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Missing Person (Verba Mundi Book) by Patrick…
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Missing Person (Verba Mundi Book) (original 1978; edition 2004)

by Patrick Modiano

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
9773221,215 (3.71)50
"For ten years Guy Roland has lived without a past. His current life and name were given to him by his recently retired boss, Hutte, who welcomed him, a one-time client, into his detective agency. Guy makes full use of Hutte's files - directories, yearbooks, and papers of all kinds going back half a century - but leads to his former life are few. Could he really be that person in a photograph, a young man remembered by some as a South American attache? Or was he someone else, perhaps the disappeared scion of a prominent local family? He interviews strangers and is tantalized by half-clues until, at last, he grasps a thread that leads him through the maze of his own repressed experience."… (more)
Member:LegalBizzle
Title:Missing Person (Verba Mundi Book)
Authors:Patrick Modiano
Info:David R. Godine Publisher Inc (2004), Paperback, 167 pages
Collections:Your library, Favorites
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Missing Person by Patrick Modiano (1978)

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English (18)  French (3)  Swedish (2)  Italian (2)  Dutch (2)  Spanish (1)  Czech (1)  Catalan (1)  Portuguese (Brazil) (1)  Norwegian (1)  All languages (32)
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"[B]ut what she said." [end of text] — Kafka, "The Castle"

Modiano, is, in some way, the opposite of Handke: we sense he is always making a mistake (Handke writes "Deep Blue"). Our author is constructing a story of loss whose heroines, unlike in Sebald (Austerlitz), are not stored in carbonic (maid) nor celluloid (mother). Here, we are seeking the Polaroid, going after the (ephemeral) magazine, recalling the issue our chief character borrows with a promise and fails to return. A history of magazines not returned. Nobody seems to ask any questions. Eager to believe. He is always responding 'yes' as if at a séance or motivational interview. And we sense our narrator has never actually left that office full of books of faded directories bequeathed at the outset of his journey - playing, instead, an Oulipian game of construction: semantic connections, constellations (and makeup) on empty space.

But this is just a kind of bad writing (there are good and bad ways to do Oulipo), arising from the space of imagination and always making a mistake. Among those we know to practice confabulation (I am seeking a less pejorative term), O'Connor's efforts are most frail, Joyce Carol Oates a little better with history to stand on, Murnane's are more complex (Because he is always scraping the imaginary landscape to the bone. (This is how, at his most successful, we are occasionally getting the so-called Murnane-sentence, hardly more than a phrase, which is trying to go a little deeper.)) It sometimes takes more imagination to do nothing at all. Modiano, who has surely read Kafka (The Castle), may have done better to cut our novella short mid-sentence during that scene adrift in the Swiss Alps (also the halting point of my memory of the text). ( )
  Joe.Olipo | Jan 1, 2024 |
As always: retracing memories, retracing lost people, places, lifes and finding a person; oneself. As always, a masterpiece from an author that has become essential for me. (Read a Swedish translation.) ( )
  ansedor | Oct 13, 2020 |
Hutte, for instance, used to quote the case of a fellow he called "the beach man." This man had spent forty years of his life on beaches or by the sides of swimming pools, chatting pleasantly with summer visitors and rich idlers. He is to be seen, in his bathing costume, in the corners and backgrounds of thousands of holiday snaps, among groups of happy people, but no one knew his name and why he was there. And no one noticed when one day he vanished from the photographs.

A.S. Byatt once noted she finished David Mitchell's Ghostwritten at a busy airport baggage carousel and found the location infinitely appropriate. Likewise I found myself this morning in a darkened swirl of insomnia and read the final 100 pages of Missing Person. Periodically I stared about our quiet living room. I looked at where this afternoon I'll put the Christmas tree I buy at the supermarket. I looked out the window and the neighbors' seasonal lights. I don't question why we don't employ our own. I just don't. Life is often hazy and ill-defined. I wish I had the means at the disposal of Modiano's protagonist. I certainly liked this one better than my previous exposure to the Nobel Laureate. I think the sinister whispers of history were significant here. I'd recommend Missing Person as a premium point of departure for this strange author. ( )
  jonfaith | Feb 22, 2019 |
داستان همچون کابوسی است نرم و آهسته و طولانی در مه با تصاویری که پس از بیداری تا ساعت‌ها در ذهن رژه می‌رود و تا روزها در ذهن می‌ماند. و آدم‌هایی که از دل تاریکی می‌آیند و در دل برف و سرما و بی سرانجام ناپدید می‌شوند. آدم‌هایی که هیچ نیستند مگر نیمرخی ضدنور در بالکن کافه‌ای بارانی... برخلاف ترجمه ضعیف (هرچند روان) در این کتاب بیش از دیگر آثار مودیانو شناور شدم. ( )
  MasoudBorbor | Jan 8, 2018 |
Guy Roland hasn’t known his true identity for at least a decade, since Paris was occupied during WWII. His name isn’t his own. It was given to him by his boss, Hutte, the owner of the detective agency where Guy has worked since he hired Hutte to discover his identity. It never happened. Now Hutte has retired to Nice, leaving Guy with time to search for clues to his past.

He criss-crosses Paris talking to people, garnering clues, doing research at Hutte’s empty office, and getting records from files through Hutte’s contacts. People share their memories, photos and mementos with Guy. He gets closer to his old identity until he’s pretty sure he’s there. Then he wants to find out what happened to his friends, which takes him eventually to Polynesia.

Modiano’s writing (and the translation) is entrancing, enthralling. The closing thought of the story as Guy peruses a childhood photo in which one of his lost companions is crying is “do not our lives dissolve into the evening as quickly as this grief of childhood?” ( )
  Hagelstein | Oct 20, 2016 |
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» Add other authors (33 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Patrick Modianoprimary authorall editionscalculated
Borger, EduTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Heller, GerhardÜbersetzersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Mohan, MonCover designersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Weissbort, DanielTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Pour mon père
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Je ne suis rien.
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"For ten years Guy Roland has lived without a past. His current life and name were given to him by his recently retired boss, Hutte, who welcomed him, a one-time client, into his detective agency. Guy makes full use of Hutte's files - directories, yearbooks, and papers of all kinds going back half a century - but leads to his former life are few. Could he really be that person in a photograph, a young man remembered by some as a South American attache? Or was he someone else, perhaps the disappeared scion of a prominent local family? He interviews strangers and is tantalized by half-clues until, at last, he grasps a thread that leads him through the maze of his own repressed experience."

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Haiku summary
Qui est-il? Il trouve
la trace d'amis et d'amours
grâce à des photos
(Tiercelin)

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