Thursday, November 29, 2012

The Amorous Rage Of An Infuriated Animal

There have been moments during this project that made me at once feel a sense of solidarity with Proust, and then a sense of shame for myself; my character, I have found, is not what I often tell myself it is. Throughout my life, I have tried to uphold a sort of "minimum standard" that I set, which, according to some people close to me, is excessively high. This goes for how I treat others versus my expectation for how I am going to be  treated, my work ethic, and what I expect of myself artistically and intellectually.

Tonight, I found a quote that immediately jumped off the page. These novels are, partly, a treatise on the human mechanics of loving and being loved. They detail one man's experiences and insights on a topic that interconnects us all. His insights, in some cases, have struck extraordinarily close to home. This brings me back to my opening sentence, and to this quote, which was spoken by the narrator in regards to his desire of a beautiful woman, contrasted to his feelings when he suspects his lover, Albertine, desires a woman herself:

"We consider it innocent to desire, and heinous that the other person should do so." (Proust, 168)

I will admit that in the scope of offerings Proust made to me today and yesterday, this was not the pinnacle of his investigations or his findings. This was not the most profound passage I found. Far from either, it was a passing remark made about a topic that he has been addressing over the span of two separate novels. However, it was impossible to ignore, for me, the parallelism to my own life, and specifically, to the singular relationship that these books have given me so much perspective on. Equally, it has turned around that first sentence of this post in such a way that this post ties into my previous in regards to misassigned guilt. 

There is a feeling, and I will say that this is a universal one, of desire that no human can entirely dismiss on random days, for random people that we will never even know the name of passing in the street. This desire may be totally misguided; a non-existent version of a passerby seen from the corner of our eye evincing something that could never be true and would never cause us to think twice, for example. Regardless, it exists, and we know it to be entirely harmless. To have that fleeting feeling of attraction is a natural human function and, without it, we would likely miss the details of a beautiful person, which would make the world a much less colorful place. There is a difference, again, universal, between a passing, second-long attraction to a stranger we see once, and carrying out behaviors based on some longer term attraction. The latter, of course, being typically understood as immoral in our society (this is a sentiment with which I agree).

As a monogamous person, one who has spent the bulk of his young adult life in monogamous involvements, I know that I do not ascribe importance to this moments in my life. I know they are as a breeze and thus, of no real matter. I am guilty, however, as many of us likely are, of putting a weight upon this same reality when it exists in the mind and eyes of the one I love or ones I have loved. It has often been, in my mind, hard to bear when a significant other has found another person attractive, even in passing. Perhaps this speaks volumes about my character (it does) much like it does for Proust as he represents himself in his narrator. Both of us have self-doubt to conquer that makes any person a possible threat to our happiness. 

Having this spelled out for me, however, and thinking to myself how crooked it is of Proust to think such a thing only to realize that I have many times felt the same way without verbally expressing it, has turned my mind. It was at the moment I read that passage that it became apparent to me that on the sliding scale of consciousness, we are all in a very similar place. We all experience similar emotional triggers and responses, with similar sets of stimuli and in similar settings. I am not so different from the people I have struggled to understand throughout much of my life, and they are not so different from me. 

We are all equally at fault and equally innocent in matters of the heart in a grander scheme by the end of our time. To assume I have been more wronged than I have wronged others is, I see now, incredibly strange.

To bring this home, I offer a quote that may summarize my thoughts more clearly. Thank you, Jannell, for posting this tonight, at exactly the moment I was writing about this exact topic:


"‎Here’s one example of the utter wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of. Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness, because it’s so socially repulsive, but it’s pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our default-setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: There is no experience you’ve had that you were not at the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is right there in front of you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your monitor, or whatever. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real — you get the idea. But please don’t worry that I’m getting ready to preach to you about compassion or other-directedness or the so-called “virtues.” This is not a matter of virtue — it’s a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default-setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.
People who can adjust their natural default-setting this way are often described as being “well adjusted,” which I suggest to you is not an accidental term." -David Foster Wallace

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

You're Not Going To Leave Me Alone With Those Freaks!

One of my favorite novels I've read in the past few years was Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. I found it relatable in many ways, dealing myself with some of the issues she discussed in the book. Thus it was a pleasure finding a quote in part five, The Captive, today that mentioned an analogy that is much like the one that binds together the theme of Plath's novel.

"Even if one lives under the equivalent of a bell jar, associations of ideas, memories, continue to act upon us." (Proust, 17)

The topic on which Proust was writing was also one near to me, making the discovery of this passage even more poignant for me. He was discussing, as he has been for sometime, his fear of Albertine's possible involvements with other lovers in her past, and possibly, her present. While it is not necessarily a fear of any other lover, but rather of a female lover, that has Proust in a state, his sentiments are universal for any of us who has had a relationship with a person who was...not the most forthcoming about their activities past or present.

