On January 1, 1909 Marcel Proust dipped his madeleine into a cup of tea and thus began his seven volume novel In Search of Lost Time, or as some call it, Remembrance of Things Past. It took Proust fourteen years to write this novel of three thousand pages. I have read the book, and astonishingly I really love it. I’m almost embarrassed to admit it. Why?
1. It’s French.
2. There are no car chases.
3. It’s really, really literary.
4. Most people who read and like it are incredible snobs.
5. My tastes usually run to Elmore Leonard and Raymond Chandler, what the heck am I doing reading Marcel Proust?
6. It’s uh, really French.
There are a two things about Proust that endeared me to him immediately:
1. Proust fought a duel after being insulted. Both duelists missed, but honor was upheld. Can you imagine any writer doing that in this day and age? No way, scribes are far too busy hunting for 400 count cotton thread sheets for their duvet covers. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
2. Proust was an ardent defender of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. In his upper-class, anti-Jewish society, such a position was socially, the kiss of death. There are scenes in the novel where characters violently argue about the Dreyfus case.
I guess it really comes down to Proust’s simplicity. That’s right, the plot of the seven volumes that make up In Search of Lost Time is incredibly simple. The narrator, he actually calls himself Marcel once or twice in the seven volumes, is on a journey: will he become a great writer or not? That’s really what the whole book is about. But within this simple, motionless plot Proust draws a pointillistic portrait of Parisian society. And it is a devastating picture of, well, everyone — including the narrator.
At one point Proust gives us a one-hundred and fifty page description of an aristocratic dinner party. It’s like a battlefield, Austerlitz without the booming canons and bloody corpses, but make no mistake about it, by the end of the evening, feelings and reputations have been shredded and though dinner guests leave in fine carriages, their innards are left in steaming heaps. It’s what we call in screenwriting, “indirect dialogue.”
Proust is savage in his belief that society is made up of selfish people who are, at the core, overflowing snobs and hypocrites. Love, money, friendship, sexuality, all are forces far greater than honest human relationships. It’s a bleak portrait of humanity, and the only people who escape this terrible judgement are the immediate members of his family.
The difficulty in the book is the oceanic prose; sometimes, quite frankly, it’s hard to follow the plot through the scrim of Proust’s often labyrinthine sentences. But for me it was worth it. After making my way through the seven volumes I felt as if I had glimpsed an entire age, seen into a specific man’s soul. It took me over a year of disciplined reading, and I actually plan on doing it again.
The very best book to help you get through the seven volumes is: Roger Shattuck’s Proust’s Way: A Field Guide to In Search of Lost Time. It is essential, and without it I might have given up any number of times.
Here’s one of my favorite quotes from Proust: “We believe we can change things according to our wishes because that’s the only happy solution we can see. We don’t think of what usually happens and what is also a happy solution; things don’t change, but by and by our wishes change.”
Proust Links:
In Search of Lost Time Website
Ariel Chaim Avrech, ZT'L, May His Righteous Memory be a Blessing.
19 Comments
Antoine:
Thanks so much for the input. You know far more about this period than I. But I have to admit to a lingering feeling of being enveloped in a haze of historical analysis that has little to do with real life as lived by French Jews.
I would point out that France was clearly not the best country for Jews in the 19th century but most obviously America.
Finally, no 13 year old child should be required to read Proust. That is just plain dumb.
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In defence of Frenchman, I think I know what he’s on about.
The Dreyfus Affair was a case that became a battle between supporters of the secular French republic, which was sufficently not anti-semitic for Dreyfus to have reached the rank of Captain, and also introduced a state education system that treated all religious education (especially Catholic) as outside the remit of the state. I’m told Germany was then a more friendly country for its Jewish population, though I suggest that Berlin was probably a lot better than rural Bavaria. France was largely moving in a less Catholic dominated, secular, modern (technology and wealth) direction. The Jews were a major factor in this (the Pereire brothers had revolutionised banking in France in the 1860s) and attracted the usual admiration versus envy.
However, French society was in a reactionary period, but for two reasons unrelated to Jews: the German occupation of Alsace-Lorraine since 1871, which was a national obsession (my grand-father said that he was told by every adult who spoke to him as a child that his purpose in being born was to recapture Alsace and Lorraine), and the circumstances of the IIIrd Republic’s formation: the French Army crushing the Paris Commune and other uprisings in Lyon and other parts of France and a not often mentioned German occupation for about four years until the French had paid the German “war damages in full”.
