La Place de l’étoile

Trilogie « de l'Occupation » #1

by Patrick Modiano

Au mois de juin 1942, un officier allemand s'avance vers un jeune homme et lui dit : « Pardon, monsieur, où se trouve la place de l’Étoile ? ». Le jeune homme désigne le côté gauche de sa poitrine.

Genres: Fiction, France, Historical Fiction, Nobel Prize, French Literature, Literature, Novels

224 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Patrick Modiano is a French-language author and playwright and winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature.

He is a winner of the 1972 Grand prix du roman de l'Académie française, and the 1978 Prix Goncourt for his novel "Rue des boutiques obscures".

Modiano's parents met in occupied Paris during World War II and began a clandestine relationship. Modiano's childhood took place in a unique atmosphere: with an absent father -- of which he heard troubled stories of dealings with the Vichy regime -- and a Flemish-actress mother who frequently toured. His younger brother's sudden death also greatly influenced his writings.

While he was at Henri-IV lycee, he took geometry lessons from writer Raymond Queneau, who was a friend of Modiano's mother. He entered the Sorbonne, but did not complete his studies.

Queneau, the author of "Zazie dans le métro", introduced Modiano to the literary world via a cocktail party given by publishing house Éditions Gallimard. Modiano published his first novel, "La Place de l’Étoile", with Gallimard in 1968, after having read the manuscript to Raymond Queneau. Starting that year, he did nothing but write.

On September 12, 1970, Modiano married Dominique Zerhfuss. "I have a catastrophic souvenir of the day of our marriage. It rained. A real nightmare. Our groomsmen were Queneau, who had mentored Patrick since his adolescence, and Malraux, a friend of my father. They started to argue about Dubuffet, and it was like we were watching a tennis match! That said, it would have been funny to have some photos, but the only person who had a camera forgot to bring a roll of film. There is only one photo remaining of us, from behind and under an umbrella!" (Interview with Elle, 6 October 2003). From their marriage came two girls, Zina (1974) and Marie (1978).

Modiano has mentioned on Oct 9, 2014, during an interview with La Grande Librairie, that one of the books which had a great impact on his writing life was 'Le cœur est un chasseur solitaire' (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter), the first novel published by Carson McCullers in 1940.

(Arabic: باتريك موديانو)

Reviews

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I couldn't quite believe this was a Patrick Modiano novel. I had to keep checking the cover thinking there had been some sort of mistake. La Place de l'étoile reads nothing like some of his later work, and could even be seen as a homage to the ranting and raving of Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Could Patrick Modiano really be so blatantly offensive? Well, he is here. Maybe Michel Houellebecq learnt a thing or two from reading this. The mood of melancholy and loneliness from something like 'In the Café of Lost Youth' is absolutely nowhere in sight here. It's easy to see why he became the new modish and hip writer of the time in the late 60s, as Modiano abandons the well-constructed values of the traditional novel and goes for more of a free-form, free-spirited, frenetic kind of style. And I have to say, I really liked it, even though there were times when I wondered just what the hell was going on! It's like he took so much of France's 19th and 20th century history and literature, threw it all in a blender, with whatever else took his fancy, and turned the contents into a novel. It's main focus might be France under occupation, but it's simply like no other WW2 novel I've read at all. It's a novel of collaborations, betrayals, Eva Braun, Dreyfus, bad faith, anti-semitism, raucous behaviour, just to name a few things, all centred around the neurotic episodes of a Jew turned Nazi sympathizer called Raphael Schlemilovitch. He is, like some of Nabokov's narrators, unreliable, brought on more so by Modiano's really clever ending: in Freud's Vienna consulting room.

[Manny · Rating 4 out of 5]

A friend in the Jewish Defence Force has given me the password for the space laser, so I log in and experiment. The resolution is excellent. After some search, I find Marjorie Taylor Greene hosting a barbecue and grill the steaks to a crisp in a few seconds. There is no audio, but I can see I've achieved my objective of framing her husband. "You think like a Jew, Manny!", says my military friend with evident approval. "A half-Jew," I answer modestly and take my leave. I'm already running late for my next event.

I have to hunt around to find the Tiki-torch but get there just as they set off. I'm marching next to a cute blonde shiksa from Texas, whose porcine boyfriend I detest on sight. I am surprised that no one seems to know the words to the Horst Wessel Lied, so I pass the time broadening their cultural horizons. When the Antifa people show up, I wait until the largest one approaches us, say something obscene about his mother in Yiddish, and duck. Kyle from Houston goes down like he's been poleaxed and the Antifas start kicking him. I grab the blonde's hand and run. We reach the Ritz a few seconds before they lock the doors to keep out the teargas. I give the receptionist a generous tip and we take the private elevator to my suite.

The blonde is shaking like a leaf and incoherently repeating phrases she's picked up from Q. I open a bottle of fifty year old armagnac and start pouring it into her while reciting the opening lines of Du côté de chez Swann from memory. She knows no French, and it has a calming effect. As I unhook her bra, she makes a feeble attempt to brush my hands away.

"What would Jesus do?" I ask. I have no idea why this line offers such a high rate of return, but since my internship at the Banque de Rothschild's trading unit I have learned to follow the data where it leads. She becomes docile and even welcomes my advances. It seems prudent to take her from behind, we have had enough surprises and my nerves are also starting to fray a little. When she has fallen asleep, I send an SMS to a distant cousin who runs a high-class brothel in Damascus. They can never get enough American blondes.

All in all, quite a good day.

