Suspended Sentences: Three Novellas by Patrick Modiano

Misty watercolor memories of Paris without much direction or conclusion

French author Patrick Modiano won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature. The book Suspended Sentences, published that same year, is an English-language collection of three of Modiano’s novellas that were first published in French in 1988, 1991, and 1993. The three works are not related, as in a series, but they do bear some similarities. All are narrated by an unnamed writer, probably not intended to be the same unnamed writer in all three cases, but it’s not difficult to imagine them being one and the same. All three novellas are set in Paris, which is not just an arbitrary setting but a sense of place integral to the narrative. All involve the narrator looking back on his past, coming to terms with bygone losses, harbored regrets, and unsolved mysteries, and reconciling the differences between memory and reality.

In the first novella, “Afterimage,” the narrator befriends a photographer after a chance meeting in a Parisian cafe. He volunteers to catalog all of the artist’s existing photographs, and in doing so becomes involved in the lives of some of the subjects depicted in them. The photographer, on the other hand, has no interest in cementing his career in history, but rather opts for a physically and spiritually nomadic lifestyle of living for the present. When the photographer leaves France, never to return, the narrator is left to piece together his life, resulting in an exploration of the intersections between life, memory, and art.

The title selection, “Suspended Sentences,” is narrated by an adult man remembering his youth. While his mother is off performing in a traveling circus, he and his little brother were sent to a suburb of Paris to stay with his aunt and the two women with whom she lives. The narrator recites the details of his daily life and conversations with these women and their gentlemen friends. New characters are needlessly introduced on almost every page, and the story isn’t very interesting. There are hints of something deeper going on beneath the surface—love affairs? criminal activity?—but the payoff comes late and too little. This renders the narration rather unrealistic since why would anyone tell a story of their life in such a deadpan, unrevealing way without highlighting the aspects of the story that might actually make it interesting to the listener.

In the final selection, “Flowers of Ruin,” the writer/narrator looks back on his memories of living in a particular Parisian neighborhood in the 1960s, while also recalling a murder that took place there in the 1930s. He remembers acquaintances that he knew in his younger days, people with mysterious pasts into which he digs like a tenacious detective. None of these investigations, however, ever amount to much. The prose is largely a list of streets and buildings. Parisian writers often write for Parisian readers, as if the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Many New York writers are also guilty of this, but not quite to the extent of their French counterparts. For Modiano’s Parisian readers, the mention of a particular avenue or arrondissement may bring up a wealth of associations, preconceptions, and historical baggage. I, on the other hand, being merely a tourist, often felt like I was reading a road atlas.

None of these novellas really have endings; instead they just come to a halt at arbitrary stopping points. Are these really novellas, or are they just unfinished, rough sketches of novels? They read more like the latter than the former. This is my first experience reading Modiano’s fiction. Perhaps he is a fantastic novelist worthy of his Nobel Prize, but these vague short sketches certainly can’t be his best work.

Novellas in this collection

Afterimage

Suspended Sentences

Flowers of Ruin

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Fire and Ice: Three Icelandic Plays by Jóhann Sigurjónsson, Davið Stefánsson, and Agnar Þórðarson

Trio of important Nordic playwrights

Published in 1967, Fire and Ice: Three Icelanic Plays is a volume in the Nordic Translation Series from the University of Wisconsin Press. It reprints in English Translation three plays previously staged and published earlier in the twentieth century. The volume is edited by Einar Hagen, a distinguished professor of Norwegian linguistics and literature, who provides introductions to each of the plays. In the late ‘60s, The Nordic Translation Series introduced works of modern Scandinavian writers to English-language readers. Eleven books from this series, including Fire and Ice, are now available for free download from the University of Wisconsin Libraries website.

This trio of Icelandic dramas highlights three important figures in the history of Icelandic theatre. In his general introduction to the book, Haugen explains that Icelandic culture was dominated by Danish influences early in the twentieth century, when Denmark ruled Iceland as a colony. Iceland gained partial independence from Denmark in 1918 and full independence in 1944. During these decades of transition, Icelandic playwrights worked to come out from under the shadow of Danish literature, build an Icelandic theatre scene, and develop a national literature. Despite Iceland’s small population, these Icelandic-born stage productions found a respectably large and supportive audience in the country’s very literate population.

