grado di dire se mi piaccia o meno, è troppo poco per affezionarmi allo scrittore o per non amarlo. Oltretutto questa è una autobiografia, non un vero e proprio romanzo, e parlare di sé stessi non è certo come scrivere un’opera di finzione. Ciò che colpisce è la capacità dello scrittore di raccontare i suoi primi ventun anni di vita da lui vissuti da lontano, come fosse uno spettatore che guarda un film davanti ad uno schermo. E' di certo un modo peculiare di vedersi e parlare di se', toccante ma anche difficile da comprendere. E� come se la scrittura gli servisse da rimozione della sofferenza patita dalla nascita fino al momento della svolta, l’inizio della sua vita da scrittore, una strada parallela alla prima, dalla quale egli idealmente si volge indietro e guarda “il film� della sua vita precedente. Un film fatto di una serie di immagini che passano veloci, persone che entrano ed escono, nomi in sequenza che nulla dicono, si fermano un momento accanto a lui e scompaiono, come in una stazione, come in un quadro di Edward Hopper.
October 10, 2015
When, last October, the Swedish Academy announced that France's Patrick Modiano had been awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature, their spokesman, Peter Englund,said they had chosen to celebrate the author's remarkable “art of memory� and acclaimed him as “a Marcel Proust of our time�.
'Pedigree' makes sense of, and at the same time challenges, such statements.
To call this an autobiography is almost missing the point. Modiano has attempted something breathtaking: to capture on paper nothing less than the chaos of memory. This book is a collection of shards that the author sifts through and collates in an effort to gain a greater understanding and acceptance of who he is and where he came from.
“Apart from my brother, Rudy, his death, I do not believe that anything I will relate here truly matters to me. I am writing these pages the way one compiles a report or résumé, as documentation and to have done with a life that was not my own. It's just a simple film of deeds and facts.�
Nothing is avoided, but neither is anything very deeply explored. The tone has a forced coldness, as if keeping to the surfaces is a method of self-preservation. Yet the details do accumulate, to gradually reveal a childhood quite horrific in its neglect and deprivation.
It doesn't make for easy reading. What elevates 'Pedigree' into the realms of the remarkable is its honesty in the face of failure. Unlike Proust's Madeleine moments of total sensory recall, Modiano acknowledges the realistic inadequacy of memory.
Certain flashes of the past live as the barest sentence: a name dropped, a place or event, a grasped moment. Others fit together to form an acceptable chronology if not quite a narrative. The author lets it all come, like tide. From these glimpses, a world slowly forms, featuring a cast of dozens, ne'er-do-wells and hangers-on that he offers up, counting on the notion that any evidence of their existence will somehow emphasise and maybe justify the reality of his own.
The unwanted baby of a Flemish actress (“a pretty girl with an arid heart�) and a part-Jewish black marketeer who'd survived the war on the run from all sides, he is left, virtually from infancy, to fend for himself, abandoned to grandparents, babysitters, the charity of friends, and low-rent boarding schools. Throughout the twenty-one years charted here, his mother flits in and out of his life with occasional cruelty. His father, the dubious and always scheming businessman, is slightly more supportive, if only in a meagre financial sense, until a second marriage turns him into a constant adversary. A ferocious survival instinct sees the young Modiano keep questionable company, steal to eat, and grab comfort where and when he can. And only dreams of a literary career sustain him.
“Sometimes,� he writes, “I would like to go back in time and relive those years better than I lived them then. But how?�
For readers new to Modiano, 'Pedigree' is probably not the place to begin. The past year has seen a number of his works translated for English audiences, and his novels are short, dense and, in their best moments, transcendent. 'Dora Bruder', Missing Person' and 'Honeymoon' all concern themselves, at a basic level, with notions of identity, and all present him at his most essential. Coming to 'Pedigree' after some exposure to his fiction enhances this short, stark and occasionally stunning memoir nearly beyond measure and allows for a fuller appreciation of its depths.
'Pedigree' makes sense of, and at the same time challenges, such statements.
To call this an autobiography is almost missing the point. Modiano has attempted something breathtaking: to capture on paper nothing less than the chaos of memory. This book is a collection of shards that the author sifts through and collates in an effort to gain a greater understanding and acceptance of who he is and where he came from.
