Patrick Modiano
Patrick Modiano is a writer French born on July 30th, 1945 with Boulogne-Billancourt.
Biography
Patrick Modiano was born from a father of Jewish confession of origin Italy (Albert Modiano) and from a Belgian mother, unloaded in Paris in 1942 (Louisa Colpijn better known under its name of actress of Belgian Cinéma Louisa Colpeyn). His/her parents met in occupied Paris and lived the beginning of their relation in a semi-clandestinity.Its childhood proceeds in a particular atmosphere: between the absence of his/her father - on the subject of which he hears turbid accounts - and the rounds of his mother, he carries out his schooling of college in pension. That brings it closer to his/her brother, Rudy, which dies of disease at the 10 years age (the works of Patrick Modiano are dedicated to him of 1967 with 1982). This disappearance announces the end of the childhood of the author, who will keep a marked nostalgia of this period.
It makes its studies at the school of Montcel with Jouy-in-Josas, with the Saint-Joseph college of Thônes (Haute-Savoie), then with the Lycée Henri-Iv with Paris. Having for particular professor of geometry Raymond Queneau, a friend of his mother whom it meets whereas it is 15 years old, it takes down her baccalaureat with Annecy but does not undertake an higher learning.
Its meeting with the author of Zazie in the subway is crucial. Introduced by him into the literary world, Patrick Modiano at the time of taking part in cocktails given by the Gallimard editions. It will publish its first novel in 1967 there, the Place of the Star , after having made some read again the manuscript with Raymond Queneau. From this year, it does not make any more but write.
September 12th, 1970, Patrick Modiano marries Dominique Zerhfuss. I have a catastrophic memory of the day of our marriage. It rained. A true nightmare. Our witnesses were Queneau, which had protected Patrick since his adolescence, and Malraux, a friend of my father. They started to dispute in connection with Dubuffet, and one was to us there like front a match of tennis! However, that would have been amusing to have photographs but the only person who had an apparatus forgot to put the film. Then there remains to us only one photograph, of back and under an umbrella! ' (Interview with It , October 6th, 2003) From this union will be born two girls, Zina (1974) and Marie (1978).
Its work
Topics approached
The literature modianienne is initially built starting from two major topics: the search of the identity (his and that of its entourage), as well as the impotence to include/understand the disorders, the movements of the company. What produces a phenomenon where the narrator is almost always in observer, undergoing, and trying to find a direction with the many events which are assembled in front of him, concerned with the details, of the indices, which could clear up and constitute an identity. Modiano (or its narrator) shows themselves sometimes like a true archeologist of the memory, raising and preserving the least document, unimportant at the first access, in order to even join together information in connection with him, of close relations or the unknown ones. Therefore certain pages seem to be worked with the manner of a detective or of a historiographer.Another obsession modianienne, the period of the German Occupation. Born in 1945, he obviously did not know it, but he unceasingly refers to it through the desire to determine the life of his parents during this period at the point to adapt it and to plunge some of his characters there. The obvious duplicity of the ideological position of his/her parents thus tends to make emerge in its works of the protagonists to the fuzzy situation, with the badly definite limits and profiles (in particular in the first trilogy, known as " of Occupation" , made up of its first three novels).
The question of the father
The topic of the father and paternity is with share in Patrick Modiano. Initially because it constitutes the epicentre of a whole network of variable secondary topics (the absence, treason, heredity…), but also because it is about an element of autofiction influencing the whole of the universe being released from the writings. This topic is thus mainly present as a backdrop at the accounts of Patrick Modiano.Albert Modiano remains a enigma by various points and the writing makes it possible the author to develop them way liberator. Of his youth, one is unaware of almost all, except his participation in some traffics. During the Occupation, he lives in the illegality supplements and uses a false identity (Henri Lagroux) which enables him not to carry yellow star. But the most disconcerting remainder an episode in which, after being taken in a raid, Albert Modiano is taken along to Austerlitz for a convoy. In a surprising way, it will quickly be released by a friend placed high. The identity of this individual remains fuzzy. That it is about a member of the band of the Rue Lauriston, i.e. the French Gestapo is supposed.
Having for practice to meet his son in highly attended places, like the halls of stations and hotels, Albert Modiano is always worried by mysterious businesses. Patrick decides at the 17 years age more to re-examine it. He will learn his death (ever elucidated) without never knowing the place of the burial.
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