[Ulysse · Rating 4 out of 5]

you are writing this from your bed
where you've been lying all day
with a headache and a sore throat
an empty cup of herbal tea and half
an orange in a small bowl next to
you on the restless sheets
the machine gun noise of construction
from across the street shakes
your windowpane like a giant eardrum
making it hard to sleep
you're feeling pretty crappy but at least
the war is on only inside you
you've just finished reading Modiano's first
novel entitled La Place de l'étoile (1968)
he wrote it when he was 21 years old
which is pretty impressive given
how little you had achieved by 21
when you still didn't have a job
or a bank account and spent
all your time feeling miserable
about yourself because you'd just been
dumped by your first serious girlfriend
for someone with a job and a bank account
and the poems misfortune inspired you
to write were embarrassingly mundane
and insipid and jejune and puerile and
asinine for lack of a better word
and consoling yourself with street meat
on the corner of East Hastings & Main
you found a screw in your pizza
but enough about you the title of the novel
you've finished is a play on words quite hard
to translate into English for it refers both
to the world's most famous roundabout
located at the top of the Elysian Fields
(an avenue in Paris not the place
where the Greek hero forever moped
after his girlfriend Fate snipped the thread
of life from him) and to the place where
the star of David was sown on a person's
coat so that his or her Jewishness would
be known to the otherwise unsuspecting
passerby the novel opens with the following
epigraph in the month of June 1942
a German officer approaches a young man
and says excuse me sir where is the Place
of the Star? the young man replies by pointing
to his left breast (a Jewish story)
the Jewish have an excellent sense
of humour making light of very dark
material and you think this is precisely
how this book should be read
with a grain of salt for while salt makes
life savory salt comes also from
the heart of your saddest tear

[Vicky "phenkos" · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars.

I was at once troubled and fascinated by this book. Like Paris Nocturne, which I read recently, the narrative is disjointed and meanders around a small number of key themes, in this case, Jewishness, Frenchness, the German occupation of Paris, resistance, collaboration, self-doubt and self-hatred. Nightmarish and compulsive, this is not a narrative that endorses heroic, black-and-white notions of good and evil (resistance=good, collaboration=bad), but relentlessly explores what it would have been like to have been a Jew in France in the fateful years between 1940 and 1945. To have been arrested by the Gestapo, taken to the notorious rue Lauriston where the Gestapo headquarters were, to have then been saved from Auschwitz by the skin of one's teeth with the help of Gestapo collaborationists... Which is what happened to Modiano's father. Perhaps the whole book is an extended meditation on what happened to that father inside rue Lauriston, an attempt to bring this evanescent experience into a now that the son wishes he could relive, yet cannot relive fully.

The book opens in a kind of Marquis de Sade way - not in the sense that there are orgies or sexual debauchery but in the sense that the narrator seems to be all too happy to shed his Jewish identity in exchange for another: that of the anti-Semite commentator who rubs shoulders with those who despise Jews and align themselves with the regime -the pétainistes. But there is no sense of loss in this exchange, it happens quite matter-of-factly, indeed the narrator seems peculiarly untouched by the drama of those around him. The themes of collaboration and French supremacy dominate this part of the novel: the narrator's closest friends are a French aristocrat and a former Jewish collaborationist who forged fake papers when the war was over.

Internalised Jew-hatred is an important theme throughout the book. French intellectual life, the French aristocracy, everything French is glorified, and the narrator fantasises about being a boy from a good, provincial family, about to embark on a degree at the École Normale Supérieure. But instead of staging the ultimate coming-to-consciousness, the Jew becoming aware of his identity and destiny, Modiano turns the tables on this whole way of thinking: the young Jew becomes the last defender of staunch French tradition in the face of opposition and ridicule from his native French schoolmates. He beats them up.

At places, the book reminded of an old film starring Bruce Willis that some of you may have seen. The film was called Twelve Monkeys and has the character played by Bruce Willis stuck in a kind of time loop. Each time he thinks he's escaped the loop, the horrors come back and he finds himself trapped again. That's precisely what happens in this book. The main character escapes, takes on new identities, even travels to Israel after the war, only to find himself back at the hands of the Gestapo, en-route to rue Lauriston, about to be tortured, shot at the back of the head with a bullet by people who are themselves Jews, collaborators of the SS.

I read the book in one sitting - it was that gripping. But I wouldn't describe it as in any way 'enjoyable'. Towards the end I flicked though the pages as fast as I could, partly because I couldn't stop and partly because I wanted this to come to an end as soon as possible. This book is certainly not for everyone. But if you do decide to read it, be prepared for a novel experience where sterotypes and familiar tropes are left behind.

[David Carrasco · Rating 4 out of 5]

A veces abres una novela de un premio Nobel esperando una voz baja, calles mojadas y recuerdos que se borran. Aquí, en cambio, a las veinte páginas de El lugar de la estrella tienes a Proust, Hitler, Freud, Maurice Sachs y Eva Braun corriendo por el mismo manicomio. Conviene saberlo cuanto antes: este es el Modiano del incendio, mucho antes del Modiano de la niebla.

Patrick Modiano tenía veintidós años cuando publicó su primera novela, la que abre la llamada Trilogía de la Ocupación, y entró en la literatura francesa como quien irrumpe en un salón lanzando una silla por la ventana. Hay rabia, erudición, humor negro, obscenidad, vértigo y una necesidad casi física de ajustar cuentas con un país, con un padre y con una historia que todavía olía demasiado a habitación cerrada.

El título contiene ya toda la trampa. El libro se abre con un chiste judío: en junio de 1942, un oficial alemán pregunta a un joven dónde está la “Place de l’Étoile”, y el joven se señala el lado izquierdo del pecho. El juego funciona porque en francés place significa tanto «plaza» como «lugar». En ese gesto caben el Arco del Triunfo y la estrella amarilla que los judíos fueron obligados a llevar durante la ocupación nazi. ¿Cuál es entonces el lugar de la estrella? ¿El centro monumental de París? ¿El cuerpo del perseguido? ¿La memoria de Francia? Modiano va desplazándola de un sitio a otro hasta que resulta imposible contemplar el mapa de la ciudad sin ver también la marca infamante.