“Apart from my brother, Rudy, his death, I do not believe that anything I will relate here truly matters to me. I am writing these pages the way one compiles a report or résumé, as documentation and to have done with a life that was not my own. It's just a simple film of deeds and facts.�
Nothing is avoided, but neither is anything very deeply explored. The tone has a forced coldness, as if keeping to the surfaces is a method of self-preservation. Yet the details do accumulate, to gradually reveal a childhood quite horrific in its neglect and deprivation.
It doesn't make for easy reading. What elevates 'Pedigree' into the realms of the remarkable is its honesty in the face of failure. Unlike Proust's Madeleine moments of total sensory recall, Modiano acknowledges the realistic inadequacy of memory.
Certain flashes of the past live as the barest sentence: a name dropped, a place or event, a grasped moment. Others fit together to form an acceptable chronology if not quite a narrative. The author lets it all come, like tide. From these glimpses, a world slowly forms, featuring a cast of dozens, ne'er-do-wells and hangers-on that he offers up, counting on the notion that any evidence of their existence will somehow emphasise and maybe justify the reality of his own.
The unwanted baby of a Flemish actress (“a pretty girl with an arid heart�) and a part-Jewish black marketeer who'd survived the war on the run from all sides, he is left, virtually from infancy, to fend for himself, abandoned to grandparents, babysitters, the charity of friends, and low-rent boarding schools. Throughout the twenty-one years charted here, his mother flits in and out of his life with occasional cruelty. His father, the dubious and always scheming businessman, is slightly more supportive, if only in a meagre financial sense, until a second marriage turns him into a constant adversary. A ferocious survival instinct sees the young Modiano keep questionable company, steal to eat, and grab comfort where and when he can. And only dreams of a literary career sustain him.
“Sometimes,� he writes, “I would like to go back in time and relive those years better than I lived them then. But how?�
For readers new to Modiano, 'Pedigree' is probably not the place to begin. The past year has seen a number of his works translated for English audiences, and his novels are short, dense and, in their best moments, transcendent. 'Dora Bruder', Missing Person' and 'Honeymoon' all concern themselves, at a basic level, with notions of identity, and all present him at his most essential. Coming to 'Pedigree' after some exposure to his fiction enhances this short, stark and occasionally stunning memoir nearly beyond measure and allows for a fuller appreciation of its depths.
August 7, 2017
“A volte, come un cane senza pedigree e che è stato abbandonato un po� troppo a se stesso, provo la tentazione di scrivere nero su bianco e in dettaglio quello che mi ha fatto subire, per colpa della sua durezza e incoerenza. Taccio. E la perdono. Tutto ormai è così lontano� ma il mio era un dolore da nulla, di quelli su cui non ci si può scrivere nemmeno una poesia.�
Patrick Modiano in questo piccolo libro, mentre racconta la sua vita da giovane, si paragona ad un cane senza pedigree, principalmente a causa del rapporto pressoché inesistente con i genitori e con la madre in particolare, di cui riporta:
“Il fidanzato le aveva regalato un chow-chow ma lei non se ne occupava e lo affidava sempre ad altri, come più tardi farà con me. Il chow-chow si è suicidato gettandosi dalla finestra. Quel cane compare in due o tre fotografie e devo ammettere che mi commuove profondamente e che lo sento molto vicino.�
Una vita particolare, quella raccontata da Modiano, contrassegnata dalla povertà e dalla lotta per avere un posto caldo dove dormire. I genitori parcheggiano Patrick da un collegio ad un altro senza nessun rimorso e lui subisce senza reagire a questa totale indifferenza.
La madre, molto amata, non ha mai nemmeno un gesto di tenerezza nei suoi confronti; davanti a lei Patrick si sente sempre inadeguato, a disagio. Il padre, finanziere vive di espedienti fingendosi una persona perbene; è un uomo talmente solo da avere sul comodino un libro dal titolo “Come farsi degli amici�.
Un libro scritto in modo freddo, duro, essenziale, pulito, che parla del dolore acuto vissuto intimamente durante la giovane età dall’autore e ci aiuta un po� a capire gli altri suoi libri. Un libro che sottolinea il rimpianto per una gioventù che poteva essere migliore, ma non lo è stata. Un libro che fa riflettere su quanto peso abbiano il luogo, gli incontri e i genitori nella formazione di una persona.
