REVIEW: "Suspended Sentences: Three Novellas" by Patrick Modiano

Yale UP, 14 Nov 2014, $16.00

„Vivre, c'est s'obstiner à achever un souvenir“. Patrick Modiano, Livret de famille (1977).

Before Patrick Modiano won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2014, his name was a blank slate for me. There are always some names out there who even a wide-read reader will never have heard of (another example would be the 2009 winner, Herta Müller, who just wasn’t on anyone’s mind and who unfortunately faded back to obscurity after her win). It is a pleasure to get to know such a widely acclaimed author as Modiano.

According to the statement released by the Nobel committee, he won the prize “for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation“. The first part, “the art of memory”, is especially important when looking at the collection at-hand. Suspended Sentences groups together three novellas, Afterimage (Chien de printemps, 1993), Suspended Sentences (Remise de peine, 1988) and Flowers of Ruin (Fleurs de ruine, 1991). As Modiano ascertains in the introduction, “taken together … those books form a single work”. Mark Polizzotti’s translation easily manages to make sense of Modiano’s particular style, which is easily read but not necessarily understood. From what I could see with my limited French skills, not that much is missing from the source text.

The main focus on these novellas is on remembrance. Modiano has been likened to Proust, and I can see where that is coming from. The texts are fragments that recall things that have been, while often reminiscing about things that happened even further back. The narrator in Flowers of Ruin seemingly recalls meeting the elusive Pacheco, while also retelling that man’s life story before the Second World War. Even if this sounds confusing, it is actually not, which makes it such a pleasure to read these texts.

Afterimage tells the story of a photographer, a student of famous photographer Robert Capa, who our anonymous meets and works with. Suspended Sentences deals with two brothers living under the care of Annie and her ragtag team of compadres. This team is somewhat seedy, dealing with liquor and travelling to and fro Paris throughout the narrative. While raising a lot of questions, most of them are left unanswered and will sink down with the memories the narrator summons to write his story. Flowers of Ruin is a mixture of a whodunit and the recollections of a flâneur. Again and again, points spring up, but none of them will be connected, something is always missing. This story felt like coming home to me, as the vivid descriptions of streets, places and avenues remind me so much of the past summer: While Modiano’s Paris is surely different from the modern one, the feeling I got when wandering through it last June was surely similar.

In my opinion, the story itself does not matter in these novellas. Take a hike down memory lane, get swept away by the currents of remembrance, reminisce on the people you have met and the thousands you forgot, jump from picture to picture and from emotion to emotion, enjoy the ride. Making sense of the past is often impossible, especially if we only rely on our faulty memories. Will there be another Patrick Modiano in a hundred years’ time? We will have to see. Until then, this collection is the way to go. I will give it 4 ½ stars, rounded down to 4. The translation is spectacular, the stories are a pleasant and intriguing read, and what ultimately counts is the ride, not the outcome, but there is still something missing to make it a solid five stars. Still, this is highly recommended.

Thanks to Yale UP for providing a copy through Netgalley. Suspended Sentences: Three Novellas was released November 11, 2014 for a price pf $16.00 and was translated by Mark Polizzotti. 

REVIEW: "Youth: Autobiographical Writings" by Wolfgang Koeppen

Dalkey Archive Press - $14.95 - 18 Nov 2014

„Youth: Autobiographical Writings“ is a dizzying experience. The style is typical for Wolfgang Koeppen: He skilfully uses the Montage-technique, which shares some similarities with the stream-of-consciousness-technique in Modernist writing. Impressions, scraps and emotions are woven into a dense text. Scenes from a Pre-, Inter- and Post-World War I Germany hit the reader with the force of a tank. While the titular story follows a more or less stringent story, many of the scenes are lavishly told associative pieces on war, decay, death and growing up. The translator Michael Hofmann does a splendid job; side-by-side comparisons of the text show that he grasps the intricacies of the text. In his introduction, he portrays Koeppen, who he knew personally, as a hard-working and destitute writer, a “silent, broody author”. The text is autobiographical, but without any knowledge on the writer this might be hard to discern. Hofmann describes the style of the book as such:

“Whether a sentence is a beautifully landscaped torrent going on for several pages or a dumbly insolent “I was Germany’s future” or one of Koeppen’s patented “or maybe…” constructions, sidestepping into freedom, it is all scrupulously managed, supple, cadenced, sumptuously lexical, expressive prose.”

A simple description what “Youth” is about does not do it justice. Just as youth is confusing, abstruse, incomprehensible, awkward and complicated, so is the pastiche we are presented with. Sentences heaped on sentences filled with descriptions of the horrors of the Great War, the aching sense of isolation and desperation teenager feel they have the monopoly on, first experiments in love and loss. “Youth” was first published in 1976, a late work of the then 70-year-old. Some of his experiences are universal, some romanticized, some a nihilistic portrayal of growing up during times of war. So to speak, he is a much more suitable proto-member of the Lost Generation, living in and through the Great War and not having the chance of comfortably choosing to be an expatriate. In a way, he is the younger brother to most of more famous writers of the Lost Generation, such as Remarque. Koeppen is eight when the Great War begins, twelve when it ended in 1918. He describes the feeling of being trapped in a war-torn country:

“(…) I thought I want to run away from this town, away from this country, flee, flee, and I traipsed in with everyone and found my seat.”

The narrative also focuses on Koeppen’s budding love for literature. After he witnessed the First World War in the small village of Ortelsburg, he returned to school in 1919. Koeppen worked in bookshops and attended lectures at the University of Greifswald later on. There are several stories and articles in newspapers by him. As is normal for many writers, he spends most of his time reading:

“Libraries attracted me. I haunted them, greedy and addicted. I was in love with the people who worked in them. I was irresistible, the librarians were helpless. They did my bidding. They opened their shelves to me, they parted from their treasures. I surrounded myself with script. I guzzled type. I forgot myself. I sat in the public square like a drunkard. The alphabet swept me away. I was a caution to the city. I was an irritation.”

A young man, drunk on prose and poetry during and after times of war is an eye-sore to the system. It is reassuring to know that he made it through. 

The second story in this thin volume is more closely related to the travel writing Koeppen used to commit to in his later years. Michael Hofmann likens it to a refreshment after the bombardment of the titular story, “something plain and uncomplicated and benign”. It reads exactly like that. Once Upon A Time in Masuria is missing the fierce descriptions, the high-brow literary techniques, yes, even the subject matter. It is a short text of vignettes, revelling in nostalgia. 

What I liked best about this book are Koeppen’s monumental sentences, often spanning more than a page. While it is easy to get lost in them, it is a welcome change to be treated to such well-crafted and immersive sentences. Before reading Youth, Koeppen was still a name I knew about, especially from my German AP courses during the Abitur. Tauben im Gras is widely regarded as one of the best post-war works of German literature. I always wanted to read a complete work by him rather than just fragments, now this English translation finally enabled me to do exactly that. What a pleasure! 



Youth: Autobiographical Writing will be published Nov 18 2014 by Dalkey Archive Press. I received a free copy in exchange for a review through Netgalley.