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May 17, 2005
TT: The Teachout way
In case you were wondering, I fell off the Proust bandwagon for a couple of weeks. Unlikely as it may sound, my attention was diverted by Conrad Black's Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom, which isn't quite as long as A la recherche du temps perdu, though it seemed that way toward the end. Fortunately, I wrapped it up last week, and am now deep into Le Côté de Guermantes, meaning that you can expect a fairly steady stream of Proustian almanac entries and other passing observations in days to come.Earlier today I dipped into the section on Proust in Anthony Powell's Miscellaneous Verdicts: Writings on Writers, 1946-1989, and fished out a few neat observations. Here they are:
- "Proust did not at all avoid objections expressed by those who supposed they had been 'put in' his novel, although...the derivations from actual individuals are almost always infinitely combined and adapted. Proust himself observed that authors had to be careful with their friends 'because if my characters turn out to poison people or commit incest later on, they'll think I mean them.'"
- "Proust liked high society in the purely social sense. Coming from a rich but irredeemably middle-class family, having a Jewish mother, his entry into the beau monde of that day was naturally something that required effort on his own part."
(That irredeemably is a nice touch.)
- "One is almost tempted to wonder whether certain critics want to take it out on Proust simply because they feel that he attended more amusing parties than they themselves."
Ouch! But enough blogging--I've got a book to read.
P.S. I am, alas, a hopeless monoglot, but Our Girl is a full-fledged Francophone, and I've been nudging her to accompany me in the simultaneous adventure of reading Proust in the original. Pelt her with encouraging e-mails--maybe she'll succumb....
Posted May 17, 2005 12:03 PM