Intentar resumir el argumento de El lugar de la estrella se parece bastante a tratar de archivar una alucinación. Raphaël Schlemilovitch, un joven judío francés, toma la palabra, delira, confiesa, parodia y se multiplica en una sucesión de vidas incompatibles en las que aparece como millonario, intelectual, colaboracionista, víctima, seductor, aventurero y encarnación ambulante de casi todos los fantasmas que el antisemitismo europeo ha fabricado durante siglos. Las épocas se mezclan, los muertos regresan, la Historia se comporta como si hubiera bebido más de la cuenta y el narrador cambia de identidad con una facilidad que terminaría arruinando a cualquier funcionario del registro civil.

Los saltos de ciudad y de época funcionan como síntomas de una conciencia incapaz de sostener una identidad estable. De repente estás en la Viena de los años sesenta, luego en un París asfixiado por la Ocupación y, sin previo aviso, en una comisaría de Tel Aviv donde el pasado parece más vivo que los muebles. Todo puede suceder en el mismo capítulo, a veces casi en la misma frase. Schlemilovitch viaja y se descompone al mismo tiempo: cada ciudad le presta una máscara y cada época, una coartada.

Schlemilovitch carece de una personalidad estable porque lleva dentro un vestuario abarrotado. Cada traje corresponde a una imagen del judío creada por otros: el usurero, el cosmopolita, el traidor, el intelectual decadente, el conspirador, el apátrida, el seductor, el mártir. Él se los prueba todos, los exagera y se contempla en espejos que deforman incluso antes de devolverle la imagen. A ratos parece disfrutar del espectáculo; en otros momentos intuimos que esa verbosidad es la forma que ha encontrado de evitar que lo aplasten bajo las identidades que le han asignado.

Y aquí reside la idea más feroz de la novela: el odio puede llegar a colonizar el vocabulario de quien lo padece. Raphaël habla con las voces de sus enemigos, repite sus insultos, adopta sus prejuicios y convierte el desprecio hacia sí mismo en una representación grotesca. Modiano llena las páginas de clichés antisemitas y los obliga a chocar entre ellos hasta revelar la demencia que contienen. La operación es peligrosa y por momentos desagradable. También es extraordinariamente audaz. Modiano abre el frasco, hace que su narrador se beba el veneno y luego nos obliga a presenciar la convulsión.

Schlemilovitch puede resultar cómico, repulsivo, agotador y dolorosamente vulnerable en el espacio de unas pocas líneas. Creer o dejar de creer en lo que cuenta termina siendo secundario. Ni Francia ni Israel le ofrecen una identidad habitable: ambos lo reciben con un molde preparado de antemano. Su verdadera función consiste en ofrecer un campo de batalla donde las fantasías francesas sobre los judíos se insultan, se contradicen y acaban devorándose entre sí. Es menos un individuo que una multitud encerrada en un solo cuerpo, y la multitud no se lleva precisamente bien.

Francia aparece como un país aficionado a posar para su propio retrato heroico mientras alguien intenta esconder a los colaboradores detrás de la cortina. Modiano publicó la novela en 1968, cuando el relato de una nación unida en la Resistencia empezaba a agrietarse, y convirtió la Ocupación en un cabaret siniestro donde los verdugos citan literatura, los oportunistas cambian de chaqueta y las víctimas terminan aprendiendo el papel que sus perseguidores han escrito para ellas. Nadie sale demasiado elegante en la fotografía, algo que suele ocurrir cuando salta el flash antes de que todos hayan tenido tiempo de colocarse.

Detrás del estruendo histórico se adivina además un conflicto mucho más íntimo. Modiano nació después de la guerra, pero la Ocupación formaba parte de su herencia familiar. Su padre, judío, había sobrevivido en un territorio moral turbio, relacionado con negocios clandestinos y ambientes próximos al colaboracionismo. En cierto modo, esta novela parece el intento de un hijo por imaginar qué pudo sentir aquel hombre, qué hizo para sobrevivir y por qué dejó tras de sí tantos silencios.

Cuando una familia se niega a contar su pasado, siempre existe el riesgo de que un hijo acabe inventándolo con Hitler, Proust y Eva Braun como figurantes.

La prosa avanza mediante ráfagas. Modiano acumula nombres, referencias literarias, episodios históricos, juegos verbales y caricaturas con una velocidad que apenas permite recuperar el aliento. Cada nombre propio abre una trampilla. Maurice Sachs, Dreyfus, Drieu La Rochelle, los colaboracionistas franceses, los escritores nacionalistas y los grandes tótems de la cultura europea entran y salen de la narración como invitados de una fiesta que ya estaba descontrolada antes de nuestra llegada.

Esta exuberancia produce páginas eléctricas, pero también constituye el principal obstáculo del libro. Muchas bromas dependen de conocer la literatura francesa, el antisemitismo intelectual de entreguerras o las figuras turbias de la Ocupación. En ciertos pasajes el lector puede sentir que ha llegado sesenta años tarde a una reunión privada de cadáveres ilustres. La novela exige atención, paciencia y, de vez en cuando, un doctorado improvisado en miserias francesas. Quien se deje llevar por el ritmo disfrutará del delirio; quien pretenda identificar cada alusión probablemente terminará rodeado de notas mientras Schlemilovitch ya ha cruzado tres fronteras y adoptado dos personalidades nuevas. Conviene leerlo como se escucha una confesión borracha, siguiendo el temblor de la voz aunque algunos nombres, fechas y alusiones se escapen por el camino.

Céline circula por estas páginas como una corriente contaminada. Modiano recoge parte de su furia verbal, su gusto por la exageración y su capacidad para convertir la frase en un ataque, pero dirige esa energía contra el imaginario antisemita que Céline ayudó a alimentar. Toma la voz del enemigo y se la devuelve convertida en parodia.

