In the Café of Lost Youth

Product Information

She wanted to escape, to run farther and farther away, to break violently with her everyday life, to finally be able to breathe. And new mystery will always follow upon the heels of old mystery in this book, and to Louki it is all the endless folds of the Eternal Return. We are caught in an endless loop, of times, places and characters. And mysteries. Although charged with trying to find her, Caisley ultimately decides he'll throw Louki's husband of the scent; yet even in doing the right thing can't see where it leads, the words of his generous gesture reading far differently in the story's conclusion: Modiano is a pure original. He has transformed the novel into a laboratory for producing atmospheres, not situations—where everything must be inferred and nothing can be proved. The cemetery at Montparnasse, not far from where Louki lives, is shown here: https://www.tumblr.com/ Photo by SerpentKiss

So, Monsieur Modiano, I now have to unfriend you. Unlike you, I have found meaning in my life that I mean to retain. Louki reveals his sufferings without any trace of pathos, all her night escapes having a single purpose : that of not being alone in the darkness that dominated the room in which she lived. Louki's portrait is sketched by four narrators, each of them in his or her own way a drifter through life who seeks refuge among the friendly and slightly decadent atmosphere of a bar at night. First there is a student at the nearby Sorbonne, then a private investigator hired by the woman's abandoned husband, followed by Louki herself and concluded by an artist companion. A review obviously detached in time (it’s 2020) and subjective. Maybe fitting for Modiano? Here we go. 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".

Un jour de cafard, sur la couverture du livre que Guy de Vere m’avait prêté : Louise du Néant, j’ai remplacé au stylo bille le prénom par le mien. Jacqueline du Néant. But not last week, when, anxiously searching for a classic, to make me forget about this damn pandemic, I found this volume, and I didn't miss the opportunity again. I had some reluctance, though, I always have it, when it comes to an author I don't have many references to. The other key character in the book is the city of Paris. A knowledge of the geography of Paris might add to the experience of the book. The company I used to work for had its head office on the outskirts of the city so I made fairly frequent trips there with visits to the city centre for dinner etc.. This meant I recognised some of the name of places, but I get the feeling that a proper knowledge of Paris would enhance the mood of the book. However, even without that knowledge, the writing style, which is very minimalist, along with the indirect discovery of a lot of the story, makes for a very atmospheric read. This is the Paris of late-night metro rides, of all night cafes, of night time walks along boulevards.

Further attempts at flight from reality, from herself, from toxic friends and family ties define Louki's journey, illustrated by her favorite books ("Lost Horizon", "Louise, Sister of the Void"), her occasional drug use and her tentavive relationship with Roland, a young man she meets at a bookshop for esoteric material and the final narrator of her story. In the Café of Lost Youth is presented in four parts, each with a different narrator: the second part is recounted by Caisley, who is charged by Louki's husband -- she turns out to be married -- to look into her disappearance, as she had left him two months earlier, "after an unspectacular argument"; it's this search that leads Caisley to the Condé. Where did Louki come from? What was her past like? What is with this enigma surrounding her? It appears that no one really knows. In the case of the student, he seems more concerned about hiding the fact that he is still a student, at the nearby École Supérieure des Mines.However, as in many Modiano novels, things do not work out. People die. People disappear. Buildings disappear or, at least, change their function or are rebuilt. People disappear one day and we notice that we knew nothing abut them, not even their real identity, says Roland but it could be the epitaph of any Modiano novel. Veo ciertos puntos en común con mi propia generación del Madrid de los ochenta. Sobre todo, el recurso al alcohol y drogas, que le costaron la vida a algunos de mis amigos y conocidos. Sin embargo, la novela que ahora comento no ha conseguido despertar mi empatía. Los personajes me han resultado planos, carentes de pasión. No digo que Modiano no sepa construir un personaje. Esa falta de volúmenes en la personalidad parecía un recurso del autor, que tal vez pretendiera que fuera el lector quien reconstruyera esos personajes a partir de los detalles que se presentan aquí y acullá. Stopping at a Tabac buying Le Parisien and exchanging the obligatory courtesies, sitting in Parc des Buttes-Chaumont watching life pass by. Taking in the facades of the buildings in the Quartier Tolbiac, almost expecting to bump into Nestor Burma when I turn the next corner. Rolands/Modianos Chanson triste gilt dem alten Paris, der verlorenen Kindheit, der vergeudeten Jugend, der toten Geliebten Louki. Doch der Zeitfluss lässt sich nicht aufhalten: Nietzsches grosser Mittag und die ewige Wiederkehr bleiben Illusion. Unsterblich ist nur die Kunst." - Ingeborg Waldinger, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

Like W.G. Sebald, another European writer haunted by memory and by the history that took place just before he was born, Modiano combines a detective's curiosity with an elegist's melancholy."--Adam Kirsch, The New Republic And yet, Modiano has Louki narrate her own version of events in the section that follows: She says that Guy de Vere gave her Lost Horizons [see quoteto read, a book about a group of people climbing the mountains of Tibet in search of the monastery Shang-ri-la, in hopes for discovering the meaning of life. Louki reads it, but says, “It’s not worth the trouble to go so far. For me, Montmartre was my Tibet.” It turns out Louki was one of those beautiful young women who at 15 looked 20. She never knew her father. Her mother, a dancer at Moulin Rouge, leaves her daughter home alone each night until the wee hours of the morning. At that early age Louki starts going off on her own into the Paris night scene. It was without the slightest trace of lightheartedness that I returned to that apartment each night. I knew that sooner or later I would leave it for good. I was counting a great deal on the people I would eventually meet, which would put an end to my loneliness. This girl was my first encounter and perhaps she would help me take flight on my own. I was initially attracted to it by the title, a reference drawn from 60's radical and Situationist theorist Guy Debord's "anti-memoirs."In the Café of Lost Youth is a kind of suspense story. It is a story about the many facets of a single woman but also, unquestionably, a story about the multiple worlds within Paris, a city that, as much as any individual human being, remains essentially unknowable. It casts a near hypnotic spell.”—Douglas Kennedy, L’Express The story begins when we learn that Louki has left her husband (older, wealthy, adoring, boring). The private investigator hired by her husband to find Louki starts falling in love with her. In this life that sometimes seems to be a vast, ill-defined landscape without signposts, amid all of the vanishing lines and the lost horizons, we hope to find reference points, to draw up some sort of land registry so as to shake the impression that we are navigating by chance. So we forge ties, we try to find stability in chance encounters."