Review of Modiano's works: has all the advantages of Haruki Murakami's novels

The 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature re-selected French literature and awarded it to the "Neo-Fables" novelist for the second time – last by Le Clézio, this time by Patrick Modiano. In terms of world literature and European fiction, this may not be called "unpopular", but it is definitely a big surprise. Among them, the original commission is worth scrutinizing.

Why Patrick Modiano

Patrick Modiano, Chinese mainland translated as "Patrick Modiano". But the surname Modiano seems to be more accurately pronounced as "Modiano". For the sake of convenience, this article is right and conformist.

Patrick was a French Jewish novelist who wrote poetry at the age of 10 and began experimenting with fiction a few years later. At the age of 17, he aspired to become a writer with great ambitions, and with the help of his debut protagonist, he expressed his desire to become the greatest French Jewish writer since Proust and Celina. And in order to highlight his identity as the "son of France's 'World War II'", he changed his birth year from 1947 to 1945, which is now widely circulated in the media. He studied at the Sorbonne, but dropped out of writing a year later. From his debut film "Place de la Star" in 1968 to "Rue du Shop" in 1978, he has basically won the most important french novel awards in the past ten years. As co-writer for the film Lacombe Lucien, he also earned a Nomination for Best Director for an Oscar for another collaborator, director Louis Mahler (which did not win, but the film won the 1975 BAFTA Award). He also made cameo appearances for Chilean film maestro Raúl Ruiz (who directed "Remembrance of The Age of Water") and served as a judge at the 53rd Cannes Awards (both Jiang Wen and Yang Dechang won awards). Interestingly, none of the few translators and writers in the mainland who have admired Mo's novels have pointed out the obvious sense of imagery in the language of his novels over the years.

The Jewish life, writing about the trance of the nightmare living environment of Europeans during the Nazi occupation, the linguistic and narrative aesthetic innovation of the novel style, enjoying a high reputation in the French literary world, the works are poetic, showing a certain entertainment and genre writing characteristics, but most of the time did not sell well... All of this seems to constitute the reason why the Nobel Prize favored Mohs. The only obstacle is that his new allegorical "brother" Le Clézio has won a Nobel Prize 6 years ago, but the new allegorical writers are very different from each other. Le Clézio pays attention to the environment, green, and spurns the shortcomings of contemporary civilization, closer to the head of Tuniere, and the motif of most of Modiano's novels is focused on expressing the floating feeling of people in the fate, as well as the dazedness and questioning of the protagonist's first awakening under the nightmare reality; Le Clézio has always considered himself a writer in his homeland of Mauritius, and Modiano is more like a fusion of Proust and Simnon styles (although Simnon is Belgian, his novels have long been respected by many literary heroes in modern France). It has an orthodox French style. In this way, the obstacle is lifted.

What needs to be explained is that the advantages of Mo's novels over two other writers, Milan Kundera and Haruki Murakami, who are widely favored by the Chinese media, are almost covered. After Kundera moved to France, he was almost regarded as a French writer, but his new works of the French period tended to be mediocre, even less than Modiano, who was also in old age and decline (in the case of "Midnight Crash"). Some of the motifs in Kundera's novels have become invalid due to the disappearance of the Cold War background, and Mo's Jewish situation, World War II, life questions, and the confusion of young people are still the focus of attention of the global elite literary circles for the time being. Kun's most prominent stylistic contribution to the novel is the introduction of political theory into the narrative mainstream, but Modiano's video fiction narrative is injected even more insignificantly, and he can even be said to be the only remaining novelist in the world after Salinger's death who does not aim to shape the image and intends to depict the mental state of mankind at a specific stage. The adventurous nature of this quest is the most so since Proust and Celina, and all of his novels are characterized by short and medium lengths, at worst incompetent (I see it this way), but from the point of view of appreciation, it can be regarded as an aesthetic persistence and adventure.

