For the past two years, I've been working through Proust's Recherer du temps Perdu (In Search of Lost Time, en Anglaise). As of today, I've less than 250 pages left. Thought I've read long books before, and long serieses, I don't know that I'll miss any of them the way I'll miss my daily dose of Proust.
It isn't fun. It isn't easy. But it's good. It is so good. Nowhere else that I've found has been a pure impression of a person's mind the way Proust provided. How in the world can 2000 pages about a fairly typical life among French aristocrats be interesting? I suppose to many, it isn't. But if you've anything of the adoration for a beautifully crafted sentence I claim, you'll love every moment.
I met a guy at the "Y" a few weeks ago who noted my reading of Proust and commented that he gave it up after the first two. I don't know how that's possible. There's little plot to draw you on, but, more than with any other novel or collection of novels I've ever read, plot isn't necessary. I've been saying that phrase, that plot isn't necessary, for years (I wrote 100 pages of it so I could gradutate from Wooster), and Proust proves my point. It's not the story you tell but the way you construct your sentences, upon each other, that matters most. Or at least that's what Proust says subconsciously. You might disagree. Or maybe you don't like to read as much as you like to view media and can get entranced by a media telling you something interesting, riveting, or exciting. It's okay if that's you..but my port of call for literature and art is different.
I've loved Proust to the degree that I've only loved Jesus, Alexandra, and our Dog Hazel as much in the past two years. Annie Dillard said a novel, at its core, is a line of words. She wasn't wrong.
Short of Joyce, no one made those lines like Proust. Transcending Joyce and allowing his mind to open in ways which the rest of us can only dream, you'll find Marcel Proust, in a room full of cork. If Joyce could have been that lucid and honest, the art of literature would have hit its peak and modernism wouldn't have proved a failure. Alas, Proust, though brilliant, is no Joyce as a writer. Joyce, however, was miles behind Proust as a human.
That's life I guess.
-Zack
"Nowhere else has ever felt like home"
-Anberlin