Patrick Modiano in questo piccolo libro, mentre racconta la sua vita da giovane, si paragona ad un cane senza pedigree, principalmente a causa del rapporto pressoché inesistente con i genitori e con la madre in particolare, di cui riporta:
“Il fidanzato le aveva regalato un chow-chow ma lei non se ne occupava e lo affidava sempre ad altri, come più tardi farà con me. Il chow-chow si è suicidato gettandosi dalla finestra. Quel cane compare in due o tre fotografie e devo ammettere che mi commuove profondamente e che lo sento molto vicino.�
Una vita particolare, quella raccontata da Modiano, contrassegnata dalla povertà e dalla lotta per avere un posto caldo dove dormire. I genitori parcheggiano Patrick da un collegio ad un altro senza nessun rimorso e lui subisce senza reagire a questa totale indifferenza.
La madre, molto amata, non ha mai nemmeno un gesto di tenerezza nei suoi confronti; davanti a lei Patrick si sente sempre inadeguato, a disagio. Il padre, finanziere vive di espedienti fingendosi una persona perbene; è un uomo talmente solo da avere sul comodino un libro dal titolo “Come farsi degli amici�.
Un libro scritto in modo freddo, duro, essenziale, pulito, che parla del dolore acuto vissuto intimamente durante la giovane età dall’autore e ci aiuta un po� a capire gli altri suoi libri. Un libro che sottolinea il rimpianto per una gioventù che poteva essere migliore, ma non lo è stata. Un libro che fa riflettere su quanto peso abbiano il luogo, gli incontri e i genitori nella formazione di una persona.
December 15, 2019
Modiano writes a memoir like a novel by Modiano. Not surprising. All the characters of his life are set adrift by various clandestine and vulnerable scenarios, a Jewish father avoiding the yellow star, later avoiding a real job and the responsibility for raising a child. The child shifting from boarding school to boarding school. And characters appear around the streets of various Paris arrondissement like they always do. There was actually a Costa Rican character and a Columbian story line in the real Modiano, as there appears variously in his novels. The memoir, up the date he becomes and adult, coincides with the publication of his first novel. And thus a life of crime is avoided. How else does an unstable childhood end up, anyway? You either succeed writing about it, or tread water, before you drown in it.
Short snappy sentences capture brief experiences, or use brevity to evade hardship. He says at one point he is no good at metaphor. He ends in one. There is that elusive atmosphere in all his work, people come and go, in and out of cars, streets, strange apartments, inconclusive relationships.
There should be unhappiness. But that is elusive, too. The father is forgiven, despite his deliberate distancing. Emotions are avoided, for cold hard facts and actions. The novels, too, move quickly through emotional stages, avoiding them? Or looking at the modern world as anomie?
I find Modiano's work engaging constantly. I had never heard of him, until he won the Nobel. Now I can't stop reading him, with new translations coming on board every few months. Some editions are appalling like the Night Watch Bloomsbury. A book that must contain the most typos per 1000 words. There should be an award for such little irritations.
Short snappy sentences capture brief experiences, or use brevity to evade hardship. He says at one point he is no good at metaphor. He ends in one. There is that elusive atmosphere in all his work, people come and go, in and out of cars, streets, strange apartments, inconclusive relationships.
There should be unhappiness. But that is elusive, too. The father is forgiven, despite his deliberate distancing. Emotions are avoided, for cold hard facts and actions. The novels, too, move quickly through emotional stages, avoiding them? Or looking at the modern world as anomie?
I find Modiano's work engaging constantly. I had never heard of him, until he won the Nobel. Now I can't stop reading him, with new translations coming on board every few months. Some editions are appalling like the Night Watch Bloomsbury. A book that must contain the most typos per 1000 words. There should be an award for such little irritations.
March 15, 2018
Patrick Modiano's Pedigree: A Memoir is an autobiographical essay (it takes a little more than two hours to read) which cover the years of his upbringing up to the publication of his first book in 1968.
To put it simply, Modiano received no loving upbringing on the part of his parents or relatives. His father was a small-time hustler with big dreams, and his mother was a small-time actress. At one point, Modiano writes:
Throughout most of this book, the feeling of hurt is palpable. Yet Patrick Modiano won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2014. Over the last few years, I have read six of his books; and I am more likely to pick another Modiano to read than almost any other French writer -- except maybe Balzac, whom I adore.
