Fleur Pellerin hasn't read Patrick Modiano

One of the major news bits that I missed while I was in the US was that Patrick Modiano won the Nobel Prize. Now, I did hear the news, obviously (how could I not? I was presenting on him!), but I came back to posters and book displays in windows everywhere here in Paris. Here is just one of the many bookstores boasting about how many Modiano books they sell:

Apparently one of the other news items I missed was even reported in the New York Times. The French Culture Minister, Fleur Pellerin, apparently received some backlash for admitting that she has never read even a single book of Modiano's. The opinion here seems split: while some are happy that Ms. Pellerin is honest enough to admit that with her trying schedule, she doesn't have time to read novels, the other half are outraged that their Culture Minister knows so little of the French literary tradition that she hasn't even read a single work by such a renowned author (Modiano, in case you didn't know, beat Georges Perec's La vie mode d'emploi for the Prix Goncourt, and has since written dozens of best-selling books). Here is the NYTimes article about it: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/world/europe/fleur-pellerin-patrick-modiani-france-culture.html?_r=0

My thoughts aren't perfectly formulated, but I wanted to address it anyway. While I do think it's good that Ms. Pellerin did not pretend to have read Modiano (which is very common—how many American politicians from the Tea Party have pretended to have read Ayn Rand?), I also think that it is surprising she would take the time to read at least one of his books before meeting with him and discussing his recent Nobel Prize. I mean, the book I discussed at NCFS was only about 150 pages long, and is a real page turner whether you like Modiano's style or not. And since most of Modiano's books seem to be about the same topics (I should say right now that I haven't read all of Modiano, but he's also not my specialty), reading one or two could allow one to say a good deal about his style and corpus. Finally, I think this incident really says a lot about the current state of French literature. French literature is one of the greatest national literary traditions in the world, but in the past half-century has become very academic, theoretical, and a lot less about narrative. While Modiano's work is still largely accessible to a general public (revealing the horrors of the Nazi occupation of Paris during WWII through gripping stories, events that the French tend not to speak about), it has also been noted recently that the English-speaking world hasn't shown as much interest in French literature recently. And while I might be straying from my topic, I should also say that the fact that even a French person—but not any one, but the Culture Minister—doesn't read contemporary French literature is disconcerting from where I stand. I mean, it will eventually be my job to teach foreign students about this language and literature and how to inspire interest in it first and foremost. But how to do that when even French ministers of culture don't care? 

I can't say I have the answers right now, but I do know I'm working with an excellent set of texts. The OuLiPo is filled with fun, games, plays on words, puzzles, secrets, and more. Students seem to like it, and it works wonders for teaching the language (forcing students to write with constraints is one thing, but in another language, it can be used to focus in on certain vocabulary or grammar). Hopefully, my students will read French literature, unlike Fleur Pellerin.