Modiano’s Fictions: The Political Landscape

There is a question Edward W Said reserves for Jewish intellectuals who write about Holocaust and atrocities against Jews: How do they read and respond to the similar genocide that the Zionist government orchestrates against Palestinians. Their answer would be the proof of their radical politics not being sectarian. Sadly, Modiano is silent about Palestine.

This year’s Nobel Prize for Literature has been announced with French Novelist Patrick Modiano bagging the greatest award in literature. Modiano has written around 40 novels, including Missing Persons, Night Rounds, Trace of Malice (works translated into English). He is noted for being the screenwriter of Louis Melle’s Lacombe, Lucien-a film on the world war human condition based on the famed director’s experiences.

As it is sometimes, the Royal Swedish Academy struck down familiar names as awardees. The Syrian Poet Adonais, Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami and Philip Roth were among the contenders. The omission of Philip Roth raised the eyebrows of his readers, especially the Guardian columnist Emma Brocks and Le Monde critic Josyane Savigneau There are sharp criticisms against the Academy’s not choosing a better writer than the chosen one. And this criticism is as old as Nobel Prize itself. None thinks that the award pinpoint masters and classics. Among those neglected by the Academy, we have many titans, including Mark Twain, Tolstoy, Joyce, Nabakov, Yeats and Frost. In fact, there is no sharp criticism about Modiano himself; he is merely said to be second to many. That is all. So the criticism should not have been against the novelist himself; it should have been directed against the Academy and judges or, about the very purpose of such an award, as it is not a marker of greatness.

In fact, Modiano himself has rejected the notion of a novelist placed over his works. If someone’s works are really significant, so the standard of judgment for a classic is its acceptance and time-tested value among the readers. Modiano uses the word byzantinisme, as pointed out by Akne Kawakami, to signify a decadent enjoyment of obscurity and blames it on academies. His distrust of academies can also be extended to Swedish Academy as well and its selection of obscure, less significant works over the time-tested works of art. During an interesting interaction on Thursday, Modiano said that he was writing the same novel for 45 years and that he did not know why he was selected for the award.

Modiano is not, however, an insignificant writer, who tries to escape from the destruction and fascism in the political world to the coziness of cupboard realism and family dramas. He is a chronicler of the genocide (especially against the Jewish diaspora) and the destructiveness of the world war. Loius Melle’s film, through which Modiano is famous in the English speaking world, is a stark portrayal of life in the midst of war and of how war shatters and disrupts identities centered on lineage. Rootlessness, void, rejection, desertion by parents have been the major themes of his work.