To put it simply, Modiano received no loving upbringing on the part of his parents or relatives. His father was a small-time hustler with big dreams, and his mother was a small-time actress. At one point, Modiano writes:
I hope I can be forgiven all these names, and the others to follow. I'm a dog who pretends to have a pedigree. My mother and father didn't belong to any particular milieu. So aimless were they, so unsettled, that I'm straining to find a few markers, a few beacons in this quicksand, as one might attempt to fill in with half-smudged letters a census form or administrative questionnaire.It seems that for most of his youth, Modiano was sent to cheap boarding schools in the provinces. His father, who has married a person whom he calls, simply, "the ersatz Mylene Demongeot" after her resemblance to that French actress, sees him at long intervals, and his new wife calls the police on him when he dares to make a visit (though he lives only one floor beneath him).
Throughout most of this book, the feeling of hurt is palpable. Yet Patrick Modiano won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2014. Over the last few years, I have read six of his books; and I am more likely to pick another Modiano to read than almost any other French writer -- except maybe Balzac, whom I adore.
May 5, 2022
Chịu thua lần nữa với Modiano. Không phải là câu chuyện khó hiểu mà là mình không tìm thấy bất c� động lực hay s� tương đồng đ� tiếp tục theo dõi. C� cuốn sách giống như một bản thống kê lai lịch của hàng đống con người liên quan h� hững tới nhau.
Có l� cần có những s� liên đới nhất định với chính cuộc sống của người đọc mới có th� đồng cảm và yêu thích Modiano.
Có l� cần có những s� liên đới nhất định với chính cuộc sống của người đọc mới có th� đồng cảm và yêu thích Modiano.
June 12, 2021
80 pagine per lo più elenco di persone e luoghi che hanno fatto parte dell'infanzia e adolescenza di Modiano. Frammenti di ricordi. Fotografie della difficile giovinezza dello scrittore, abbandonato a se stesso: figure genitoriali assenti o, quando presenti, assolutamente inadeguate. A mio parere può interessare solo a chi ama Modiano e vuole conoscere parte della sua vita.
July 31, 2016
Un libro genial. Modiano es un maestro del ritmo de la narración, de lo que Piglia llama el tono propio. Un Pedigrí es una exploración incómoda sobre sus padres. Casi todo el libro tiene un tono esquivo, áspero. Las frases son telegráficas, escuetas, parcas. El narrador parece estar molesto por tener que hablar de las miserias de sus padres, a los que acusa pero perdona. Allí radica su legitimación, su pedigrí, en el perdón. Creo que este libro es una especie de ascesis evasiva en proceso, en pleno desarrollo, inestable, inconclusa. No hay justificación para el trato que recibió en la infancia y la adolescencia, en caso de contener este relato ficcional elementos verídicos. Sin embargo, Modiano evita con elegancia la autocompasión por un lado y la justificación forzada del desamparo que sufrió y pareciera que todavía sufre, por el otro lado. Una madre actriz que lo abandona pero le pide ayuda. Un padre rarísimo, débil frente a su segunda mujer pero autoritario con su hijo, al que trata de expulsarlo de su vida (que parece vinculada al delito). Modiano parece relajarse recién hacia el final del libro, donde logra momentos de redención, aunque inconclusa. Opino que este efecto forma parte del arte de Modiano. No creo que se pueda explicar solamente como el ritmo catártico de una sesión de psicoanálisis. Opino que conviene leer este libro en el contexto de toda la obra de Modiano, que trata siempre el tema de la construcción de la identidad, de las sombras de la memoria, de la literatura, de París, de sus padres, del abandono. En particular, creo que conviene leer Un Pedigrí, publicado originalmente en 2005, junto con su libro de 2014 Para Que No Te Pierdas En El Barrio.
March 18, 2022
The promotional material suggests this slim memoir will provide a glimpse into Modiano's formative years and sources of inspiration. Perhaps it does. The memoir is full of glimpses, or even half-glimpses (if there are such things). At times the narrative devolves into little more than lists. (Can a list offer a glimpse?)
Knowing nothing of Modiano's work, this memoir was a very slight offering.
Perhaps not the most inspiring introduction to this Nobel Prize winning author. Research continues.
Knowing nothing of Modiano's work, this memoir was a very slight offering.
Perhaps not the most inspiring introduction to this Nobel Prize winning author. Research continues.
November 15, 2018
This is a short memoir of Patrick Modiano- His very disjointed life spent mostly at boarding schools and being shifted between parents and parents friends whoever would have him. I am reading his many books lately i love the atmosphere he creates very unique to him.The translation of Pedigree is perfect all french details and and expression very beautifully shown. Lovely book ,handsome breathtaking cover portrait -mon dieu!
