Para você não se perder no bairro

De Patrick Modiano e Bernardo Ajzenberg

Mais recente romance do ganhador do Prêmio Nobel de Literatura 2014, Patrick Modiano, Para você não se perder no bairro é a saga íntima de um homem em busca da sua identidade. Curto, elegante e hipnótico, como a maioria das obras do autor, o romance conta a história de Jean Daragane, um escritor veterano cuja rotina solitária é alterada após receber a ligação de um desconhecido que alega querer devolver a ele uma caderneta de endereços e telefones.
O desconhecido se identifica como o jornalista free-lancer Gilles Ottolini. Está acompanhado de uma jovem, Chantal Grippay, vestida de preto, que logo provoca em Daragane uma emoção inquieta que ele não sabe explicar de onde vem. Ottolini explica então seu interesse na caderneta: nela está anotado o nome de um homem, Guy Torstel, que ele investiga, e cuja história estaria ligada a um assassinato na época do pós-guerra na França.
O número do telefone de Torstel está anotado com sua letra, mas o escritor não sabe de quem se trata. Para complicar a situação, é o mesmo nome de um personagem secundário que aparece no primeiro livro de Daragane, publicado muitos anos antes e intitulado No escuro do verão. É a senha para se estabelecer um jogo metaliterário no qual o passado e o presente se cruzam, o real e o imaginário se fundem.
A partir desse encontro inusitado, o relato se transforma quase numa investigação detetivesca. O autor se apropria dos melhores recursos do suspense, e mesmo da literatura e do "film noir", para estabelecer um clima de angústia existencial. O que parecia enterrado volta em forma de mistério a ser decifrado em um túnel do tempo que ecoa o período do colaboracionismo e da ocupação da França pelos nazistas durante a Segunda Guerra.
Em 2014, a Rocco relançou três clássicos do escritor laureado com o prêmio máximo da literatura em novo projeto gráfico – Ronda da noite, Dora Bruder e Uma rua de Roma.

• Idioma: Português
• Editora: Rocco Digital
• Data de lançamento: 10 de set. de 2015
• ISBN: 9788581226132

Patrick Modiano

PATRICK MODIANO was born in 1945 in a suburb of Paris and grew up in various locations throughout France. In 1967, he published his first novel, La Place de l'étoile, to great acclaim. Since then, he has published over twenty novels—including the Goncourt Prize−winning Rue des boutiques obscures (translated as Missing Person), Dora Bruder, and Les Boulevards des ceintures (translated as Ring Roads)—as well as the memoir Un Pedigree and a children's book, Catherine Certitude. He collaborated with Louis Malle on the screenplay for the film Lacombe Lucien. In 2014, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy cited “the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the Occupation,” calling him “a Marcel Proust of our time.”

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STENDHAL

Quase nada. Como uma picada de inseto que parece bem fraca no começo. Ao menos é o que você se diz, em voz baixa, para se tranquilizar. O telefone tocou por volta das quatro horas da tarde na casa de Jean Daragane, no quarto que ele chamava de escritório. Tinha adormecido no sofá do fundo, para se proteger do sol. E aquela campainha, cujo som ele perdera o costume de ouvir havia muito tempo, soava ininterruptamente. Por que tanta insistência? Talvez tivessem esquecido de desligar o fone do outro lado da linha. Por fim, resolveu se levantar e se dirigiu ao canto do quarto onde ficavam as janelas e o sol batia muito forte.

– Queria falar com o senhor Jean Daragane.

Uma voz suave e ameaçadora. Foi a primeira sensação que teve.

– Senhor Daragane? Está me ouvindo?

Daragane quis desligar. Mas por que fazê-lo? A campainha certamente voltaria a tocar, sem parar. A não ser que cortasse de vez o fio do telefone...

– Ele mesmo.

– É sobre a sua caderneta de endereços, senhor.

