In the Cafe of Lost Youth -Whole Book Spoilers (Feb 2018)

[Clarke]

This can be the whole book spoilers section -- I guess. I'm not sure where I am.

[Clarke]

Here are three possible paths in CLY, although you may well prefer a path of your own devising:

1) THE PATH OF ALLUSION: It strikes me that some of the plot of Jacqueline/Louki's life resembles that of Lolita, albeit with different points of view. Worth noting that Nabokov was interested in games/puzzles/encryption in his work, and CLY is a kind of puzzle.

2) THE PATH OF SYMBOL: Here you have lots of choices, but one that interests me is when Roland says that he and Louki were seeking a place of "endless summer"--and then Jacqueline/Louki ends up in the "snow" with "Crossbones." Further, "Crossbones" is aka Jeannette Gaul, which makes one think of Jeanne D'Arc + Gaul, adding an ethnic or perhaps political element to the mix.

3) THE PATH OF OBFUSCATING CHARACTER-NARRATORS: The Student knows very little. He's on the periphery. Caisley learns some facts, but he decides to hide them from Choreau, his employer, considering himself complicit with Jacqueline/Louki (p.51). Jacqueline/Louki's section tells us less than either Caisley or Roland tell us. And Roland is naive and unreliable. Just look at how dumb he is about "Bob Storms." Do we really think "Bob Storms" is interested in Roland? So, arguably, the whole book is composed of unreliable narration.

[Sue]

The word that jumps out in all the reviews I read is "melancholy". Certainly a better fit than "wow that was depressing!".

One of the reviews posted in the opening discussion for this book described how Modiano wandered these exact same streets at the exact same time described, and how adults from that post-WWII era moved on quickly, but children/young adults had a larger impression made on their lives.

The book certainly describes young adults with no permanency - no set way to live or place to be, no permanent associations with others, hazy pasts and futures. Really cast adrift with no reliable help from anyone including (or especially) parents/school/police.

As I was reading, I thought of the parallel to social media in our current society. I'm in my 50's, and while I enjoy "escaping" into social media, I consider my real interactions with others to be in person or on the phone. And friends and family are held onto and encouraged to be very permanent in my life.

But I'm aware of how younger people seem to prefer to interact on line. Texting instead of talking, on-line instead of in person. I read with amazement recently that last names aren't exchanged until 2nd or 3rd dates these days. That information is deemed to personal for a first date.

I wonder if we'll see books written in coming years about the emotional wasteland of growing up in the dawn of the social media era? (Or maybe I'm simply showing my age?)

[Hugh]

I have finished the book, but I don't find it an easy one to talk about - I liked the central premise and the Paris setting (though I don't know Paris well enough to imagine the journeys) but I have to admit that I struggled to maintain interest in the characters. I hope others are more positive.

[SueLucie]

I did like the book, Hugh, and I think my feelings about it echo the other Sue's about young adults' rootlessness after peace had broken out in Europe. I'm copying below the comments I had posted on the other thread as they are probably better placed on this one.

Thanks for adding that interview with Modiano, Hugh.

I've finished the book now and I think my overwhelming impression is of the aimlessness some people seemed to feel once the occupying forces had gone and the jubilation died down. I was struck too by the scope for anonymity and self-reinvention of the city in these post-war years. I read The Evenings by Gerard Reve last year, set in Amsterdam immediately after WWII, and was reminded of it here.

I very much enjoyed the atmosphere he gives us of post-war Paris. I'm tempted to seek out another Modiano for more of that.

[Neil]

I have now read this for the second time and I think it is more interesting if you can invest the extra couple of hours it takes to read it twice.

I have said in some of my book reviews previously that mood/atmosphere counts for a lot when I am reading a book. I would put it above plot and character development, actually. Discuss!

This book has a lot of atmosphere. On my first reading, I got the impression it was all taking place at night because that's how it felt. I was surprised on second reading how much of it was in broad daylight because it doesn't feel like a broad daylight kind of book.

Of the 3 paths Clarke talks about, it is the narrator one that resonates most with me. Coincidentally, the book I read before my second reading of this one was Encircling. The central premise in this is that friends and family of a man with amnesia write their memories of him in the hope that it will speed his recovery when he reads them. A key topic is "unreliable narrators". Sometimes, the narrators contradict one another or tell different stories. Their own personal lives ask questions about how much we can believe when one person tells another person's story.

CLY gives us a similar set up except that here we also get a chapter narrated by the central character (he is completely absent, except by reference, in Encircling).

What makes this book worth a second reading is that you know what the future narrators are going to say so you can start to project forward as you read and notice more of the connections between the stories. Somehow, it makes the climax, Jacqueline's suicide, more emotional.

Notice that I call her Jacqueline rather than Louki. That's how I think of her, even though she is Louki when she is first introduced to us.

