Reading Proust – Swann’s Way, 2: Struggling with Proust
Page 264, end of Part I.

Well what can I say at this point? In case it’s not obvious already, I’m not an academic, I’m not a writer, I’m a person with a job who reads when I have the time. I read because it offers a subjective view of history, or a close-up view of life that you miss in non-fiction or even, to bring Proust himself into this, because it can be more truthful than reality. So that’s where I’m coming from. And now, onto the book.

Mr. Proust is capable of some beautiful linguistic photography and he has some fascinating reflections on the mind, human interactions, social class, nature, reading, memory, and whatnot. And that’s just in the first 264 pages of a 3000 page novel. It’s a work of genius.

However, I have to say, I’m really struggling to continue. I might just be too distracted by other things going on in my life, or maybe I’m not getting enough sleep, or maybe I shouldn’t have committed to Proust so soon after emotionally exhausting myself on Hrabal, but I just find myself, ok, recognizing his genius as a novelist while struggling to give a damn about what the narrator thinks of hawthorn trees, or his gossipy dying aunt’s routine being thrown off by eating lunch an hour early on Saturdays. If I were in a class where I’m forced to read this, I could come up with some interesting observations and even write a paper about it if I were motivated by a grade. But as a guy with limited free time and a shelf-full of other books I’m thinking about reading, I’m finding it increasingly hard to focus on Swann’s Way. One expectation I had when I started this is that, like War & Peace, reading such an enormous novel I’d over time become increasingly attached to the characters and their stories. But because of the perspective of In search of lost time, you only get to know one character, whose own thoughts on the novel’s events (which aren’t really events per se, but rather his memories of, well, the past). After 264 pages I’m starting to feel like I’ve been stuck in a room with the same person for too long, and I need air, I need other characters with their own lives who aren’t just shadows of this one person’s memory – as vivid as those shadows are evoked. I find myself desiring conversation.

I do have plenty of positive things to say about the novel, however, which is the reason I’m not ready to give up on it just yet. As I said, Proust’s a genius. His physical descriptions, while they can drag on and become tedious, are beautifully written (or, beautifully translated, at least). In general, though, what interests me most are his descriptions of what he calls “the life of the mind” which, “of all the various lives we lead concurrently, is the most episodic, the most full of vicissitudes” (258).

One thing that’s really struck me is the way he presents the relationship between reality and imagination. I’m getting the impression that the narrator is a person who prefers desire for its own purpose over the eventual fulfillment of that desire. Much of the narrative is tied up in reflection and fantasy, that leads to ultimate disappointment when that reality is fulfilled. There are two illustrations of this: when he sees the Duchess of Guermantes in her ancestral church, about whom he’d been dreaming and fantasizing for a while, and is “immensely disappointed” when he sees her in person. He says this disappointment comes from the expectation that she would be an image on a tapestry or stained-glass window, which is how he’d been looking at images of her ancestors in the church. The second illustration is just a line on the nature that surrounds him on his walks: “because reality takes place in the memory alone, the flowers that people show me nowadays for the first time never seem to me to be true flowers (260). I'm not doing a great job of evoking it but it really is amazing stuff.

I was reminiscing recently with a friend I’ve known for 30 years about growing up together, so had our own search for lost time to compare with the novel. Perhaps that could be its own post, or perhaps you’ll just have to fantasize what I could come up with on such a topic, a post which could only disappoint whatever it is you can imagine. I do hope to continue to write about the novel, though, much as Proust’s narrator does, “to appease my conscience and to satisfy my enthusiasm” (255).

There’s obviously plenty more to say about Proust, but I think this is more than enough for now. I’m taking a break from the book today after finishing Part I, but I’ll probably be picking it up again soon enough. I should also confess that I’ve picked up Hrabal again during my break, this time reading him in Czech. I’m not sure if I’ll be posting on that or not yet, but if nothing else it’ll serve as a distraction while I let the memory of reading Proust surpass the act of actually doing so. He’d be so proud of me.

Monty Python - All-England Summarize Proust Competition

As you can see, you just have to go and read the book for yourself. And for the record, I'd have given her the prize, too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8rhIw_9ucA

Reading Proust - Swann's Way: 1
About 64 pages in...

Have you ever heard about the scene in Proust with the madeleine? It's about 60 pages in. I just read it, and wow, I'm starting to get what this is all about, especially why you get books like 'Proust and the squid' or 'Proust was a neurosurgeon.' He really has a great way of explaining how memories can be lost and then evoked by certain senses.

I was actually thinking about this quite a bit earlier because it comes after a 50-page memory of how the narrator used to cry for his mother as a child. I didn't find that part very inspiring, but without it this essay or whatnot on memory would not have had the same impact. I was thinking about how I would summarize or explain this to someone who hasn't read the novel, and then it hit me that if we were capable of summing up in a few words what it took a novelist 60 pages to say, the world would have no need for literature. The novel is an art form that expresses a view of human experience in a very specific way, and the only way to get that is to actually read the novel (same goes for any other work of art, I guess). I think that's why I prefer it to straight philosophy - it kind of teaches by example or illustration instead of by theory. Being told "A man died" would not have the same impact on you as if you actually read the story of that man's life, suffering and death, even though the end result is ultimately the same. Kind of like the difference between watching a game and seeing the score in the paper the next day. Maybe that's what makes a book good, or even great - expressing that experience extremely well?

As I anticipate that reading In search of lost time will be quite an adventure, I hope to post more of these quick entries on thoughts I have on the book as I go along, partially to share my thoughts but also just to leave bread crumbs of where I've been over the course of the 2500 pages. We'll see where this leads. I also just read Hrabal's I served the King of England. I'll have to come up with something on that as well.