También resulta tentador pensar en El lamento de Portnoy, publicada un año después. Roth convierte la neurosis judía en una guerra familiar y sexual; Modiano la hace chocar con la historia de Europa. En ambos casos asoman carcajadas culpables. Con Modiano duran poco: medio segundo después, uno comprueba discretamente si todavía conserva la cartera y la dignidad.

Quienes conozcan las novelas posteriores de Modiano encontrarán aquí a otro escritor y, al mismo tiempo, el origen de todos los demás. El Modiano maduro escribirá mediante ausencias, direcciones incompletas, fotografías borrosas y personas que quizá estuvieron en determinado café una tarde de 1942. En El lugar de la estrella utiliza la saturación: todas las voces hablan a la vez, todos los fantasmas comparecen y la guía telefónica entera parece a punto de explotar. Con los años bajará el volumen, pero seguirá regresando a las mismas calles, al padre fugitivo, a las identidades inciertas y a esa Ocupación que él no vivió y que, sin embargo, le había preparado la habitación antes de que naciera.

La novela posee la insolencia y también los excesos de una primera obra escrita por alguien que teme no disponer de una segunda oportunidad. Se repite, se embriaga con sus propias piruetas y en ocasiones parece empeñada en demostrar que Modiano ha leído todos los libros de Francia y recuerda incluso los malos. Esa falta de medida forma parte de su fuerza. La rabia todavía no ha aprendido modales ni ha descubierto la eficacia de hablar en voz baja.

Como puerta de entrada al universo de Modiano, El lugar de la estrella tiene más bien el comportamiento de una salida de incendios: alarma, humo y codazos. Yo empezaría por Calle de las tiendas oscuras. Este debut se disfruta mejor cuando ya conoces al Modiano de la niebla y regresas después al origen del incendio. Es una novela apabullante, desigual, muy divertida en algunos tramos pero profundamente amarga cuando la carcajada se retira. También es el gesto de un muchacho que comprende que el pasado de sus padres no ha terminado, que Francia ha maquillado demasiado bien ciertas fotografías y que la identidad puede convertirse en la primera celda de una prisión.

El título pregunta dónde está el lugar de la estrella. Modiano responde colocándola en el pecho del judío, en el callejero de París, en el álbum familiar y en las palabras con las que un país decidió recordar —y olvidar— lo que había hecho. Después de leer esta novela, resulta difícil devolverla a un solo sitio.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too intellectual, bizarre and intimately French for me (the glossary of real life individuals deployed at the back of the book stretches to five pages). It's a scathing attack on France's collaboration with the Nazis, narrated by a young Jewish man who creates a madcap fantasy of his life in which, among other things, he is Eva Braun's lover and works for the Gestapo. This was Mondiano's first novel and I liked his writing enough to try him again.

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hero of Hallucination

La Place de l’Étoile was Modiano's first novel, but I would not recommend it first to the new reader. It is brilliant, but with that particularly French brilliance of a young intellectual writing to astound older intellectuals, punching his card as a member of the closed circle, yet turning their sacred shibboleths to his own profane ends. It is far removed in style from any of the other six short novels of his that I have read since Modiano won the Nobel Prize, books distinguished by their relative modesty and by action that takes place in dark Parisian corners reluctant to give up their secrets.

Nothing dark about the Place de l'Étoile, though, that hub of haute-monde Paris standing proudly on its hill with the gleaming white Arc de Triomphe in the middle. But Modiano is brilliant with titles, and this one has a sinister second meaning that the author explains in an epigraph:

In June 1942, a German officer approaches a young man and says to him: "Excuse me, sir, where is the Place de l'Étoile?" The young man points to the left side of his breast.

Alas, the pun is untranslatable, since nobody speaks of the Parisian landmark as the "Place of the Star." But there is also something splendidly defiant about the bitter joke: if the young man is not Jewish, he is criticizing the German racial laws; if he is, he risks his life. This splendid defiance, so unlike the author's other novels, is the defining feature of this one.

Modiano was born in 1945. His father, a Jew, survived the Occupation, it is thought by turning his underworld contacts to the service of the Gestapo. The son's other novels mostly take the form of noirish investigations into mysteries that go back to the Occupation. But there is nothing dark or mysterious about this one at all. It is a cry of outrage hidden in a firework display of youthful exuberance. It is a picaresque tale tossed on the wildest flights of the imagination. It is a headlong carnival ride through geography and history, following the young narrator, Raphaël Schlemilovitch, Jew par excellence. Now fabulously wealthy, then poor, then rich again, he finds success as author, soldier, alpinist, and lover, at one point becoming the bedmate of Eva Braun and Hitler's closest companion, his Official Jew. Very little of it takes place in Paris, let alone the Place de l'Étoile of the title, but Raphaël visits America, the Gironde, Vienna, and Tel Aviv, living in luxury hotels, kibbutzim, or cloistered abbeys. The book is embroidered with so many names—literary or historical; real, fictional, or repurposed—that a translation would require almost as many footnotes as text. I can't claim to have picked up more than a small fraction of the references, but only to have read it for the sheer dizziness of the author's fantasy. And I certainly cannot summarize the book half as well as Modiano himself, in the brief preface that I attempt to render here:

The narrator, Raphaël Schlemilovitch, is a hero of hallucination. Around him, in delirious trajectories, a myriad lives which might be his own intersect on orbits of stirring fantasy. A thousand contradictory identities whirl in a verbal mania where the Jew is sometimes king, sometimes martyr, hiding his tragedy with buffoonery. So we see personages both real and fictional: Maurice Sachs and Otto Abetz, Lévy-Vendôme and the doctor Louis-Ferdinand Bardamu, Brasillach and Drieu la Rochelle, Marcel Proust and the killers of the French Gestapo, Captain Dreyfus and the Pétainist admirals, Freud, Rebecca, Hitler, Eva Braun, and countless others, like figures on a carousel spinning madly through space and time. But the place of the star, the closed book, is inscribed at the exact centre of the "capital of pain."