Incidentally, Clarke, I don't think I agree that Jacqueline's section tells us less than Caisley or Roland. She fills in a lot of detail about her relationship with her mother and the time she spent wandering the city while her mother was at work. Plus some other things, too. For me, Caisley's section was the lightest, but it would be fascinating to hear what others think.

[Clarke]

Neil wrote: "I have now read this for the second time and I think it is more interesting if you can invest the extra couple of hours it takes to read it twice.

I have said in some of my book reviews previously..."

Yes, Neil, I think of her as Jacqueline, too, and I agree that the climax works much better on a second reading. On first reading, I was disappointed by it, "underwhelmed" as I think Sue said.

On Jacqueline's section, perhaps it was hyperbolic to say it tells us nothing, but it seems she could tell us so much more than she does. This is someone who commits suicide, snorts cocaine, and habitually runs away at age 14.

It's clear she suffers tremendous anxiety. When Roland drives near her neighborhood, she nearly jumps out of the car (57). She says her life was "imposed on her" (58). She thinks of an "imaginary family" she might have had in her dreams (59). She wishes one of the cops could stay and be her "guardian angel" (62). She feels early on her mother can "no longer do anything for her" (60). She lies, fearing "ghosts" (65). She lies about her mother's job (66), clearly embarrassed by it, but never coming out and saying what it is, other than that it's at the Moulin Rouge, with "the most beautiful nudes in the world" (72). Her days at the Canter involve her in spending nights at Cabassud, and she can't stand to think about these days later (Roland section), but we never learn what goes on at the "parties," although we can imagine. She says almost nothing about her marriage to Choureau, although she mentions the separate bedrooms. She gets panic attacks (71), and feel s intoxication whenever she breaks all ties with someone, is "never really myself when I wasn't running away," seeks always "flight & escape" (76-77), but never, ever tries to pin down any reasons for the anxiety. We're left with a half-imagined outline of a girl with no father, a mother whose job is embarrassing, who runs away, gets involved in drug abuse, may have worked briefly as a prostitute, and kills herself. Given this outline, her section could have revealed a great deal more, but that's not apparently what serves Modiano's purpose.

Which raises the question what his purpose is.

[Neil]

What an excellent summary!

I see what you are saying about Jacqueline’s section.

I think Modiano definitely wants the reader to work, to use her/his imagination. There are so many unanswered questions, and more of them on second reading than on first, I think, because of the additional detail you notice. Jacqueline is a mystery in so many ways, but there are clues that allow us to build our own view.

Coincidentally, one of sections of Encircling seems to ask the question about narrator reliability when it is so easy to build a new narrative that still matches the facts. It seems there are multiple routes that all go through the same fixed points (CLY talks about fixed points) and who is to say which one is the truth?

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees]

I really enjoyed the book as well...except the very ending. Maybe another read, as Neil suggests, would make this ending seem like a better fit, and maybe it's actually more true to life, I don't know (thankfully). Maybe it's because it came as a bit of a shock--I think there was plenty enough foreshadowing and character development to clue us in that something was about to happen, but I really expected Louki to simply disappear, for no one to ever know where she escaped to this time. I may have been too convinced that that was where Modiano was leading us, and that contributed to my disappointment.

But even with the ending as it is, I still really enjoyed the book. I wasn't really looking for any sort of resolution at all--and that may have been another slight irritation. The suicide was a definite ending to this character, yet the entire book up to that point seemed to shy away from anything definite. These character's lives were vague and shadowy, though very raw.

I liked this one a bit better than Rue de la Boutiques Obscures, which I read a few years ago, though there was a great similarity in style. Some of this enjoyment probably depends on expectations--I had an idea of what Modiano's oeuvre looked like, and I was ready for it. At some point, I'll probably re-read both of these, plus others of his. Makes me wish I lived in Paris in the late 60s. [Is that where you all date these events? I never saw a firm date, but I did notice the reference to James Jones, and I know he was writing a book on Paris of 1968, (The Merry Month of May), so I assumed that was the time frame of this book as well.]

[Dianne]

Clarke wrote: "Neil wrote: "I have now read this for the second time and I think it is more interesting if you can invest the extra couple of hours it takes to read it twice.

I have said in some of my book revie..."