The first selection, The Wish (original title: Galdra-Loftur) by Jóhann Sigurjónsson premiered in 1915. It is a Faust-like tale of a studious young man with a thirst for arcane knowledge who dabbles in black magic. The second play, Davið Stefánsson’s Golden Gate (Gullna hliðið), debuted in 1941. It is about an old woman determined to get her recently deceased husband into Heaven by carrying his soul to the Pearly Gates. Both of these plays are based on Icelandic folktales, not pagan folklore but Christian folklore. From these two works, one gets the idea that Christianity was a prominent force to be reckoned with in Icelandic society during this time period. The Wish, being the earlier of the two productions, takes itself seriously as a moral drama. Golden Gate, on the other hand, treats its religious subject matter with much irreverent humor that would have likely been considered scandalous a couple decades earlier. The humor, however, is pretty obvious and grows rather tedious, making Golden Gate the least successful entry in the volume.

The final selection, Agnar Þórðarson’s Atoms and Madams (Kjarnorka og kvenhylli) from 1955, is an Icelandic pony-sized horse of an entirely different color, being a secular political satire. A scientist from Canada, sent by the International Scientific Commission, discovers uranium in an Icelandic mountain. A local senator schemes to swindle the valuable land away from his farmer friend. Through satire, Þórðarson expresses the reality of Iceland’s newfound independence, in which America and the larger European nations meddle in the island nation’s post–war future, covet its natural resources, and infect the Icelandic populace with contagious opportunism. This is quite a clever and entertaining comedy.

Because of its tripartite structure and Haugen’s informative contextual introductions, Fire and Ice is one of the more successful books in the Nordic Translation Series at educating the reader about the history and literature of the nation in question. And although Stefánsson’s less impressive offering drags on far too long, the other two plays make for gratifying reading.

Plays in this collection

The Wish by Jóhann Sigurjónsson

Golden Gate by Davið Stefánsson

Atoms and Madams by Agnar Þórðarson

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The Storyteller by Mario Vargas Llosa

Ethnographer goes Native in the Amazon

Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature after a long and distinguished literary career, a career that still continues to this day. His novel The Storyteller (El Hablador) was first published in 1987.

A Peruvian writer walks into an art gallery in Florence, Italy. On display is an exhibition of photographs of an Indigenous community in the Amazon rain forest in Southern Peru. The writer recognizes a figure in one of the photographs, thus sparking a series of memories presented as flashbacks in the novel. When the author was younger, studying at San Marcos University in Lima, he befriended a classmate named Saúl Zuratas. Nicknamed “La Mascarita” because of a large birthmark occupying half of his face, Saúl was a misfit in Peru due to both his unusual physical appearance and his Jewish heritage. The two students meet in a class on the ethnology of the Indigenous Peruvian Indians. The writer seems to favor the government policies of gradually assimilating the Amazonian peoples into modern Peruvian society, thus preventing their extinction as agricultural and industrial “progress” encroaches upon their lands. Saúl, on the other hand, is adamant that the remaining Amazonian tribes should remain uncontacted and unspoiled, and allowed to live in the manner in which they have existed for thousands of years, no matter how strange and incongruent their customs may seem to modern Peruvians.

While the writer goes on to become a literary celebrity, Saúl devotes his life to his ethnological studies. He focuses his research on one tribe in particular, the Machiguenga. The Machiguenga communities recognize a figure called the Storyteller or Hablador, who is neither chieftain nor shaman. About this mysterious role little is known to the outside world, even among the most expert researchers in the field. Upon hearing of these Machiguenga Storytellers, the writer becomes fascinated by this vocation and its role in Indigenous culture and decides to investigate further. Although his friendship with Saúl ended years ago, the writer periodically comes across hints of his former classmate’s whereabouts and his work amongst the Machiguenga.

The perspective of the novel alternates between two narrators. Every other chapter is narrated by the author character, through which we get a view of academia and the intellectual sphere in modern Peruvian society. Alternate chapters, on the other hand, are presumably narrated by a Machiguenga Storyteller, who recites the myths and legends of his people. Of these two parallel threads, the academic narrative is the more successful in delivering a clear and compelling story, providing the reader with an understanding of life in Peru, and exploring the political issues around the Amazonian tribes’ place in the modern world. The Storyteller chapters provide a glimpse into the mindset of an Indigenous culture, but they feel more like departures from the novel than a part of it. While certainly interesting, if I really wanted to know the creation myths of the Machiguenga, I would rather read it in a nonfiction text on ethnography. Vargas Llosa’s literary voice renders such stories more poetic than coherent. Also complicating matters is the fact that the Storyteller indiscriminately applies the name Tasurinchi to almost any male character referred to in the third person.