[Jan Rice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Send-up -- a parody; an act of imitation in order to ridicule someone or something or cut them down to size; satire, burlesque, lampoon, caricature, mockery. Simon Dentith's definition: "any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemical allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice." --pulled from the Wikipedia entry and Google online dictionary

That's what this book is: a send-up -- on steroids. It's Modiano's first book, published in 1968, when he was 23. He takes everything about French antisemitism and the Holocaust that people did not want to talk about and shoves it in their face. His character Raphael Schlemilovitch -- son of a schlemiel -- embodies every imaginable cultural aspect of antisemitism with in-your-face manic glee. Then, for good measure, at the end he does the same with the new state of Israel and its attitude toward European Jews, according to which Israelis are brave, strong, masculine warriors who deserve to survive and the European survivors are cowardly 90-p0und weaklings.

Nothing is to remain hidden and festering. The book is a rampage of cauterizing.

The characters exist in a frenzy of kaleidoscopic shape-shifting. Even the person in which the book is told is in flux: from "I" to "he" and even "you."

At first, I was "Wha... what?" I started to catch on and go a little faster, which helped, but then, after 30 or so pages, I discovered the notes to the cultural references at the end. I slowed down to look at them, and that was a problem. I began to get bored. I made it to p. 61 and decided to speed up, damn the references, and that was the ticket. The book is a fever dream and needs to be read as such.

I knew a lot of the references anyway, or at least general feelings. Seems that's what I've been reading up on for the last 10 or 12 years. How many general American readers have read a biography of Heine and a novel by Edmond Fleg in recent years?

People don't like this book so much. I saw the opinions of some of my friends. Guess the later books are different; this was the first, and he was not only discharging his rage but finding his voice--sort of like Stephen King at the first of his Dark Tower series, which he started in college -- not that I'm comparing King to Modiano....

This is the second book in a row in which the author was born the same year I was, the other being Susan Jacoby, whose review I haven't gotten to yet. When you read someone born the same year you know what was going on. Modiano was over in France; still, makes for ease of comparison and contrast.

He sure knew a lot more than I did at that age. Here, in my life, the genteel silence persisted. If it was being exploded, I didn't know. Took me decades longer.

Don't know how to rate. Still a little shell-shocked.

I have the trilogy and have now made it through the first.

[Peiman · Rating 1 out of 5]

ما کتاب میخونیم یا برای سرگرمی یا برای آموختن. به نظرم این دو هدف بزرگترین دلایل برای خوندن کتاب هستند. و این کتاب برای من به شخصه هیچ کدوم از این دو مورد رو نداشت. کتاب سرشار از اسمی هست و برای اینکه کتاب رو راحت بخونید باید اول یه چند سالی تشریف ببرید فرانسه و اونجا رو مثل کف دست بلد باشید بعد هم یک دایره المعارف اسامی و شخصیت ها رو حفظ کنید. مورد بعدی اینکه ترجمه بسیار سردرگم و نامفهوم بود. و اما داستان کتاب در مورد فردی هست متوهم که خودش رو یک یهودی بی وطن میدونه و فرانسه و ادبیاتش رو مدیون یهودیان میدونه و خودش و یهودیان رو مظلوم تاریخ میدونه و خودش رو به جای یک نجیب زاده فرانسوی جا زده و ادامه ی داستان....ه

[Anders · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bizarre, bitingly sarcastic look at what it means to be a French Jew, delivered with a kaleidoscopic array of cultural and historical inputs. Most prominent among them are the German occupation, France's literary tradition and a series of Jewish "role models" that the main character alternately imitates fawningly and rejects in disgust. Chronology and plot are cast aside altogether, as the hero Schlemilovitch acts the playboy billionaire, the Third Reich's top Jew, the lycée bully, the sensitive young writer and the white slaver in no particular order. It's precisely the unconventional narrative style that makes this portrait of a wounded, alienated, and deeply split psyche so compelling, helped along by the author's wicked sense of humour.

[Niamh]

Je n'ai pas du tout compris ce livre. Or maybe it just didn't understand me. Modiano, quand il était jeune, était encore plus bizarre que Modiano l'adulte.

[Ivy-Mabel Fling · Rating 5 out of 5]

I quite enjoyed this but it is very different from the other books by Modiano and I think it needs to be read at least three times to get a grasp of what it is saying!!!

[Jonathan Widell · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book displays, and demands, a tremendous knowledge of historical events and persons which one may or may not look up somewhere if one is not fortunate enough to be already familiar with them. A story of different Jews at different times in modern history under different circumstances and tied together with the psychoanalysis done under someone who is taken for Sigmund Freud. Where is the aesthetics though? At no point was the book an engrossing or even enjoyable experience.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bizarre story. A satire of the Nazi occupation. Raphael Schlemilovitch is a young Jewish man who both loves and hates himself. The Place of the Star is where the story partly takes place. We really do not who Raphael is? A Venezuelan heir to a fortune, a white slave trader or someone institutionalized for paranoid delusions.

The story is well written and mixes real people with his narrative. I came away perplexed but perhaps reading the other two parts of the trilogy would help to understand what the author is trying to say.

Parts of it are funny and I liked the quote ‘When I hear the word culture, I reach for my truncheon ‘. What the story does through satire is lay bare the hypocrisy of occupied France.

[Ana · Rating 1 out of 5]

Não gostei nada deste livro. Em parte julgo que a culpa foi minha, porque a história está cheia de alusões à literatura e história de França, a maior parte das quais me passaram ao lado. Mas outra parte deveu-se ao desenrolar da história, que começou de forma mais ou menos normal - trata-se de uma de auto-biografia do personagem principal, um jovem judeu vivendo em França na época da segunda Grande Guerra - mas que depois se foi tornando cada vez mais bizarra e inverosímil, até acabar de forma bastante estapafúrdia. Enfim, não gosto de julgar um autor pela leitura de um único livro, mas a verdade é que não fiquei com grande vontade de voltar a pegar no P. Modiano.

[Isabelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the great books of my life, written by Patrick Modiano when he was barely 20, his first book. This is a quest of identity through being Jewish, or actually not quite so Jewish. The narrator Rafael goes through a hallucinatory journey within himself but also with the who's who of Jewish culture, Freud and Eva Braun, for instance. I experienced this book like a punch in the stomach. I felt so relieved that someone out there could put into words the sort of confusion I felt about being almost Jewish...

[Paul · Rating 1 out of 5]

Je ne comprends pas. Ni ce livre. Ni pourquoi. Ni son Nobel. 100 pages et je n'en pouvais plus.

[Jean-charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Modiano a écrit ce premier roman à vingt ans. Son narrateur halluciné, Raphaël Schlemilovitch est un Juif français antisémite dont les errances logorrhéiques sont ponctuées de tirades outrées et burlesques. Schlemiel signifie maladroit en yiddish, c'est aussi sous la plume d'Eric Berne le nom d'un « jeu » en analyse transactionnelle, le schlemiel occasionnant des désagréments et se retranchant toujours derrière sa maladresse, sauf-conduit social. Schlemilovitch est un Juif antisémite, à tel point que non content de collaborer avec les instigateurs de la solution finale, il incarnera toutes les figures méprisées du Juif affairiste, proxénète, méprisant et aux tenues d'un mauvais goût levantin et ostentatoire.

L'histoire de la famille de Patrick Modiano éclaire ces hallucinations déroutantes : son père et son grand-père paternel sont des Juifs déjuidaïsés, interlopes, aventuriers, trafiquants et louches, sa mère flamande. Il sera délaissé par ses parents et même baptisé par une famille d'accueil. En 1942, son père est relâché à la suite d'une rafle à Paris grâce à l'intervention d'une connaissance bien placée. Les détails exacts restent mal connus, ce qui laisse supposer des amitiés, notamment au siège de la Gestapo, rue Lauriston, nom qui revient fréquemment dans le roman. Pour Eric Berne, Juif lui aussi, les grandes orientations de la vie sont fixées depuis l'enfance, son livre "Games people play" sort en 1964.

Place de l'étoile a obtenu le Prix Roger Nimier, dont Les Épées ressemble aux aventures de Schlemilovitch par ses dérives psychiques à la géographie incertaine, ses doubles allégeances brumeuses, son ton outrancier voire haineux. Dans Les Épées, le narrateur tue un Juif d'un coup de pistolet, sans motif autre que le délit de sale gueule de l'individu en question, qui lui semble Juif, trop heureux d'être libéré et donc d'avoir survécu à l'occupation, et dès lors redevable d'une balle dans la tête. L'occasion est belle pour Sanders, le narrateur. Il va occire ce survivant heureux, dans le climat d'impunité que génèrent les troubles de la Libération. Les actes gratuits étaient dans le Zeitgeist, avec Gide d'abord, puis pour de vrai et à large échelle.

Un épisode en Israël a retenu toute mon attention, et comme il parle de lui-même, j'en livre des citations à moitié crues. P. 177, Schlemilovitch reçoit un billet pour la terre sainte, ce qui ouvre un long passage d'une hargne jubilatoire antagonisant les rapports culturels et politiques entre le nouvel Etat bronzé et musclé et les pâles Juifs tremblants de la galoute (exil en hébreu). Ce thème se retrouve chez Philip Roth sous une variante sexualisée dans Portnoy's complaint (1969). L'excursion de Schlemilovitch en terre promise fera retarder la publication de Place de l'Etoile par Gallimard en 1968, (juste après la guerre de Six Jours, laquelle on s'en souvient ou pas, fut déclenchée par Israël sous le prétexte des escarmouches avec la Syrie et des rodomontades de Nasser, notamment au détroit de Tiran, et avec la garantie des services secrets américains que les troupes arabes n'étaient pas de taille à mettre en péril l'Etat hébreu et sa puissante armée, en dépit de toute la propagande qui nous a été infligée depuis sur le danger d'une élimination de la carte de ce hâvre de paix pour les Juifs persécutés de par le monde, fin de la parenthèse.)

« Quand le bateau accosta, les battements réguliers de son cœur lui firent bien sentir qu'il retrouvait la terre ancestrale après deux mille ans d'absence. …/... Maintenant que Tel-Aviv s'étalait devant lui il pouvait mourir, le cœur pacifié. …/... Je ne suis pas tout à fait français amiral, je suis JUIF français. JUIF français. L'amiral Lévy le regarda avec hostilité. L'amiral Lévy ressemblait comme un frère à l'amiral Doenitz. » p. 177-178.

Schlemilovitch est détenu et interrogé par quatre hommes vêtus d'imperméables. La perquisition de ses bagages leur a permis de découvrir des œuvres de Proust, Kafka, Modigliani, Soutine, des productions galoutiques (galoute = exil en hébreu, en le répétant ça s'ancre) qualifiées de « subversives » p. 190. Il est menotté et emmené dans un panier à salade « semblable à ceux que la police française utilisa pour la grande rafle des 16-17 juillet 1942 » p. 180. Ils le font mettre à genoux, le passent à tabac. « De ta peau [on fera] des abat-jour » lui dit Isaïe » p. 182. L'hallucination continue avec une visite des locaux de la Gestapo. On l'appelle Marcel Proust, on le torture auditivement avec un phonographe jouant du Charles Trénet. Ensuite, supplice de la baignoire, entailles aux pieds avec un couteau suisse et dialogue intérieur: « Si ces brutes me laissaient la vie sauve, j'écrirais un beau roman : « Schlemilovitch et le Limousin » où je montrerais que je suis un Juif parfaitement assimilé. » p. 186. On lui fait porter un pyjama rayé avec une étoile jaune Juif français , « Französich Jude » (sic) p. 189. Le correcteur n'était pas payé pour corriger les fautes d'allemand, il y en a plusieurs, ach französischer Jude.

