I was pleased to see Chris Power at The Guardian find that despite all the hoo-hah, and all the "aren't we so brilliant we read Proust" puffery, there really is something to reading Proust after all. Power also agrees that just as many said it would be, so it is: reading Proust is addictive.
While I cannot bear those who discuss their reading of Proust as if they've mastered some trying athletic exercise that only the best could hope to begin let alone finish, I do love to read about those who've experienced that delicious pleasure of summer afternoon reading filled with Proust and his wry humor and carefully observed ruminations on, well, everything. I think it takes a book or two to really get into the spirit of things (do not let the whole madeline nonsense trip you up, there is much more he offers than the taste of a cookie that brings back his entire childhood). I think so fondly of that time in my life, of that heady summer, fall and winter where everything - everything - I touched, saw, smelled, experienced, seemed somehow infused with Proustian charm, pain, beauty. Never mind that I had to read him all in French and so the pain part was particularly...plentiful. Somewhere into book three I broke down and bought the English version to read alongside it because my massive French to English dictionary was too heavy to lug around the grassy knolls of my undergraduate quads. I distinctly remember that both my lit-friends and non-lit friends had reached their limit with me and my Proustian observations. The word "show-off" was bandied about. I'm sure I was obnoxious as an undergrad lit major (who wasn't?) and my desire to share my newly found knowledge outweighed my sense of how much Proust anyone could bear over the course of a year.
It has been so hip as of late to read Proust and there are so many books devoted to doing just that, that I've been officially "off" Proust for years. Someone who has only just discovered Proust and wishes to share with you all the things you've already found to be true, can grate on the nerves. Worse still, I've recently been cornered at dinner parties while guests expound at length upon this great writer they've discovered and I might do well to get on the bandwagon too. Ugh, kills me. So there's that. I know, it's not enough is it? But it bugs me. I should celebrate each reader who finds such a wonderful writer to be worth their time.
Yet as much as I feign irritation (nay, petulance) at the whole Proustian affair, a quick peek at my bookshelves would reveal otherwise:
- How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton (who, I must say, is quite, quite funny and you know how I feel about funny; have you read him? anything of his? get thee a copy of anything and start reading at once...)
- Marcel Proust by Edmund White and Corinne Durin
- Marcel Proust on Art and Literature by ahem, Marcel Proust
- The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust (a good place to start!)
- On Reading Ruskin by Marcel Proust
- The Letters of Marcel Proust
- Swann's Way through to Finding Time Again in English
- Du côté de chez Swann through to Le Temps retrouvé en Francais
There are many other books (and so many others not listed here) that I've managed to avoid either through sheer will or laziness or both but that have remained on the periphery of my "eventually I'll break down and buy these" list:
- The Year of Reading Proust: A Memoir in Real Time by Phyllis Rose
- Proust Among the Stars: How to Read Him; Why Read Him? by Malcolm Bowie
- Reading Proust: In Search of the Wolf-Fish by Maria Paganini
- The Mottled Screen: Reading Proust Visually by Mieke Bal
- Madame Proust: A Biography by Evelyne Bloch-dano
- Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf
- The Proust Project by Andre Acimen (which, I must say, looks quite good - Colm Toibin & Lydia Davis on Proust? That sounds delicious...)
I'll add that the forthcoming Proust Was a Neuroscientist has peaked my interest - although the cover art with the now-ubiquitous madeline has irritated me enough to hold off on my request for an ARC.
What I hate even more (I can't even believe I'm saying it, but he is that good): I find myself drawn to reading him again. All of him. In order. But. Then. Well. There is everything else I'll never get to if I let Proust take over. I've already lost (devoted?) a year (plus) of my life to the man and, well, there are so many other things to read. Yet, I find the drum beat getting ever-stronger, demanding my attention despite my embarrassment in not only following the trend, but adopting it well after it was newish again. It's quite like declaring that I'll be spending the next year cooking through Julia Child's recipes with a view to writing a little book about my experiences...as if that idea were new, not already done, not already covered with aplomb.
And so. Here we are. At a crossroads. Do I really want to take up this task? Again?
I'll say this: if I do, it damn well won't be in French this time.