Ele a perdera no mês anterior, no trem em que viajava para a Côte d’Azur. Sim, só podia ter sido naquele trem. A caderneta provavelmente caíra do bolso do paletó quando ele tirou o bilhete dali para apresentá-lo ao fiscal.

– Encontrei uma caderneta de endereços com o seu nome.

Na capa cinza estava escrito: EM CASO DE PERDA, FAVOR DEVOLVER ESTA CADERNETA PARA. Daragane, um dia, maquinalmente, escrevera o seu nome ali, bem como o endereço e o número do telefone.

– Vou levá-la à sua casa. No dia e na hora que o senhor quiser.

Sim, com certeza uma voz suave e ameaçadora, com um tom beirando a chantagem.

– Prefiro que nos encontremos em algum outro lugar.

Esforçou-se para disfarçar o desconforto. Mas sua voz, que ele pretendia fosse indiferente, pareceu-lhe de repente apagada.

– Como o senhor quiser.

Houve um momento de silêncio.

– É uma pena. Estou bem perto da sua casa. Gostaria de lhe entregar em mãos.

Daragane se perguntou se o sujeito já não estaria na frente do prédio, e se não ficaria ali à espreita, aguardando que ele saísse. Melhor se livrar o quanto antes.

– Vamos nos encontrar amanhã à tarde – disse, por fim.

– Se o senhor prefere assim... Só peço que seja perto do meu trabalho, para os lados da estação Saint-Lazare.

Quase bateu o telefone, mas conseguiu manter a frieza.

– Conhece a rua da Arcade? – perguntou o homem. – Podemos nos encontrar em um café. Na rua da Arcade, número 42.

Daragane anotou o endereço. Respirou fundo e disse:

– Combinado, senhor. No número 42 da rua da Arcade, amanhã, às cinco da tarde.

Desligou sem esperar a resposta do interlocutor. Logo em seguida, arrependeu-se de ter-se comportado de maneira tão grosseira, mas atribuiu-a ao calor que sufocava Paris havia alguns dias, um calor fora do normal para o mês de setembro. Um calor que reforçava a sua solidão. Obrigava-o a ficar trancado naquele quarto até o pôr do sol. Além disso, fazia meses que o telefone não tocava. E ele mesmo se perguntava quando fora a última vez que tinha usado também o celular, largado ali no escritório. Mal sabia utilizá-lo, cometendo sempre vários erros ao tocar nas teclas.

Se o sujeito desconhecido não tivesse telefonado, acabaria por esquecer para sempre a perda daquela caderneta. Tentou se lembrar dos nomes registrados nela. Na semana anterior, buscara resgatá-los de memória e começou a fazer uma lista numa folha em branco. A certa altura, rasgou a folha. Nenhum deles era de pessoas que realmente tiveram importância em sua vida, cujo endereço e número de telefone ele na verdade nunca precisara anotar, pois os sabia de cor. Naquela caderneta havia apenas conhecidos do tipo profissional, como costumamos dizer, alguns endereços supostamente úteis, no máximo trinta nomes. Entre eles, muitos já mereciam ter sido excluídos por desatualização. A única coisa que o preocupara por ter perdido a caderneta era o fato de haver registrado nela seu próprio nome e seu endereço. Logicamente podia interromper as coisas por ali e deixar aquele sujeito a esperá-lo sozinho infinitamente na rua da Arcade, 42. Mas, nesse caso, algo permaneceria no ar; uma ameaça. Em algumas tardes de profunda solidão, ele imaginava o telefone tocando e uma voz agradável a chamá-lo para um encontro. Recordava-se do título de um romance que havia lido: O tempo dos encontros. Talvez esse tempo ainda não tivesse passado para ele. Mas aquela voz, de poucos minutos antes, não lhe inspirava confiança. Sim, uma voz ao mesmo tempo suave e ameaçadora.

Pediu que o motorista do táxi o deixasse na Place de la Madeleine. Estava menos quente do que nos dias anteriores; podia-se caminhar na rua, desde que na calçada coberta pela sombra. Avançou pela rua da Arcade, deserta e silenciosa sob o sol.