To sling another quote, 

"It is better not to know, to think as little as possible, not to feed one's jealousy with the slightest concrete detail." (Proust, 17)

Here, heartbreak occurs across hours and minutes both alone and together with one's partner. Reading these novels has catapulted me through an emotional obstacle course of reminiscence and nostalgia, inevitably bringing me back to several times in my life where this sentiment was absolutely part of my mindset. The thought that not knowing is possibly better than having the full reveal is solely indicative of an unhealthy situation, which I'm sure Proust will remark upon later in his normal way of examining the past. For some reason, though, it was only through the lens of Proust's work that I realized this.

I have painted so many elements of my past in shades of rose and gold, treating them to the sweetening of memories by the passage of time. Certain realizations have become inescapable for me, and it is drastically changing how I understand my present. While I was not expecting any effect like this, I cannot begin to express how important these changes are. 

Cause and effect are very real components of life. I cannot shoulder the blame any longer for effects I did not cause. I was raised Catholic. I have enough guilt without giving myself any extra.

Monday, November 26, 2012

The Reputation Of The Local Pancakes

Hopefully, I am not the only person who has made the following mistake. An event occurs in life, scale of importance not being vital to this example, and as time passes, it begins to be difficult to remember which major players in one's life were present or a part of it. Granted, there are certain exceptions to this (significant others, family members, or "A-level players,"), but in the general, for lack of a better word, B-level players in life (below which are the other 24 levels of importance in social interaction with people, so don't fret, you B-players) there is a rather embarrassing blurring that can occur over the stretch of time, especially when regarding recurrent events, or events with very similar parallel events that occur throughout one's life.

In Proust's work, now closing in on the final pages of Cities, I have found what appear to be recurring, or at least very parallel, events occurring in the life of the narrator as to the life of M. Swann from the first book. Granted, the expanse of narration that is necessary to demonstrate these parallels is vast in comparison to that first book. These parallel events, though, were beginning to confuse me. I was attempting to reconcile them either as wholly new events without precedent in the plot, or as parallel events, but without attempting to find the initial plot thread from earlier in the series. This led to mixing up characters and, in some cases recently, interactions between epochs in the story and its various subplots.

Recently, I decided to nut up and go back and make some connections and get my shit straight, for lack of a better turn of phrase. I found a very interesting construct developing by the end of the second novel. Where M. Swann was living in a world, to me, foreign in many ways, I had begun to feel a part of Proust's world as narrator. The elements that confused me in Swann's life were commonplace by part three of the novel. I am finding, then, that the expose on Swann's life may very well have been used as a sort of large scale foreshadowing for the life of the narrator. While I cannot say this conclusively yet, as about a thousand pages remain in the entire series (yes! I am in the final leg as of tonight!), I am sensing very related threads being woven through time in this series of novels.

To anyone who has actually finished these novels, what I'm saying is rather cute and obvious. For me, though, it is a thrilling thing to realize how the lives of tangential players to our own can be so profoundly similar in character and, in some ways, taste, to our own. While I will not delve into specifics and examples until I can firmly argue my case across the entire work, I will say that there are some mighty convincing parallels that lead me to believe that, perhaps unwittingly, Proust prepared his readers for what was to come via M. Swann's life.

Of course, there is a magnifying glass held over the narrator's own experiences compared to Swann's, but the skeleton appears to be quite similar in size and build. Hopefully, though, the narrator escapes some of the heartbreaks and concessions of Swann, who to me, is an absolutely tragic character. I, thus, suspend my sorrow for the narrator currently, though I am afraid for what his future holds. He has not set himself up well at this point.

Saturday, November 24, 2012

An Internal Survival Of The Primitive Marine Element

I have had a lot of whiskey tonight. I am truly "in a way" as Proust's narrator would say, though he would qualify it with a certain modifier before "way," indicating just what sort of manner he was existing and behaving in. In my case, I have had adequate whiskey to prevent me from having any interest in writing the post I had planned. I have been thoroughly fascinated by the dynamic of romance as presented in Cities Of The Plain, especially the second chapter's second part, where Proust's interactions with poor Albertine have been so serpentine, so complex that the poor girl was surely at an absolute loss.

I have at least half a dozen bracketed or underlined quotations that I was going to use to build a series of reflections on this matter. Instead, though, I will highlight a certain question I was asked about Proust this past holiday while driving from the train station. Due to whiskey and time, my memory of the exact wording is hazy, but it was akin to this:

Being that Proust was born and raised in a privileged situation, does it change how you feel about the insights you've found in his work?

And I had honestly been thinking about this. I'm finding these brilliant, glimmering bits of hope for my situation in his work. My situation, of course, involving an adult lifetime (of a whopping five years to be totally fair) of manual/skilled/"menial" work, is vastly different from Proust's. I remarked to Joe (my close friend who asked me this question and, frankly, probably my only friend "qualified" to ask me heavier questions regarding this project based on his academic credentials and, honestly, the impressiveness of his intellect) that I had likely done inadequate research prior to undertaking this about Proust's personal life and younger life in order to understand more fully what he would be discussing when I did arrive at the stage I am now at. 