As for Haruki Murakami, it can be said that all the advantages of Murakami's novels are found in Modiano's novels. Because he did not write long stories, he also avoided the lack of control that Murakami showed when he mastered thick long stories. In addition, he has not yet sold well in Murakami, which may be in line with the ridiculous "spiritual morality" and hatred mentality of the Swedish Academy. As both admirers of these two writers for many years, I personally feel that Mo Shi is obviously a little stronger than Murakami's elite posture. Moreover, Murakami's popularity and elitism are slightly weaker, and he may pay for the prospects of his Nobel Prize in the future, and it is difficult to say whether he will be able to compete with his compatriot Kazuo Ishiguro in the future, who will certainly be accepted by the judges of the European Cultural Center. And then there's the Kitajima we love – as long as Kitajima continues to be shortlisted, he will always be a strong contender for the next Nobel Laureate in Chinese. But as a prolific author, he is definitely at a loss compared with Modiano, even if it is Kundera and Murakami.

Why the "New Fables"

According to the nobel prize in literature, except for English, which is the world's first common language, not many people award the prize to the same language in a short period of time. Since the new century, in addition to English, there have only been French, German and Chinese. The situation in the 20th century is also roughly similar.

Literary movements that are awarded to the same literary genre or the same continent are even rarer. Italy's occult poets Savador Guasimodo (1959) and Eugeño Montale (1975) were authors of the same literary genre, but the two were awarded 16 years apart. Marquez (1982) and Llosa (2010), who belong to different genres but are collectively known as the "Explosion of Latin American Literature," won the prize for 28 years.

Asturias (1967), Márquez (1982), Zalamego (1998), Grass (1999), and Mo Yan (2012), who are cross-lingual but also belong to the aesthetics of the novel, seem to be favored, but the first two are separated by 15 years, and the last two are separated by 13 years. Based on this, the treatment received by the two authors of the "New Allegorical" novel is really remarkable.

In the final analysis, two of the three giants of the "New Fable School" have won awards in succession within 6 years, which can also be regarded as a grand event that is difficult to replicate in literary history in a short period of time. What makes this fundamental, I think, lies in the innovative vitality of the genre that the "New Allegorical School" has shown in the novel circles of continental Europe in the past fifty years (further introducing or strengthening the elements of fables, myths, images, etc.), the adherence to the position of the elite, and the involvement of many humanistic and social topics from the "World War II" to the contemporary era... Moreover, compared with the "New Novel School" that is more familiar to the Chinese mainland cultural circles, the "New Allegorical School" novels invariably show more intense concern for human beings themselves, more "human flavor", and more obvious and effective narrative talent.

"The most important thing in the novel is storytelling" - this is a rule that European and American novelists in the 18th and 19th centuries, a considerable number of novelists in the United States and Russia today, and almost all Chinese novelists unanimously believe in. However, when non-fiction works, news, film and television, which also have the function of storytelling, and literary and artistic styles, appear in front of people's eyes one after another, what is the purpose of novel storytelling is obviously an important question to test whether a novelist has professional standards. The novel tells the story, not to weave the story itself, but to express the author's view of the world and his thoughts on the times and the world in which he lives through the act of telling the story. Perhaps, the identity of the "storyteller", which is not worth emphasizing in itself, needs to be emphasized for what a person is for, to devote himself to an industry of "telling stories with words", and has been determined ever since. In this regard, Proust, Joyce, Babel, Faulkner, Bulgakov, Salinger, Malmamod, Rulfer, Pynchon, the "New Fables", Márquez, Kundera, Thomas, Kuche, Haruki Murakami... These Nobel Prize or Non-Nobel Prize writers have left the inspiration for today's people to have a special journey. Their pursuit also points to the only way for the novel to survive in the future. The affirmation and attention that the novelists of the "New Fables" have received in recent years confirm this.

The "New Fable School" has won the Nobel Prize twice as a genre, which does not necessarily mean that the Nobel Prize for Literature has a fundamental change in the selection scale of novels than in the past, but at least it will no longer blindly cling to the themes of storytelling, multiculturalism, and concern for the fate of Jews and former Eastern Europeans. Perhaps, this is an opportunity that history has offered the Nobel Prize to reinvigorate its prestige. As for whether there will be optimistic results? The stubbornness and naivety in the minds of the academic intellectuals... God knows! Xu Jiang