Fazia uma eternidade que não passava por ali. Lembrou-se de que sua mãe atuava em um teatro daquela região e que o pai trabalhava em um escritório ao final da rua, do lado esquerdo, no número 73. Espantou-se de ainda trazer na memória o número 73. Mas, ao longo do tempo, todo esse passado se tornara translúcido... uma bruma a dissipar-se sob o sol.

O café ficava na esquina com o bulevar Haussmann. Um salão vazio, um balcão comprido encimado por prateleiras, como em um self-service ou em algum antigo Wimpy.[1] Daragane sentou-se a uma das mesas do fundo. Será que o sujeito apareceria? As duas portas, uma dando para a rua e a outra para o bulevar, estavam abertas por causa do calor. Do outro lado da rua, o edifício enorme do número 73... Pensou se alguma janela do escritório do pai daria para este lado. Qual era o andar? Mas essas recordações se lhe escapavam aos poucos, como bolhas de sabão ou lampejos de um sonho que se diluem ao despertar. Sua memória se revelaria mais viva se ele estivesse no café da rua dos Mathurins, na frente do teatro, onde costumava aguardar a mãe, ou então na área da estação Saint-Lazare, bastante frequentada por ele em outros tempos. Não. Nada disso. Já não era a mesma cidade.

– Senhor Jean Daragane?

Reconheceu a voz de imediato. Diante dele se apresentava um homem de seus 40 anos, acompanhado por uma moça mais nova.

– Gilles Ottolini.

A mesma voz, suave e ameaçadora. Apontou para a moça.

– Uma amiga minha... Chantal Grippay.

Daragane permaneceu na banqueta, imóvel. Nem sequer estendeu-lhe a mão. Os dois sentaram-se de frente para ele.

– Desculpe-nos o atraso...

Falou em tom irônico, provavelmente para tentar disfarçar algum embaraço. Sim, era a mesma voz, com um leve, quase imperceptível sotaque do Midi, o qual Daragane não havia notado na conversa da véspera ao telefone.

Pele cor de marfim, olhos negros, nariz aquilino. Um rosto muito fino, tanto de frente como de perfil.

– Aqui está o seu pertence – disse a Daragane, com o mesmo tom irônico, que parecia esconder algo incômodo. E tirou do bolso do paletó a caderneta de endereços.

Colocou-a sobre a mesa, encobrindo-a com a palma da mão, os dedos entreabertos. Dir-se-ia que assim visava impedir que Daragane a pegasse.

A moça mantinha o corpo um pouco mais para trás, como se não quisesse chamar atenção para si. Morena, cerca de 30 anos, cabelos não muito longos, usava camisa e calça pretas. Fitava Daragane com um olhar inquieto. Por causa das maçãs do rosto e dos olhos amendoados, ele especulava se ela não teria origem vietnamita ou chinesa.

– Onde o senhor a achou?

– No chão, debaixo de uma banqueta, no restaurante da estação de Lyon.

Estendeu-lhe a caderneta de endereços. Daragane guardou-a no bolso. Com efeito, lembrava-se de ter chegado à estação bem antes do horário previsto para a partida para a Côte d’Azur, e de que realmente se sentara no restaurante do primeiro andar.

– Quer beber alguma coisa? – perguntou-lhe o tal Gilles Ottolini.

Daragane sentiu vontade de partir. Mas mudou de ideia.

– Uma Schweppes.

– Procure alguém para anotar o nosso pedido. Para mim é um café – disse Ottolini, virando-se para a moça.

Esta se levantou imediatamente. Parecia acostumada a obedecer-lhe.

– O senhor deve ter ficado bem chateado por perder a caderneta...

Emitiu um sorriso estranho, que, para Daragane, parecia insolente. Mas talvez fosse fruto da timidez ou por se sentir sem jeito.