If you’re reading Latin American literature, it’s likely because you’re looking for a reading experience that’s somehow different from the European literary tradition. Vargas Llosa certainly gives you that in The Storyteller. If you also want to learn about the reality of life in Peru, however, this novel is at times quite educational and at other times frustratingly confusing.
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Sirius by Olaf Stapledon

If Sigmund Freud wrote a talking dog movie

British science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon, though not a household name among general readers like his contemporaries H. G. Wells or Arthur C. Clarke, nevertheless is highly esteemed by science fiction aficionados and credited with exerting much influence on the genre. His novel Sirius was published in 1944. The title might lead one to think the book is about space travel, but Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, is also known as the “Dog Star,” and this is, in fact, a science fiction novel about a dog named Sirius. This is the second book I’ve read by Stapledon. The first was Odd John, about a mutant boy born with superhuman intelligence. That was basically a modernized elaboration on J. D. Beresford’s 1911 novel The Hampdonshire Wonder. Sirius, on the other hand, reads like a retread of Odd John, except in this case the supernaturally intelligent title character is a dog instead of a human.

The narrator, an unnamed Englishman, is in love with a woman named Plaxy. One day she up and ghosts her boyfriend, absconding to her old family home in Wales. Like any ardent lover in many a formulaic romance, he shows up uninvited to reclaim her. There he discovers that Plaxy’s father is a scientist who has been conducting genetic experiments to elevate the intelligence of dogs. His prized creation is a large canine named Sirius who possesses human intelligence and can even speak English, though with somewhat faulty pronunciation. As part of the experiment, the scientist and his wife raise Sirius as if he were a human child, which in essence makes him Plaxy’s brother. Obviously, however, the two are not biologically related, so there’s nothing to stop them from falling in love with each other and thus engaging in a tortured romance, much like an interspecies variation on Heathcliff and Catherine from Wuthering Heights.

This premise allows Stapledon to explore the differences between animal and human intelligence, or rather, to question what exactly constitutes humanity. He does a good job of exploring how an enhanced canine intelligence would differ from that of a human. For example, humans rely a great deal on their sense of sight, while dogs experience the world more through hearing and smell. Humans have the benefit of hands to put many of their thoughts into action, a feature greatly envied by Sirius as his mental acuity increases. The story also has a pronounced Frankenstein element to it, in that Sirius must come to terms with his own existence as a laboratory experiment. He questions his ultimate purpose in a human world, while suffering from the loneliness of being the only one of his kind. While this existential turmoil is interesting, it is also unfortunately the aspect of Sirius that is most derivative of Stapledon’s earlier work Odd John.

Sirius is admirable in that it pushes the envelope of science fiction. The novel does, after all, include a sexual relationship between a dog and a human. Though that’s never explicitly stated, it is heavily implied, which is pretty risqué for 1944 (and even 80 years later, still manages to gross out the reader). One could see how later science fiction writers might have appreciated the cutting-edge audacity of such challenging material. The problem here, however, as in Odd John, is that Stapledon’s sci-fi concepts are presented in the most boring manner imaginable. Stapledon loves to submit his characters to laborious Freudian psychoanalysis, scrutinizing their every thought and motive in great detail. While some of the ideas are thought-provoking, the storytelling is lackluster. The reader finds it difficult to care about characters that are treated like the subjects of a psychological evaluation, and all the excessive navel-gazing adds up to one truly tedious read.
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Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock by Steven Hyden

Raised on rock in Northeastern Wisconsin

As author Steven Hyden points out in his 2018 book Twilight of the Gods, there’s a difference between “classic” rock and “classic rock.” The word “classic” can serve as an indication of high quality, relative antiquity, and/or time-tested appeal, but “classic rock” denotes a specific category of rock music that rose to prominence in the late ‘60s and 1970s, is still revered by many rock fans as the glory days of the art form, and to which at least one radio station in every city devotes its playlist. In Twilight of the Gods, Hyden, a music critic who has previously written for Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and the New York Times Magazine, among others, examines this aging musical genre and ponders its future.

I read books on rock and roll fairly frequently, but I usually opt for fact-based biographies rather than music criticism, simply because I don’t think any music critic’s opinion is any more valid than my own. What really sold me on this book, however, is that Hyden grew up about 20 miles from me, and he writes about listening to the same radio stations in Northeastern Wisconsin that I grew up listening too. This was back in the pre-digital days when one’s radio station wasn’t just a choice on the dial but also a source of pride and identity. You didn’t just listen to the music, you wore the T-shirt and the hat if you could. I recall that being particularly true of the classic rock/hard rock station WAPL (Apple 106!) out of Hyden’s hometown of Appleton. Hyden harkens back to a childhood when he didn’t just want to listen to these bands, he wanted to know everything about them. The DJs of WAPL were his evangelists, and Rolling Stone was his Bible. I could really identify with those experiences from my own youth.

