“Embrace Your Madness”

The Modianos became his family away from home. They worried about him as if he was their own blood. “He always spoke a lot of how Christ died at 33,” says Dominique. “He spoke of St. Francis, suicide … gallows humor. Le mort. He did suffer. He did suffer a lot, a lot, a lot.” Eventually, in September 1995, he moved into their home. He slept with Marie in her room in the basement. Every day Marie woke up at 7:30 and went to high school, and Tristan woke up and went to a one-room flat that was little more than a desk, and a chair, and a stove for coffee. Patrick paid the rent. Tristan scrapped his prior draft of Barnyard and started over, almost from scratch. He wrote all day in the flat. Around 8 p.m., he came back for dinner.

One night in the winter of 1995, Patrick walked into his daughter’s room to close a window. There on a table, he saw Tristan’s new manuscript spread out in messy stacks. He couldn’t resist a peek. He leaned in closer. He saw page after page of words so small they slid into static. It reminded him of Robert Walser, a Swiss author whose script was so microscopic that his final novel was long mistaken for a coded diary — or the private scribblings of a madman.


ONCE TRISTAN FELT he was done with the new draft, he gave it to Dominique. She cracked into it, went page by page. Every third word was a dynamite stick she had to defuse with a slang dictionary. When she was done, she told Patrick that it was a work of genius.

Patrick put the manuscript under his arm. He walked to a four-story building a few blocks from the Seine, proceeded through a lobby full of black-and-white photographs of authors, and set the book on the desk of the head of Éditions Gallimard, his publisher.

“This may be something interesting,” Patrick said.

Patrick had never recommended a book. Not once in 30 years.

The manuscript quickly moved to the desk of Christine Jordis, who edits the English-language fiction at Gallimard. The manuscript sat there looking “quite heavy,” she remembers. “A mass. A pile.” She handed it to a man named Serge Chauvin, with instructions to read it fast and tell her if it was any good.

Was it likely to be good? Serge, a genially scruffy college professor who looks like a shorter John Lennon, didn’t think so. Every year, he read hundreds of English manuscripts, candidates for publication, and graded each one on a scale from masterpiece to dud (Marley & Me). Almost always, the manuscripts had been submitted by agents on behalf of published authors. Proper channels. This book’s channel was … “unusual.”

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