March 30, 2018
سيرة الفقد
May 19, 2019
Patrick Modiano won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2014 for the body of his work which includes a couple of dozen novels and "autofictions:" the Nobel citation says the prize was given "for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the Occupation. " Obviously there is a lot of imaginative work here, because Modiano was born in July 1945, just as the War was ending, and knew the Occupation only through the memories of others.
Pedigree purports to be the truth behind his fictions, the story of his life up until the time he published his first, widely acclaimed novel, at the age of 23. The title of this work is a pun, referring both to the Paris landmark and to the wartime joke about the Jew who was asked where la Place de l'étoile was, and who pointed to the left side of his chest where Jews were supposed to display the yellow star that marked them for Nazi persecution.
What happened to one's family in the past is a question that many writers return to again and again. In Modiano's case finding out has required much sleuthing, and more than once he's prepared a partial answer. A case in point is , which is almost surrealistic in its presentation of tantalizing hints about what the truth is. In the portrait he paints of his dysfunctional family is damning. He suggests at one point that his mother cared more about her little, pedigreed lap dog than she did about her two sons. He reports near the end his father's heavy-handed machinations designed to get him to follow a conventional path. He chronicles the way he defied his father, and adds with only a little regret, that he wishes his father had lived to see his success.
But one person's obsessions, however strangely fascinating when encountered for the first time, can grow boring. Dany Laferrière, the Haitian-Québécois now a member of the Académie française, says his literary work is like a house that he has returned to many times, remodelling it and adding new rooms. In his case, I would advise reading where his story is presented in its most poetic and searing version to date.
Similarly, Modiano seems trapped by his past and France's past. He writes well, but my advice would be to read this book and not to bother with his others.
Pedigree purports to be the truth behind his fictions, the story of his life up until the time he published his first, widely acclaimed novel, at the age of 23. The title of this work is a pun, referring both to the Paris landmark and to the wartime joke about the Jew who was asked where la Place de l'étoile was, and who pointed to the left side of his chest where Jews were supposed to display the yellow star that marked them for Nazi persecution.
What happened to one's family in the past is a question that many writers return to again and again. In Modiano's case finding out has required much sleuthing, and more than once he's prepared a partial answer. A case in point is , which is almost surrealistic in its presentation of tantalizing hints about what the truth is. In the portrait he paints of his dysfunctional family is damning. He suggests at one point that his mother cared more about her little, pedigreed lap dog than she did about her two sons. He reports near the end his father's heavy-handed machinations designed to get him to follow a conventional path. He chronicles the way he defied his father, and adds with only a little regret, that he wishes his father had lived to see his success.
But one person's obsessions, however strangely fascinating when encountered for the first time, can grow boring. Dany Laferrière, the Haitian-Québécois now a member of the Académie française, says his literary work is like a house that he has returned to many times, remodelling it and adding new rooms. In his case, I would advise reading where his story is presented in its most poetic and searing version to date.
Similarly, Modiano seems trapped by his past and France's past. He writes well, but my advice would be to read this book and not to bother with his others.
October 23, 2015
Patrick Modiano raconte son enfance se déroulant à une époque trouble de l’Histoire de France. Elle est pour le moins atypique, on y croise des personnages au destin singulier tout droits sortis de films de gangsters. On ne connaît pas exactement la nature de leurs activités mais on la devine, comme en les observant au travers d’une vitre en verre dépolie ou plutôt au travers des yeux d’un enfant. Le style de Modiano est surprenant. Il nous étouffe, sous les faits, les histoires et les personnages. Là où d’autres consacreraient un chapitre au développement d’une anecdote, lui y accorde trois lignes et passe immédiatement à la suivante. Les personnages sont traités de la même manière, sans approfondir leur histoire. Quelle efficacité, on a l’impression de connaître l'auteur tant ses raccourcis nous sont accessibles. On reçoit le message, ce n’est pas chaque événement qui a une importance mais plutôt leur somme. C'est la dureté, cette incroyable solitude vécue par Modiano enfant qui ressort de ce livre. Il connaît même l'atroce douleur d'être ignoré par ses propres parents. Au milieu de cette rudesse, la lecture, et certains titres en particulier lui offre un bref oasis de bien être.
On en a le souffle coupé, en une centaine de pages il nous transmet la force d’un imposant ouvrage épique. On a l’impression d’avoir visionné en accéléré la genèse, dans un environnement hostile, d’un grand écrivain.