L'interrogatoire se poursuit, devient plus franchement idéologique:

« - Maintenant, parlons peu , parlons bien. Pourquoi êtes-vous venu en Israël?
- Je suis une nature romantique. Je ne voulais pas mourir sans avoir vu la terre de mes ancêtres.
- Et vous comptiez ensuite revenir en Europe, n'est-pas? Recommencer vos simagrées, votre guignol? Inutile de répondre, je connais la chanson : l'inquiétude juive, le lamento juif, l'angoisse juive, le désespoir juif. On se vautre dans le malheur, on en redemande, on voudrait retrouver la douce atmosphère des ghettos et la volupté des pogroms! …/... Je vous signale que nous disposons de tous les moyens nécessaires pour calmer les petits masochistes de votre espèce …/... les sempiternelles histoires, ces histoires poisseuses: Diaspora, persécutions, destin pathétique du peuple juif ! ».

Le tortionnaire promet du Torquemada, de l'Himmler et relance le discours de rédemption: « De Tel-Aviv à la mer Morte, de Haïfa à Eilat, l'inquiétude, la fièvre, les larmes, la POISSE juive n'intéressent plus personne. Plus personne! Nous ne voulons plus entendre parler de l'esprit critique juif, de l'intelligence juive, du scepticisme juif, des contorsions juives, de l'humiliation, du malheur juif … (Les larmes coulaient sur son visage). Nous laissons cela aux jeunes esthètes européens de votre espèce ! Nous sommes des types énergiques, des mâchoires carrées, des pionniers et pas du tout des chanteuses yiddish à la Proust, à la Kafka, à la Chaplin! Je vous signale que nous avons fait récemment un autodafé sur la grand-place de Tel-Aviv : les ouvrages de Proust, Kafka et consorts, les reproductions de Soutine, Modigliani et autres invertébrés ont été brûlés par notre jeunesse, des gars et des filles qui n'ont rien à envier aux Hitlerjugend: blonds, l’œil bleu, larges d'épaules, la démarche assurée, aimant l'action et la bagarre ! (Il poussa un gémissement.) Pendant que vous cultiviez vos névroses, ils se musclaient. Pendant que vous vous lamentiez, ils travaillaient dans les Kibboutzim ! N'avez-vous pas honte Schlemilovitch ? » p. 193-194.

Avant son transfert au kibboutz pénitentiaire dont les gardiens portent des étoiles de David, Schlemilovitch promet de ne plus lire ces œuvres pernicieuses. Ses bourreaux, dont la santé morale pourrait être entamée par les Juifs d'Europe (p. 198), déclarent ne pas aimer l'intelligence, surtout quand elle est juive, et l'obligent à chanter des chansons de troupe (p. 196).

« Et ne jouez pas aux petits martyrs dit Isaïe. La plaisanterie a assez duré. Vous pouviez faire des grimaces en Europe, devant les goyes. Ici nous sommes entre nous, inutile de vous fatiguer. » p. 196.

Tout cela finit bien. Il est sauvé par Rebecca, une officier de l'armée israélienne qui va lui permettre de s'échapper et de rejoindre l'Europe où on le retrouvera allongé, sur le divan d'un psychanalyste en sanglots. « Je t'aime et j'ai envie de retourner en Europe, me dit-elle. Ici il n'y a que des brutes, des soldats, des boy-scouts et des emmerdeurs. En Europe nous serons tranquilles, nous pourrons lire Kafka à nos enfants. » p. 201-202. Mais auparavant, et entre autres péripéties, Schlemilovitch va visiter une boîte de nuit clandestine de Tel-Aviv en portant un uniforme de SS. Dans cette ambiance Lili Marleen, il est reconnu par le tortionnaire Bloch, ex-amant d'Eva Braun, qui déclare alors que les Juifs d'Europe sont incorrigibles, p. 203. Les joyeux fêtards sablent le champagne, trinquent à la victoire de l'Allemagne et à la bonne santé de la Gestapo.

Vor der Kaserne Vor dem großen Tor
Stand eine Laterne
Und steht sie noch davor so woll'n wir uns da wieder seh'n
Bei der Laterne wollen wir steh'n Wie einst Lili Marleen.

[Daniele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Satyras yra keistas žanras. Vos neapsiverkiau vienu momentu ant kiek keista viskas buvo.

[Rhys · Rating 3 out of 5]

A brilliant but ultimately depressing novel that is a fantasia of frustrated revenge, self-loathing and ironic bitterness concerned with the German occupation of France during WWII and the murderous treatment of the Jewish people and the desperate cynicism of the collaborators. I have rarely read a novel filled with such barely controlled anger, but this anger is used as a motive force to embark on a wild flight of fantasy, part memoir, part grandiose daydream, part nightmare, which is by turns savage, masochistic, melancholy, fatalistic and rebellious. This novel is a satire but one that owes more to Celine (who is mercilessly parodied throughout) than to any humourist. Certainly I will read more Modiano in the future, probably the next two volumes of the 'Occupation Trilogy', of which this is the first, but I need to pause for breath first.....