The accusation that Dreyfus had passed military secrets to the Germans was of course false. But there was a position taken by many in the army that “the big picture” required that someone be punished quickly and confidence maintained in the army’s long-term goal of liberating Alsace-Lorraine. I understand that Dreyfus was one of a small number of officers with access to the information that was passed to the Germans.
I suspect that any Frenchman who wasn’t well-connected would have made an acceptable fall- guy for the army, the fact that he was a Jew was at least in the early days of the Affair, a useful bonus.
For the Left, Jews were hated for being capitalists, but defended for being victims of the establishment. Hence the relative isolation of Proust and Zola.
A curious factor for non-French people was the importance of intellectuals in the affair. When big-name writers started to weigh in on the case, it had a major effect of putting the issue on the front pages of the new media of the day: daily newspapers. This had not happened before. The whole left-wing intellectuals challenging the government by virtue of their reputations (which the USA got a fill of during the Vietnam War) comes from this era.
I was forced to read extracts of Proust at the age of 13 at my school, which ruined my desire to read any literature for about 20 years. This year I have resolve to read one book or volume a week. Perhaps I shall finally read “a la recherche du temps perdu” in French…
The Vichy regime and Drancy is another story for another time, however I’m sure that for some, it was “pay-back” for the Dreyfus affair.
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Maj. Hilts:
I like Nagl’s book, learned a great deal. He talks about the military’s ability to learn and change from experience. I think Donald Rumsfeld would second many of Nagl’s observations about the conservative nature of the military. Certainly the IDF is suffering from this institutional inability to change itself–even as it sees that it must–or suffer further humiliations if not outright defeats.
Certainly each theater of operations requires a very specific fix. Malay was quite unique. The Malayan people pretty much hated the Chinese Communists, saw them as foreign interlopers, and this made it easier for the Brits to win hearts and minds. Still, 12 years is a long battle.
I do not believe the American people have the patience for any conflict that would go one for that long on foreign shores. Which is not good–for this war on terror is a multi-generational conflict. And we better be fighting over there and not here. I’m not sure the American people yet quite understand this simple choice. Many still think 9-11 was a “tragedy” not an act of war.
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I am waiting for Nagl’s book from Amazon. I’ll comment on it briefly after I get a chance to read and digest it.
Gwynn’s Imperial Policing and Trinquier’s Modern War had most of the salient points covered for serious students of warfare. I am very interested in seeing Nagl’s take–it is highly recommended by the same gifted folks who wrote the new COIN manual (several are friends).
I have my fingers crossed that Nagl’s book is not just another fad. 4GW, maneuver warfare, future shock, revolution in military affairs, etc. were all embraced by folks who missed the fact that there is nothing new under the sun. Lots of good material already exists on the topic.
Iraq will require an Iraq-specific solution, but much can be gained from the Vietnam and Malaya experiences. That said, there is little about Iraq that is similar to Vietnam, except that both countries have an I in the name, and the liberals are again on the wrong side (a nod to the fictional Colonel Mathieu from Battle of Algiers).
And I have veered from Proust–apologies! This is why I only do small talk at dinner parties.
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Maj Hilts:
I really, strongly urge you to read the Shattuck Guide first. Proust is not an easy read. In fact, some very respectable lit-crits hate the guy. Good move buying the muscle car mag. BTW, I’m pretty sure the scene I was referencing is in Volume Three, the dinner party at the Countess Guermantes. It’s hard to remember for there are several big nasty society dinners in the novel. But this one was total war–but done very politely.
P.S. Have you read Nagl’s book? If so, any thoughts?
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OK, bought the first volume to see for myself–will start after I finish my current book. I also bought a muscle car magazine to keep on the outside, to protect my reputation.
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Maj Hilts:
I really don’t recommend Proust for everyone. Karen thinks I temporarily lost my ever-loving mind. “So out of character. Must be a chemical imbalance.”
Anyway, reading Proust is something of a, uh, challenge. I don’t know what got into me. Also, I’m really stubborn, so once I started, well, I just had to finish. Did not want to admit defeat.
