Missing person

The Beach Man

Until recently, the American genres of noir and detective fiction have enjoyed a higher literary esteem in France than in their native United States. This situation has changed with the publication of some of the best noir and crime writing in the Library of America series. Patrick Modiano's 1978 novel, "Missing Person" shows the strong influence of American genre writing. This book was the first I have read by Modiano. The novel received little notice in the United States until Modiano won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Noir and detective genres pervade Modiano's book in style, character, and theme. The spare, clear writing approaches the "hard boiled" prose of American genres. The book is short and is probably best first read in a single extended sitting if possible. The book is artfully arranged with shifts in time and some changes in voices. The chapters range from a single sentence or two to several pages, giving the book a forward, varied flow. The book's many characters are shadowy and mysterious and each of them carries guilt and a past. The book has an urban setting characteristic of noir with scenes in bars, streets, many small shady businesses, abandoned schools and garages, old dingy apartments, train stations, and more. Much of the action takes places at night and in shadows. I found it easy to visualize "Missing Person" as a noir film.

The book is set in Paris in the mid-1960s and back to the Paris of the German occupation during WW II. The primary character is a man who goes by the name of Guy Roland. As the story opens, Roland has worked for a private investigator, Hutte, for eight years when Hutte is about to retire and leave Paris. Before Hutte had hired Roland, Roland had come to Hutte seeking help in recovering his lost identity as he suffered from a near-total amnesia covering several years. Hutte gave Roland his new name and identity together with a job. When Hutte retires, Roland tells him that he is going to try to search out his past. Hutte understands and sympathizes while observing that some matters may best be left alone. Later in the book, there is a suggestion that Hutte may have rethought his belief on this matter. Amnesia and the search to recover identity are relatively common literary themes and they appear in American noir writing and film. An example is the noir writer Cornell Woolrich's (1903 -- 1968) story, "The Black Curtain" which in 1941 became an early noir film, "Street of Chance" starring Burgess Meredith and Claire Trevor.

The body of the book details Roland's search to discover his memory and his earlier self. He uses his skills as a private investigator and follows through on minimal clues meeting with many people who individually offer bits and pieces about his past. Each of these individuals has mysteries his or her own. It is surprising how forthcoming and friendly they generally are with Roland, a stranger who approaches them from nowhere. The characters include diplomats, barkeeps, jockeys, gardeners, teachers, musicians, and more. Some of the characters, particularly the Dominican diplomat Porfiro Rubirosa, are historical figures. The story melds American noir/detective writing with the search for identity and with a meditation on France and Europe during the dark years of WW II and on the continuing impact of these years.

While the book has a political setting with the German occupation, I thought it focused more on the evanescence of personal identity and on the compartmentalized, fragmented character of human relationships. On the latter, Roland observes about midway through his search that "[p]eople certainly lead compartmentalized lives and their friends do not know each other. It's unfortunate." The quest for personal identity is a theme throughout the book. My sense is that Roland would have been better served by moving forward with his life, pursuing his private investigator career, and finding a woman to love. I am skeptical about quests for fixed identities, particularly past identities, but it is not clear whether Roland or the author would fully agree. A telling passage early in the book involves a parable of a "beach man" who lives an existence for a moment that is quickly forgotten. Modiano's novel can be seen as a development of the following little parable. Roland reflects:

"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. I did not dare tell Hutte, but I felt that 'the beach man' was myself. Though it would not have surprised him if I had confessed it, Hutte was always saying that, in the end, we were all 'beach men' and that 'the sand' -- I am quoting his words -- 'keeps the traces of our footsteps only a few moments."

I enjoyed reading this fine novel both for its own sake and its themes and for the associations if had for me with American noir writing.

Robin Friedman