On en a le souffle coupé, en une centaine de pages il nous transmet la force d’un imposant ouvrage épique. On a l’impression d’avoir visionné en accéléré la genèse, dans un environnement hostile, d’un grand écrivain.
February 3, 2016
A moody memoir of the young years of the Nobel Prize winner (for literature) Patrick Modiano. I have not, at this date, read any of his fiction, but will do so. I like his writing, and how he reflects on the relationship between him and his parents. His mother was very distant and sort of demanding, and father was a border-line criminal. Both parents lacked that parent skill, so Modiano floated between and beyond them.
This brief book is hard to put down, and one can easily read it in a few hours. It's concise in scope in that it addresses the years of his childhood up to the time when he wrote his first novel in his early 20s. The narration floats down the stream, like memory at work. His sense of place, specifically Paris in the 1950s is very clear. The book is written dryly, but I sense a great deal of emotion from the author as he covers his life as it happened. The writing is sparse, but loaded with meaning. On top of that, since I'm Boris Vian's publisher in English, I'm delighted he gives some attention to the remarkable figure of the Saint Germain-des-prés scene. It seems like he knew his widow, and she showed him a dance that Boris and her used to do together. Great little book.
This brief book is hard to put down, and one can easily read it in a few hours. It's concise in scope in that it addresses the years of his childhood up to the time when he wrote his first novel in his early 20s. The narration floats down the stream, like memory at work. His sense of place, specifically Paris in the 1950s is very clear. The book is written dryly, but I sense a great deal of emotion from the author as he covers his life as it happened. The writing is sparse, but loaded with meaning. On top of that, since I'm Boris Vian's publisher in English, I'm delighted he gives some attention to the remarkable figure of the Saint Germain-des-prés scene. It seems like he knew his widow, and she showed him a dance that Boris and her used to do together. Great little book.
March 24, 2021
Quiero saber por qué este señor se hizo acreedor a un premio Nobel. Podría ser por el resto de su cuerpo de obra, claro, pero la crítica dice que ésta es su gran novela. Y pues yo no entiendo nada. ¿Por qué, si a él no le importan los hechos narrados; por qué si él mismo expresa en repetidas ocasiones su duda sobre el valor de estos recuerdos; por qué, digo, tienen que importarle a alguien más? Es una novela constituida por listas de hechos, nombres, direcciones, transcripciones en 144 páginas que se sienten pesadas e interminables. Todo dudoso. Si no la abandoné es porque caí en la vieja falacia de las pérdidas irrecuperables o como se llame, y supe que todo era un fracaso cuando empecé a hacer mis anotaciones con la mano derecha, todas flojas y patas de araña. Alguien, por favor, dígame de qué me perdí, porque de verdad que no entiendo.
Le pongo dos estrellas porque tiene como cuatro frases que me llamaron la atención.
Le pongo dos estrellas porque tiene como cuatro frases que me llamaron la atención.
August 7, 2020
"Je suis un chien qui fait semblant d'avoir un pedigree". Dans ce récit autobiographique Patrick Modiano revient sur son enfance, ballotté dès son plus jeune âge entre ses parents séparés et dont aucun ne souhaite prendre la responsabilité. Entre son père, impliqué dans des affaires véreuses, et sa mère, constamment absente en quête de rôles secondaires de théâtre et de cinéma (et que sait-on d'autre), le jeune Patrick navigue un univers faussement reluisant, fréquentant aristocrates, artistes et anciens champions sportifs, mais se trouvant à la limite de la misère.
On retrouve dans ce récit l'univers jet-set aux couleurs fânées, les rencontres fuyantes, les mystères des conversations non abouties, et tant d'autres éléments constituant l'univers des romans de Modiano. Magnifique.
On retrouve dans ce récit l'univers jet-set aux couleurs fânées, les rencontres fuyantes, les mystères des conversations non abouties, et tant d'autres éléments constituant l'univers des romans de Modiano. Magnifique.
December 7, 2016
He leído tres libros de Modiano y todavía no entiendo qué le ve la gente. Me parece un autor aburridísimo, que convierte cualquier posible buena historia en un relato lento y tedioso. En este caso, ‘Un pedigrí� me parece una lista interminable de nombres y situaciones insustanciales� El autor quiere mostrarnos cuál era la relación con sus padres, especialmente con su padre, pero lo cuenta de una manera tan desalmada, que no me produce ningún sentimiento. Como me ocurre con sus otros libros que he leído.
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