– Sabe de uma coisa? – perguntou Daragane. – Eu praticamente já não uso o telefone.

O outro o fitou com espanto. A moça voltava, retomando seu lugar à mesa.

– Não servem mais nada a esta hora. Estão fechando.

Era a primeira vez que Daragane ouvia a sua voz, uma voz rouca, sem o leve sotaque do Midi do vizinho de mesa. Era um sotaque, digamos, parisiense, se é que isso ainda significa alguma coisa.

–

Avaliações de Para você não se perder no bairro

[jonfaith · Nota: 4 de 5 estrelas]

Many years afterwards, we attempt to solve puzzles that were not mysteries at the time and we try to decipher half-obliterated letters from a language that is too old and whose alphabet we don't even know.

Welcome to a simple yet disturbing turn. Modiano provides a world where the pieces don't quite fit. There are gaps and incongruities here. Chance encounters jar an author from his solitude. He himself is expected to provide answers, which only disorients him further. Insert citations about Noir and Beckett: I am not sure that will help. This is a fresh voice, even if the material appears familiar, almost recalled -- in fact.

I am not sure I could have appreciated this if I was younger. There is something about the mind's blind spots and our self-editing which doesn't reveal itself until a few streaks of gray have adorned our weary heads.

[thealtereggo · Nota: 3 de 5 estrelas]

This book was okay. I enjoyed the writing and reading it, but didn't really feel like I got anything out of it. I felt like it was leading me somewhere, and then it just ended without getting there. I thought about giving it 2 stars, but it did make me want to give some of Modiano's other works a try, so I gave it 2.5 stars. I don't know that this book would be for everyone, but on the flip side, others might appreciate it more than me. I don't know.

[garyseverance-1 · Nota: 5 de 5 estrelas]

Patrick Modiano has written more than 20 novels and has received multiple awards for his writing. In 2014, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. In So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighborhood, wonderfully translated from the French by Euan Cameron, Modiano gives the reader a view of life in Paris through the constricted paranoid consciousness of a successful novel writer.Jean Daragane is a middle age intelligent person who has withdrawn to a life of comfortable isolation in his apartment. He has a history of residence changes in Paris with a common characteristic for each venue of an escape route from the building and an anchor to the reality of Paris life outside his window. In his current home, Jean is able to look at a tree in a park across the street giving him a stable immediate connection with the living world and positive childhood memories of Paris. This action of needing only a view of the outside world for peace of mind is reminiscent of the behavior of Meursault in The Stranger by Albert Camus. Jean is not home bound, however, and likes to take daily walks in Paris enjoying the flora, especially in summer.Jean has relegated his past history to books he has written, novels that are psychologically autobiographical. Once he has written a fictional piece, he does not re-read it or think about the memories that were the foundation of the novel. His oeuvre, however, is like Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray describing the unconscious evolution of the emotion of his past. The emotion spills out of his repressed memories when he is contacted by an advertising agency employee who has a found a notebook that Jean has lost and forgotten in a Cafeteria.Gilles Ottolini and an assistant Chantal Grippay telephone Jean to arrange a meeting to return the notebook. Jean responds to a vague proposal by the two strangers to write an article based on a name discovered in the notebook.Receiving a personal call is such a rare event that the reclusive writer agrees to meet with Gilles and Chantal because of fear of blackmail on the one hand and excitement of meeting new people and breaking out of his loneliness and isolation on the other. Jean soon discovers that sharing information from his notebook triggers an emotional revisit to his childhood that leads him away from the peaceful summer memories of walking the tree lined Paris boulevards and sun filled parks in the city. He finds that the results of trauma can be hidden from consciousness, but the childhood emotional reactions to them are as powerful as they were forty years ago.I really enjoyed reading this novel with its keen psychological insight of the characters and lyrical of descriptions of the atmosphere of Paris. My overall very positive experience of reading the novel was like the one I had reading surrealist Andre Breton’s novel, Nadia. I look forward to reading more of the novels of Patrick Modiano.

