Present Pasts: Patrick Modiano's (Auto)Biographical Fictions (review)

In 'the first study to examine in depth the twelve texts specifically concerned with life-writing' (p. 11), Dervila Cooke focuses on a crucial aspect of Patrick Modiano's literary production. As Modiano's narratives invariably represent an effort to reconstruct, or reinvent, a past, either his own or that of fictional and fictionalized others, the conventions of autobiography and biography assume considerable importance in his writing. Although earlier studies have not neglected the problem of identity in his work, or its status as 'autofiction', Cooke focuses exclusively on the ambiguities and contradictions of Modiano's approach to life-writing. Present Pasts divides into two unequal sections: the first, on autobiography, analyses four 'autofictions', Livret de famille, De si braves garçons, Remise de peine and La Petite Bijou, followed by four 'fictitious autobiographical projects', Quartier perdu, Vestiaire de l'enfance and La Place de l'Étoile. The second part, on 'biographical quests', groups Les Boulevards de ceinture with Chien de printemps (as works where the writer uses imaginative speculation to create a sense of his 'biographee'), and Voyage de noces with Dora Bruder (as works where the writer attempts to approach the same subject from both fictional and documentary perspectives). The substantial introductions to the various sections both explain and justify the groupings, situating Modiano's work in relation to the theory and practice of autobiography/autofiction and biography/biofiction. In order to clarify distinctions made in these theoretical sections, Cooke introduces a dimension of reader response theory, postulating four types of virtual readers of Modiano's texts, from the uninformed 'yardstick reader' who, knowing nothing about Modiano, might idly pick up one of his books, to the 'multiple-text reader' who has followed the writer's career and read much of his work. Their differing assumptions about the fictional status of Modiano's (auto)biographical narratives are contrasted throughout the various sections, for instance, 'Voyage de noces, which is presented as a fictional autobiographical quest of Ingrid Teyrsen on a diagetic level, is biofictional for the reader who knows that it is a fictionalized account of the real-life figure of Dora Bruder' (p. 216). However, assessing these differing assumptions in relation to each of the works overburdens the text and ultimately blurs the initial theoretical distinctions, even between such crucial terms as autobiography and biography. Moreover, the similarities between Modiano's various 'novels' leads to repetition, as Cooke examines the same issues from slightly different angles in the introductions and each of the individual chapters. Most sucessful are the readings of particular novels. Cooke's impressive grasp of the Modiano corpus reveals how much a book such as Dora Bruder, ostensibly a shift toward more traditional biographical narrative, owes to earlier fictional works. Present Pasts is not the best introduction to Modiano's work, but 'multiple-text readers' will profit from the author's knowledge of the œuvre.