French author Patrick Modiano won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature, and his best-known work, at least outside of France, is his novel Missing Person (originally Rue des Boutiques Obscure, a real street in Rome on which Modiano once lived), which won the 1978 Prix Goncourt, the French equivalent to the Pulitzer or the National Book Award. Modiano’s works tend to be short and tersely written, with sparing prose not too dissimilar to Hemingway’s, and a constant distance maintained between the reader and the text. (This post is primarily about Missing Person, but this summer I also read Suspended Sentences, a collection of three novellas by Modiano, which informs my opinion of his style.)
The protagonist of Missing Person is an amnesiac detective whose boss of ten years is retiring, leaving him to try to solve the case of his own lost identity and history, based on scant clues and the need to talk to people who may not remember him, or want to talk, or even still be among the living. The short novel follows the character around Paris and France, and eventually to the South Pacific island of Bora Bora, as he tries to unroll the years he lost prior to whatever caused his amnesia. He uncovers a possible answer to his identity, although it’s far from certain, and the person he may once have been was himself a frequent changer of identities as he tried to flee from the occupying forces during World War II, eventually slipping across the Pyrennées into Spain.
Even that story, however, is of dubious veracity, and there’s a sense throughout the novel that the protagonist, who also narrates the work, is grasping at any straws he can find, overly eager to get an answer to his search without worrying enough whether it’s accurate. He has a photograph of someone who might have been him, but whenever he shows it to someone who might recognize him in that context, he’s quick to ask, “Don’t you think it looks like me?” — a leading question that elicits half-hearted agreement more than actual answers. Once the narrator has a story on to which he can latch on, he also seems to drop alternate theories, which seems contrary to his new identity as a private detective and apparently a successful one at that.
And if the narrator can’t solve the mystery of his identity and past, then what remains for him? Can he be satisfied living a life without a history, or knowing his real name (or, as it seems, one of his real names)? When the foundation of our self-identification is denied to us, how does that affect our ability to function in a society that is obsessed not just with who we are or where we came from, but with where our parents came from, or whether we come from certain stock or a high enough class? What does the lack of a personal history do to someone’s self-image? Is it better to have a satisfying myth than to have the unvarnished truth – especially if the latter is unflattering or even includes something shameful?
Modiano’s stories seem to lack firm conclusions; that is certainly true of Missing Person, where the Bora Bora lead doesn’t pan out, leaving the narrator with one last clue to try to unravel his personal history, with the novel ending with a brief thought from the narrator on his quixotic mission but no resolution. He might know who he was, but he’s not sure and it appears he might never receive that closure. Modiano asks if half an answer, of uncertain accuracy, would be better than having none at all, and leaves it to the reader to judge.
Next up: I’m halfway through Vernor Vinge’s mammoth Hugo-winning novel A Deepness in the Sky.