N arrative modes

« The English philosopher Galen Strawson has spoken of two opposite narrative modes: diachronic and episodic. For the diachronic writer, there is a sense of continuity between past and present, on the model of an unbroken chain of events. This points to a traditional conception of existence in terms of time. Plato and Nietzsche are two examples of this approach; the episodic writer rejects such a sense of continuity. Memory plays a different role, in which what truly matters is not memories, but what the author makes of them and how they fit with him into his present. In the footsteps of Stendhal, Proust, Borges and Virginia Woolf, Modiano is one of the great episodics of our times. »