[Huy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Đọc lại lần 2 và cảm giác như mới vì không nhớ một tí gì :P. Mà thật ra không nhớ cũng đúng khi mà cuốn sách không có một cốt truyện cụ thể mà chỉ là những hồi tưởng lang man không đầu đuôi, không rõ ràng đâu là sự thật đâu là tưởng tượng của nhân vật chính, bị ám ảnh bởi cái nguồn gốc Do Thái anh mải mê đi tìm nhân dạng, xóa bỏ nó, khước từ nó rồi lại đau đớn vì không thể gột sạch cái gốc Do Thái ra khỏi người minh.
Mình không thích cuốn này bằng những cuốn khác của Mondiano vì thấy nó lộn xộn quá, và thiếu đi cái chất thơ mộng u hoài như mấy cuốn khác của ông.

[Nguyên Trang · Rating 4 out of 5]

23 tuổi đã xuất bản cuốn này thì Modiano mới là thần đồng nước Pháp chứ Sagan là chi chi. Sách có không khí rất khác so với những cuốn sau (đã dịch ra tiếng V mà tôi đã đọc), tuy nhiên, mặt lá mặt phải thì vẫn cùng là một thứ, vẫn là những ám ảnh về căn cước một cách mơ hồ. Vẫn là Modiano từng biết, nhưng sốc nổi hơn. Không phải really liked mọi thứ nhưng thật sự đáng ngưỡng mộ ở nhiều mặt: cả kiến thức lẫn lối viết.

[Philippe Malzieu · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is the first Modiano's book I read. It's not the one I prefere.
We find all the recurrent themes which will haunt its books: Schoah, Nazism, identity, filiation... It is magnificiently well written, Paris ever was so beautiful, but that does not function for me.
Sorry.

[Tommi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Modiano’s 1968 debut is wildly different from the retrospective ruminations I believe his oeuvre is known for in terms of register, while the subject matter – the German Occupation of France and its effects on the individual – remains the same. La Place de L’Etoile is a punch in the face: a frenetic and satirical account of a Jewish man’s trials and tribulations delivered without much consideration for political correctness. For a novel written by someone in his early twenties, La Place is truly a feat in its encyclopedic knowledge of French cultural history, though as a story it perhaps shows it’s an early work.

[Ingrida Lisauskiene · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ši knyga yra pirma šio autoriaus parašytos okupacijos trilogijos dalis, groteskiškai ir šiek tiek psichopatiškai parodanti postholokaustinį pasaulį. Tai knyga, kurią skaitant reikia turėti šalia internetą ir galimybę pasiskaityti apie romane minimas amenybes, nes kai kurie asmenys yra man tikrai nežinomi. Pats autorius vadinamas "Nobelio premijos laureatu, kurio knygų niekas neskaito". Bet besidomintiems prancūzų literatūra teks su juo susipažinti. Tai pirma šio autoriaus knyga, gal kitos eisis ir patiks labiau.

[JoBerlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wild, provokant, assoziativ - Modianos Erstling war bei Erscheinen (1968) eine Sensation.
Ich habe das Buch als eine Art Entwicklungsroman gelesen (----> Kap. III "In der Normandie werde ich meine Erziehung der Gefühle beenden"):
Kapitel 1 Kindheit, Kapitel 2 Schule, Kapitel 3 Lehr- und Wanderjahre, Kapitel 4 Erwachsener.
Dabei geht es ohne stringente Handlung um den "ewigen Juden", um das von Nazis besetzte Frankreich und um die vermeintliche Zuflucht Israel (hier als die Intelligenzia verachtender Polizeistaat geschildert ---> Kap. IV "Wenn wir das Wort 'Kultur' hören, ziehen wir den Gummiknüppel"). Solche provokanten Worte setzen tiefe, schmerzhafte Schnitte bei der Leserschaft - wie mit einer (häufig erwähnten) Blue Gillette Extra Klinge gezogen. Modiano hat später allzu radikale Stellen abgemildert oder gestrichen.
Der im Nachwort als "Phantasmagorie" bezeichnete Roman streift assoziativ die Lebenswelt vieler jüdischer und auch antijüdischer Künstler wie zum Beispiel Sartre, Kafka, Gide, Proust, Celine ... ----> Kap. IV "Meine Tuberkulose? Hatte ich die nicht Franz Kafka gestohlen?"
Der typische Modiano-Stil späterer Werke ist hier (noch) nicht zu erkennen und doch war die Lektüre anregend, außergewöhnlich, fordernd. Ein MUSS für alle Fans des Literatur-Nobelpreisträgers 2014.

[Kelsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prior to this, I had not read any books by Modiano. I knew that he has a preoccupation with the Vichy past of France, and I was expecting a dark meditation on that period. Instead, I was confronted with a strangely humorous (though still dark) text set decades after the war, following a young Jewish man and his fantasies, which include reimagining himself as a Nazi collaborator (even as the lover of Eva Braun). Schlemilovich inhabits anti-Semitic stereotypes in a way that allows the author to lampoon them and confront the historical reality of French anti-Semitism, something that at the time of publication was not widely acknowledged. The Gaullist myth of a country full of Resistance fighters was easier to stomach, but Modiano gleefully tears down that fantasy.

The young protagonist also positions himself in relation to French intellectual history. The book is especially a nod to Proust with themes like the idealized childhood, the passage of time, the fluidity of memory.

In some ways, this book brought to mind Michael Chabon's work, such as The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

Beautifully written and provocative, c'est à lire!

[Eric Dear · Rating 2 out of 5]

One has to work hard to get through this one. It is difficult to decide if this is an utterly brilliant yet nightmarish and raving depiction of what it means and how it feels to be jewish, particularly in France, or a work of a twenty-two-year old literary prankster who wants to give a glimpse of every kind of stereotype associated with jewishness while showing off by hurling a miriad of cultural tidbits at the reader. I hoped to find the answer by the end of the book, but I still do not know. See for yourselves ….

[Johanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't find this an enjoying read. To me it was strange and off-putting. I also felt that it requires a good deal of literary and historical knowledge of France and Jewish figures throughout history.

[Quân Khuê · Rating 2 out of 5]

weird book; cannot fake that I liked it :)