In this book, Hyden reminds us that classic rock isn’t just a default choice for lazy listeners but rather a deliberate lifestyle choice for those who enjoy real electric guitars, indulgent improvisation, and vicarious hedonism. As the purveyors of that lifestyle now grow old and die, so does the music and the attitude that went along with it. Hyden tentatively defines the genre—where it started and where it ends, who’s in and who’s out, and why is classic rock so White? He celebrates all aspects of the classic-rock zeitgeist, from the admirable to the ridiculous. He pays homage to the romanticism of the road song (such as Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page,” the Allman Brothers’ “Midnight Rider,” and Jackson Browne’s “The Load-Out”), recounts his favorite rock biographies and live albums, and ponders his evolving listening relationship to artists such as Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. He also discusses the current state of classic rock, including the downward spiral from “supergroups” to “shrunkgroups”­—bands cobbled together from whoever is left alive. Rather than pontificating like some high-and-mighty, holier-than-thou music critic with high-falutin philosophical opinions on “great music,” Hyden comes across as your friend at the bar who knows a little bit more about this topic than you do, inspiring thoughts such as, “Gee, that’s interesting. I never heard that story about Led Zeppelin.” This book is not a compendium of rock and roll trivia, however, but rather a thoughtful analysis of a subculture, and not in a pretentious, academic way.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book for most of its length. Towards the end, when Hyden starts to talk about ‘90s bands like Pearl Jam and Phish as classic rock, I began to lose interest a little (I’m 8 years older than Hyden). For the most part, however, I found his writing to be engaging, insightful, and fun to read. Some of that has to do with the similarity of our WAPL-influenced youths, but I think even without the Wisconsin connection I would have enjoyed Hyden’s entertaining take on classic rock.  

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Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses by Georges Simenon

Biscuit family murder

First published in 1959, Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses (Maigret et les témoins récalcitrants in the original French) is a later entry in Belgian-French author Georges Simenon’s series of novels and short stories to feature the Parisian police superintendant Jules Maigret (his 81st of 103 outings, to be exact). Nevertheless, the series loses no steam with this taut and intriguing entry, one of the better Maigret books that I’ve come across. This one grabbed my attention from the get-go and kept me riveted until the very end.

Maigret is called to investigate the murder of Léonard Lachaume, the reigning CEO of Lachaume’s Biscuits, a popular brand of packaged cookies that Maigret remembers from his childhood. In recent times, however, the biscuit industry has not been booming. Maigret surmises that the family business has fallen on hard times, judging by the decrepit and depressing look of the Lachaume mansion, where the victim lived with his elderly parents, a younger brother and his wife, and a particularly crotchety old servant woman.

The most shocking aspect of the Lachaume home, however, is the fact that no one in the house seems particularly surprised or saddened by Léonard’s death. Each member of the household meets Maigret’s questions with a marked reluctance to share any statements about what they saw or heard on the night of the murder. Maigret finds the attitude of stoic resignation that permeates the mansion to be truly baffling. In the course of his investigation, he uncovers family secrets—including financial details revealing how Lachaume’s Biscuits has managed to stay afloat—that could indicate a motive for the killing.

This is really one of the better Maigret novels that I’ve read, and I’ve read about two dozen of them. Maigret is always a compelling character to follow, but much like any good TV series, the success of a particular episode often hinges on its guest stars. In this case, the Lachaume family makes for a fascinating supporting cast. The plot in this novel strikes a fine balance between the procedural details of Maigret’s detective work and the psychological examination of the suspects. Some Maigret novels err too much toward one or the other of those elements, but Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses succeeds at both. This is a good, perplexing murder mystery, but, like any Simenon novel, it also digs deeper into the psychological drama and motivations of the characters than most typical entries in the genre.

For non-French readers, the Maigret novels also provide outsiders with revealing insights into modern French society and private life. For that reason, some interest in French life is probably required to fully appreciate the Maigret series, much like some interest in Victorian England is likely a requirement to enjoy a Sherlock Holmes story. For anyone who likes a good classic mystery novel, however, Maigret rarely disappoints, and Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses is an exemplary entry in this fine series.
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