I think, because of all of the insights you raise Clarke, I would classify this book as the Path of Identity, or the Search for Identity, or the Loss of Identity. With Louki in particular, she never knew her father, was basically abandoned by her mother and had virtually no emotional connection with her, was so alone that when asked about her life she found herself unable to even find words... she represented a lost soul. She sought for meaning, she sought identity, but she never found it - even though she sought it in her odd friendship with Crossbones, in her encounters at the Conde, even in her desperate attempt at human connection through her 'father-like' husband she avoided, and finally with Roland. I wondered why so many of the characters were captivated by her - was it her beauty? She didn't seem to have a voice, an ability to connect with others. I wonder what finally made her give up, and in such dramatic fashion. I suppose she already told us, for in her section she noted that "I was never really myself unless I was running away." (76)

[Clarke]

No one has yet raised the issue of her relationship with Lavigne, her step father. It HAS been observed that she had no father, married a "father figure" husband, maintained connection with Lavigne after her mother's death, despite not being that close to mother, and that her last visit to another person (other than Jeannette) was to Lavigne. Also, Caisley claims the mystery was solved at a point where Jacqueline was visiting Lavigne.

[Kathleen]

I just finished, and I actually liked the ending. Not that I know how it fits, but I liked the part right before the end, when Roland is walking and searching and having his epiphany about the eternal return. I find that idea fascinating.

There's a whole genre of books, isn't there? about people walking city streets. I've read a few, and they are contemplative, the way you feel when you're walking. (Or the way people used to walk before staring at their phones while walking!) That's part of the atmosphere to me.

I don't think I'll re-read this now, but when I do re-read it, I think I'd like to read it all in one go to get the maximum effect. And preferably while sitting in a Paris Café in Autumn ...

[Dan]

Thanks to this group and to Clarke for recommending In the Café of Lost Youth . Following Neil's suggestion, I read and immediately reread it, and then even read Louki's chapter a third time. I found it oddly affecting and enjoyable, and I added a review of it. I'm already looking forward to reading Dora Bruder.

[Kathleen]

And speaking of cafes ... this is fun!

http://lithub.com/a-visual-tour-of-35...

Which one is your favorite? I'd probably choose Les Deux Magots in Paris, but doesn't the little table in the Krakow attic look inviting?

[Dan]

Kathleen wrote: "Which one is your favorite? I'd probably choose Les Deux Magots in Paris, but doesn't the little table in the Krakow attic look inviting?"

Yes, I would choose Les Deux Magots too. But I would definitely avoid Boston's Ritz Carlton in the—what?—"Boston Literary District."

[Jessica]

I really enjoyed this book as well. Thanks for the selection, I wouldn't have known about it otherwise.
Even though I've never been in Paris, I felt as though I was there walking those streets, and being a part of that group of bohemians and lost souls at the Conde. The imagery of this book was wonderful.
What I took the most from this book was how Jacqueline had to escape her live in order to feel alive, to the point where she didn't have any other road to follow but death. She escaped her mother, then her husband and then Roland. She would've never been happy unless she kept moving. I can relate to that, maybe more than escaping, a feeling of wanting things to change and not stay stagnant.

[Suki]

I really enjoyed the book; I am glad that it was a group pick because I don't think that I would have ever heard of it, otherwise.

It is a very lonely book. Everyone seems to be drifting, looking for signs of the past in the present, in the midst of a city which is changing. They are all very much alone-- developing relationships only to have the ties disintegrate.

As Neil mentions above, the novel seems to be a nighttime novel, and it is often kind of shocking to realize that certain events are taking place in the bright light of day. Time seems to drift too, along with everything else.

I wasn't surprised that Louki/ Jacqueline took her own life; there seemed to be a tone of finality when the others, especially Roland, speaks of her. It is kind of ironic that the girl who only finds freedom in flight uses "snow", which is something you can't run away from once it's got you.

[Dan]

A thread for Patrick Modiano has been added to the Author Chat in the Mookse and Gripes group: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/....

[Lily]

Clarke -- I finally finished the second read of this that you recommended. Thank you for that.

It is a pleasure to be in the presence of good writing, even when one can't even quite figure out what makes it "good writing," let alone put together an analytical set of words to describe what has just been experienced. I didn't find ITCOLY to be a particularly satisfying read, but I do find myself talking about elements of it with others in a variety of conversations. I also feel as if I'd like to read it again, even if I never get to doing so: in maybe six months, perhaps two years; to reread is seldom a status I accord a book.

[Dan]

Lily wrote: "Clarke -- I finally finished the second read of this that you recommended. Thank you for that."

I agree. I enjoyed In the Café of Lost Youth so much that I've embarked on what I expect to be a one or two year long journey through all of Modiano's translated works.

[Clarke]

Lily wrote: "Clarke -- I finally finished the second read of this that you recommended. Thank you for that.

It is a pleasure to be in the presence of good writing, even when one can't even quite figure out wh..."
I did not respond to this originally because I thought we were not permitted to respond after 30 days. Now I see some other comments that say it's OK. Just wanted you to know that.

[Hugh]

Clarke,

All of our discussions remain open for late comments after the nominal end date, we even occasionally get new comments on discussions from seven or eight years ago.