"Dark Store Street": A story about a person without a past looking for the past

Tuesday, June 4, 2019

When you forget who you are and your past can only be pieced together from the memories of others, what will happen to you at that time? What to do? "Dark Shop Street" is a novel about a man searching for his lost memory.

The protagonist Guyi is such a person. He has no past of his own. With the help of private detective Yu Te, he has lived as Guy Luolang for 8 years. When Yute retires, he will also set out again to find his lost identity. He started looking for the smallest clues, visiting gardeners, pianists, photographers, all those who had some relationship with him. Drawing on their existing memories to outline their past. This is a very difficult thing. There are three reasons for the difficulty. First, because he once had multiple identities (which was normal during World War II), and everyone knew him as only one of the identities, and he had to find the connection among them. The second is to give clues to the person who provided the clues. Because the matter happened a long time ago and he has a new life of his own, he is not particularly concerned about his past. In other people's memories, things about him have become blurry. Third, they are not direct witnesses. For him, the best way is to directly find Freddy, Guy, and Denis, the three key core figures. But often the more you search, the dimmer your hope becomes.

Faced with this dilemma, the protagonist still insists that it is important to find his past self. The sporadic clues or locations he got from other people's mouths were all visited again one by one. Trying to feel the past, he watched, listened, and reminisced. I hope that through this method, there will be an explosion of emotions and the return of memories. "Last night, I walked through these streets, and I knew they were exactly the same as before, but I couldn't recognize them anymore. Not a single building had changed, and the width of the sidewalks hadn't changed, but the lights were different, and there was something floating in the air. Something else..." p120

Fortunately, he had the important clue of photos. Even though what he collected were fragments of memories, he still understood his identity: a resident ambassador. A French diplomat in South America, he once had a good friend like Freddie and his wife Denise. When he and his wife secretly crossed the Swiss border, they were trapped by scammers Fred and Besson. In the end, both his money and his wife were missing. But there must be facts in his memory that he has not found, so he is still nothing. As he pinned his hopes on Freddy, he unexpectedly learns that he may be dead. So, what else can he do? That's right, there is one last clue and the only clue to go to Rome's Dark Store Street.

If he doesn't look for it and just grows old like this, then after the death of all his friends, he will disappear from this world. As an unknown person, we have been in this world before, but we will eventually disappear, so while we are still alive, we always have to leave something behind to prove that we have been here.

1. The smell of pepper

The smell of pepper on Denise’s body is mentioned in two places in the article. But I have always been deeply impressed by the melancholy and unhappy bride in the opening chapter. She seems to have been sitting there, leaving a light blue melancholy back. The golden hair and the smell of pepper made me guess a little bit. Could it be that the bride at the beginning was Denise who was missing in the snow?

2. Very long place names

The places where the protagonist has been are like magic in my heart. I really want to take out a map of France and see him. Every street mentioned. I even wonder if the places he mentioned, connected with a line, could be a hidden message? Maybe it's a code, a pattern or something else?

3. Names

Many times, one of the obstacles in reading foreign masterpieces is the names of foreign characters. Only in this novel did I really see the obstacles of these names. , if you don’t make some records, you will only remember the identity. As for their names, it will really be confused.

4. Writing background

In the process of reading this work, if you can learn more about history and geography, you will probably have more feelings about Paris during World War II. The fleeing French people and Russian nobles will help us understand more of the connotation of the work.

5. Book Reviews

The strange thing is that there are several blogs about "Dark Store Street" that cannot be viewed. I don't know why. So I found these two relatively in-depth articles on the Internet, about writers, works, and that period of history. I believe that most of us will gain a lot.

(1) Modiano's "Dark Shop Street": Writing in Memory of the Unknown/a/20141129/42602801_0.shtml

(2) Liang Wendao's lecture on "Dark Shop Street" 》: Modiano’s lifelong writing theme is memory | Eight minutes to open the book

/kaijuanbafenzhong/wendang/detail_2015_01/04/10021008_1.shtml

6. Not particularly clear thinking Map