Revisiting Patrick Modiano through the material and visual forms of his works (editions, publishing formats, covers, illustrations). A project by Hugo Frey in collaboration with TEXTL
“Material Modiano” seeks to systematically understand Modiano’s comparative publishing formats (‘first editions’, paperback reprints, book design and cover illustration) in France and Italy. Modiano is important for many reasons. As a Nobel winner (2014) he represents ‘accepted literature’, yet his writings are often short, linked to popular genres (mystery, crime) or autobiographical (until quite recently a genre associated with lesser or intimate literature such as diaries). How publishers frame these ambiguities makes different Modianos in different cultural locations/and imprints. Material Modiano is therefore also about discovering the world of “Multiple Modianos”. To conduct the research three methodologies are employed.
1) The temporal-historical perspective. For to understand “Material Modiano” is to understand the changing status of his writing from early in his career as ‘radical outsider’ (1968) to becoming a consecrated Nobel prize winner (2014). This means understanding how the material form of publication either supports or contrasts with the writer’s evolution as an artist and the public status attributed to his writings in France and Italy. It is also to pinpoint how ‘reprinting’ and ‘re-editing’ of earlier works starts to retrospectively reinvent a historical figure that would be entirely anachronistic in its ‘own time’ on first publication.
2) An inter-medial perspective. While often imagined as the ‘great contemporary writer’, Modiano’s career has been repeatedly informed by his appreciation and work as an intermedial writer. His oeuvre for example includes song lyrics, original film script (Lacombe Lucien, dir, Malle [1974], and illustrated novels in collaboration with Pierre Le Tan. Research will analyse how Modiano’s intermedial interventions are remediated by French and Italian publishers in material forms. From the general to the particular: it will be key to compare the use of illustration and photography in the material-visual publishing of his work.
3) A comparative approach. The ‘strong’ material and intermedial status of Modiano’s work in France is to be tested against its much less well known publishing history in Italy. In addition to comparative analysis of materiality (design, cover illustration, print format) it will be important to consider ‘sequence’ of Italian translation. Modiano’s original French works represent an intra-referential palimpsest in which characters and places recur, seemingly randomly as snippets of memory. Research will explore the publishing sequence of Modiano’s works in Italian to identify what a ‘complete’ Italian-Modiano corpus is constituted by and in what order of works.