Lire Patrick Modiano, and: Lectures de Modiano (review)

Patrick Modiano’s novels, appreciated for over forty years by a vast and loyal readership, are currently inspiring a marked increase in critical activity. Since 2008, critical work and conferences on Modiano have rapidly multiplied, most notably in a French academic context that increasingly acknowledges the critical, historical, and literary interest of this long-popular body of work. In an October 2009 Magazine littéraire dossier devoted to Modiano, Maryline Heck, the dossier’s editor, announced the author’s “entry into the pantheon of French academia” while adding that “it seems the time has come to sum up these last four decades of creation.” It was, in fact, question of a privileged moment in time, one that separated the publication of two novels: Dans le café de la jeunesse perdue (2007) and L’Horizon (2010).