[bostonbibliophile · Nota: 4 de 5 estrelas]

I'm beginning to think Modiano's books just aren't my cup of tea. All that oblique hinting, the subtlety, the innuendo. Just tell me what's going on already! I feel like I'm supposed to like this, I'm supposed to think it's profound and layered and amazing and maybe it is, maybe I just don't have the patience for books like this right now. With the first book of his I read, looking up some names in Wikipedia helped me understand what was going on and I've heard that this is helpful with this book as well. So here's the thing. Just put what you want me to know in the book. I really should not have to look up references to make sense of your narrative. It's not that i'm lazy, it's that the writing is, if it depends on me running down biographies. Modiano might just say that I'm ignorant if I don't get his allusions but I'm not sure that's fair. I just wish the book were clear enough on its own for research to be unnecessary.

[rmckeown_9 · Nota: 5 de 5 estrelas]

In his first novel since winning the Nobel Prize in 2014, Patrick Modiano has spun an absorbing tale of mystery and suspense. He is a French novelist who also won the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 2012 and the 2010 Prix Mondial Cino Del Duca from the Institute of France for lifetime achievement. His other prestigious awards include the Prix Goncourt for The Street of Obscure Boutiques in 1978 and the 1972 Grand Prix du Roman de L’Académie for Ring Road. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages. Most of his novels had not been translated into English until he was awarded the Nobel Prize.Jean Daragane is a novelist who is in a funk and living as a recluse in Paris. One day he discovers he has lost his address book, and he receives a phone call from a stranger, who found the book in a train station. His first thought is blackmail, but he agrees to meet the caller, Gilles Ottolini, who brings a woman friend, Chantel Grippay. Jean retrieves the book and leaves. The next day, Gilles calls again, and wants to talk about an entry in the address book – Guy Torstell. Jean has no memory of who this man is or even why he is in his address book. Gilles reveals Jean also used the name in his first novel, 30 years ago. The mystery thickens when Jean receives a call from Chantell and reveals several apparently coincidental items, which connect Gilles and Jean. The next day, Chantel calls Jean, and ask him to meet at her apartment. Modiano writes, “She leant over to him, and her face was so close to his that he noticed a tiny scar on her left cheek. Le Tremblay. Chantel. Square de Graisvaudan. These words had traveled a long way. An insect bite, , very slight to begin with, and it causes you an increasingly sharp pain, and very soon a feeling of being torn apart. The present and the past merge together, and that seems quite natural because they were only separated by a cellophane partition. An insect bite was all it took to pierce the cellophane. He could not be sure of the year, but he was very young, in a room as small as this one with a girl called Chantel – a fairly common name at the time. The husband of this Chantel, on Paul, and other friends of theirs had set off as they always did on Saturdays to gamble in the casinos on the outskirts of Paris: […] and they came back the following day with a bit of money. He, Daragane, and this Chantel, spent the entire night together in this room in square du Graisvaudan until the others returned. Paul, the husband, also used to go to race meetings. A gambler. With him it was not merely a matter of doubling up on your losses” (31-32). As Modiano expands on this peculiar web of coincidences, the suspense rises. Chantel gives Jean copies of notes for an article about Tostel. It is not apparent that she had permission to do so. Later, Jean examines the copies, and notices a passage from his first novel, Summer Night. Modiano reads from his novel, “In the Galeris de Beaujolais, there was indeed a bookshop behind whose window some art books were displayed. He went in. S dark-haired woman was sitting at her desk. //. ‘I should like to talk to Monsieur Morihien.’ // Monsieur Morihien is away,’ She told him. “but would you like to speak to Monsieur Torstel?’” (41). The tenuous threads, which hold this story together, create a tale of mystery and suspense, which you can finish in a day.The more clues Patrick Modiano supplies, the more mysterious the story becomes. So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighborhood is a good introduction to a writer for those interested in a good mystery mixed with fine literary fiction. 5 stars--Jim, 12/29/15