Try reading “Shattuck Guide” first, then read the first few pages of The Book. As for the dinner scene. I have to look it up. Unless you are a Proust scholar, (see: Little Miss Sunshine) events in the book tend to meld one into the next–much like lost time.
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You have never steered us (your readers) wrong on a book recommendation, but SEVEN volumes?!? Yikes. Which one has the 150-page dinner party?
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Pearl:
I do know Proustians who have read the book in the original French and my conversations with them always go something like this:
Proustian: You must read The Book in the original French.
Me: I don’t know French.
Proustian: But you must learn it.
Me: I don’t wanna learn French, thanks a lot.
Proustian: Then you have not truly read The Book.
As I said: most of the people who love Proust are “incredible snobs.”
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Pearl:
My mom the French teacher has… and Robert’s analysis is correct. If only Frenchman’s take on intellectual anti-Semitism was more of a survey of the actual people in that circle, rather than what he and many others wish it were.
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Do you know anyone who has read Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” in its original French? Or have you read about any differences between the original French and the English translations? Sometimes things often do “get lost in translation”…
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Fern:
“Dutch” Leonard used to write brilliant and beautifully paced westerns–many of which were made into Hollywood movies. When that market dried up, he turned his literary attentions to the action and adventure genre. I think that Leonard might be the best American writer on the scene today–bar none.
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I didn’t know you like Leonard Elmore! I used to watch Karen Sisco on TV all the time (well, for the season or two it lasted…). I saw a rerun the other day and decided that I finally needed to read the book so I borrowed Out of Sight from the library.
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Frenchman:
Thanks so much for your, um, very French analysis.
I believe Marcel Proust would be quite surprised by your post-modern notion of his social circles. If you read the book, the anti-Jewish hatred seeps from the French aristocrats and upperclasses at every opportunity.
Then, as now, there is always an argument as to how deep anti-Jewish hatred runs in French society. Unfortunately, when it truly counted France and the French were haters and collaborators of the very first rank. I speak of course of Black Saturday when the French Police rounded up the Jews of France, and sent them to Auschwitz — without the aid of a single German soldier.
I bring this up because French intellectuals always seem to have very clever arguments to prove that their liberal society is not really anti-Jewish–only the reactionaries are–but in the end, oddly enough, massive numbers of Jews end up quite dead.
As for a duel, gee I’m too busy shopping for 400 count cotton thread duvet covers. I’m a Hollywood screenwriter and have a lifestyle to support.
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You are wrong to think upper-class France was anti-Jewish at the time of the Dreyfus Affair. No 19th century society was better to the Jews than France. This is why a man like Dreyfus was able to enter the army, and rise in it in the first place.
Dreyfus was the victim of a reactionary campaign led by conservatives, royalists and the Catholic Church. These three groups wanted to undo the liberal advances of the third republic, advances that gave the Jews rights, freedoms, and opportunities they never had before.
The enemies of Dreyfus, in short, were enemies of the Third Republic, and enemies of liberalism. His supporters were republicans, intellectuals and anti-clericists, the sort of men who also supported the liberal progress of the Third Republic. This was Proust’s circle. Supporting Dreyfus was perfectly right for a man who belonged to such circles, and not the “kiss of death” at all.
Finally, I see in your archives that you are often the one who gives insults. We are lucky then, I think, that no one can challenge you to a duel. Eh?
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“Thank you” is politically, deeply incorrect, and this kind of subversive comedy is very hard to make work. The elites worship Woody Allen, but I find him a deadly bore; this film is better and funnier than anything Allen has ever done.
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So glad you liked “Thank You.” I was honored to have a small role in the marketing of that film… any movie that makes fun of everyone in the spectrum who deserves it is fine by me… like the ORIGINAL “Fun With Dick and Jane.”
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Jake:
Saw it. Every time Carril says: “Have I mentioned that I’m the foremost Prosut scholar in America,” I was on the floor.
BTW, I should mention that I thought the best movie of 2006 was “Thankyou for Not Smoking.”
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If you haven’t lready seen it, get “Little Miss Sunshine.” Steve Carril does a really job as a down and out Proust scholar. Lots of Porust references and jokes spice up the plot of the movie.
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