[brandiec-1 · Nota: 3 de 5 estrelas]

As I noted in my review of Patrick Modiano's Suspended Sentences, I was drawn to his work after he won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature. I didn't like the novellas in Suspended Sentences, and his "suspense" novel So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood didn't help me understand the Nobel committee's decision any better (and I'm now scratching my head over this book's inclusion on the 2016 Tournament of Books Long List, too).I put the word "suspense" in quotation marks above because it is both accurate and inaccurate as a description of Modiano's novel. This is not a novel of suspense in the sense that I (and, I suspect, many other American readers) think of such novels. Alfred Hitchcock, often referred to as the "master of suspense," defined suspense as the state of waiting for something significant to happen, where the audience is as fully informed as possible and can, therefore, hold its breath waiting for that event to engulf the unsuspecting protagonist. In So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood, however, Modiano has reversed these roles; the protagonist, Jean Daragane, seems to know what's going on, but the reader is clueless. We can see from the start that Daragane feels threatened by the man who has somehow come into possession of his address book, but we have no idea why. My notes are peppered with such comments as "Why is he so wary from the beginning?" and "Seems unreasonably paranoid." That bewilderment is never resolved; the book ends abruptly 155 pages after it began, with nothing significant having happened (or, if it did, I missed it completely).If it weren't for my having read, understood, and enjoyed several books by Pascal Garnier (not to mention Marcel Proust, with whom Modiano has been compared), I would be tempted to conclude that works translated from the French are simply beyond me. Instead, I think Modiano's writing is simply too obscure for my tastes.I received a free copy of So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood through Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.

[nivramkoorb · Nota: 3 de 5 estrelas]

I decided to read this because the author had received the Nobel Prize for literature in 2014. I understand that this is a translation so something may be missing. The author's style is about links to memory, references to the past, a mystery. The book is short and the writing is excellent. I am glad I read something by him, and I am willing to read another of his books. I will say that he may not be for everyone. I also found that his movement between the present and past got confusing because of the threads in his narrative.

[seeword · Nota: 5 de 5 estrelas]

Another fine Modiano. This could stand alone, but I think it makes more sense if read after some of his other works. Library book.

[hagelstein_1 · Nota: 5 de 5 estrelas]

A man named Jean Daragane recalls his rootless childhood, some of which was spent with a woman named Annie Astrand. Time fluctuates in the story, and he is sometimes thrust back to when he was a younger man, having written his first novel and searching for traces of Annie. A central question in Modiano’s books seems to be: “Why do people whose existence you are unaware of, whom you meet once and will never see again, come to play, behind the scenes, an important role in your life?”Jean possesses a suitcase (his memories?) he has not opened in ten years. “He could not part with it, but he was nevertheless relieved to have lost the key.”The writing is elegant, the atmosphere dreamlike, with Jean Daragane moving from present time back to the past, then further back, seeking but avoiding the most traumatic moment of his childhood.

[jon1lambert · Nota: 5 de 5 estrelas]

Nobel prize winner 2014 - hooray! My wife asked me what this book was about. It's about all the things that Modiano's books are always about, I replied. That's why it's so good. It's about a woman called Annie Astrand who once looked after the narrator when he was a boy. The return of a lost address book triggers memories in the narrator's mind and he remembers visiting Annie Astrand later on; he remembers someone telling him that she had done time but what for - no-one really knows or is prepared to say. He remembers having his photo taken in a photo booth with Annie Astrand, a mysterious train journey to a town on the Cote d'Azur - Eze sur Mer perhaps - and being left alone in a house. It's all about different layers of time, false passports, frontiers, people and places interwoven across these time zones, memories fading, resurfacing, lost parents, shady characters and activities, Roger Vincent, Colette Laurent, murdered, nothing quite clear or adding up but then it doesn't have to quite add up - it's magic. I've read it twice so far - and need to read it again. Modiano writes so well.