I was not aware that Proust was born into a very wealthy family when I began reading his work. Thus, I spent nearly the entirety of the first two novels figuring out where he fit into society and why, exactly, it appeared that the bulk of his concerns revolved around societal issues and class-related matters. Once it was clear to me where Proust stood on the social food chain, however, the insights began to become clear to me with more regularity and with more sharpness, as they were no longer inhibited by spending part of my mind's capital on figuring out the "why" and "how" of Proust's social life and his activities that resulted in such insights. 

My final answer to Joe, and to anyone interested in reading Proust, is this: Due to his privileged upbringing and lifestyle, Proust was able to contemplate and more fully "figure out" those big questions in life that I simply do not have the psychological or emotional reserves to deal with because of my lifestyle. I spend a great portion of my mental resources worrying about bills, money, my future, and what I will do to solve the first two problems during the course of the latter one, which leaves me with little to no time to try to connect the dots across a lifetime of parallels and coincidences or serendipitous events. Proust had the time and the emotional awareness to dedicate a wonderful ~3,200 pages to the study of those very questions that wake me in the middle of the night, but still fall behind "rent is fucking due next week and I only worked 60 hours all month," or "it's Christmas time and I am fucking broke..." Thus, I say only that while our lifestyles are incongruent, our concerns are not, and I am thankful that these novels are here to help me, sort of as a study guide of a kind, to recognize and conquer the more challenging corners of the struggle and joys of life.

By answering these foundational questions, I have found new ones that are newer to me and more dimensional. I am finding new avenues in myself and my life to dive into and investigate. If for nothing else, I would not undo a single page or hour spent reading since beginning this project twenty five short days ago.

Friday, November 23, 2012

A Skeleton In An Open Dress

It's not often, in my digestion of Proust's insights and sentiments, that so clear a connection can be made between my initial recognition of a subject and its expansion and explanation via the lives and behaviors of characters over the story's development. Tonight, though, I repeatedly found outcroppings of clarity in regards to the cultural acceptance of what are typically deemed "deviant" actions and choices. Specifically, I am referring to the rampant indulgence in the buying and selling of sex and in the keeping of multiple partners, despite or in spite of committed, sometimes married, relationships.

A quote grabbed me just now, that I had studiously underlined (nerd), which I may well have forgotten. Had I not been lost in my 780 loose pages from this second volume and their dog-eared, underlined, bracketed glory, I may well have just missed this connection entirely. I think, though, that I have found a reason for statements such as these, made in regards to a favorite brothel of a friend of the narrators':

"You'll see, there are young girls there, even...Anyhow, you have only to see the child... She looks to me a marvellous [sic] proposition. The parents are always ill and can't look after her. Gad, the child must have some amusement, and I count upon you to provide it!" (Proust, 719)

Of course, the narrator is not an old man himself at this stage of the story, but he had earlier remarked upon his propensity for interest in little girls, and this quotation illustrates just what he may be referring to. He and his friends appear to have developed a certain taste for, well, children. Basically. 

And in regards to another young lady: 

"Oh, if I only had a little time in Paris, what wonderful things there are to be done! And then one goes on to the next. Because love is all rot, you know, I've finished with all that." (Proust, 721)

Ah, there. The thread begins to show in the stitches. At first, it seems that maybe these men are simply pigs, as men are and have been throughout all of time. But with that second passage, it begins to grow obvious to me that there is a sort of nihilism at work here. There's this permeating "ah, fuck it" running through people at this time in regards to moral decision making. Because, after all, it's "all rot, you know." However, on page 742, Proust tries to write this all off to the greater construct of society with his remark, made in passing in regards to (of all things, after the discussion of sexual interactions with children) a homosexual relationship taken up between two purported "sisters" in a rented home out in the country:

"...for there is no vice that does not find ready tolerance in the best society..." (Proust, 742)

I know, I know. I'm slinging quotes at you pretty rapid fire right now, but I'm going to let this be one of those delightful Young Indiana Jones: Choose Your Own Adventure novels I loved as a younger man. I'll sort of bookend here with the remark made by Proust in regards to a short declaration by the Duchesse de Guermantes that made all the math work, where she claimed that "beautiful things are such a bore," (Proust, 713) amongst other things, including "pictures" and "letters," (Proust, 713). Though it preceded the above remarks by several tens of pages, it appears to me to be a sort of thematic foreshadowing. I was detecting a sort of existential commonality between many characters, and their justifications for certain depraved choices, as well as Proust's own social commentary upon certain topics, when I saw this quote. This quote that I nearly forgot.

"Finally, it was life itself that she declared to be boring, leaving you to wonder where she took her term of comparison." (Proust, 713)

If that didn't just crack the knuckles of the nihilist baby I've been growing inside my embittered heart for the past nine months, I don't know what could. Now, choose your own adventure.


Wednesday, November 21, 2012

An Innocent Stroll Taken Beneath His Nose

In light of the coming holiday, I was delighted to find a rather fitting passage in my reading today. I've gotten into the thick of book four, Cities of the Plain (or Sodom and Gomorrah, depending on your translation) and am so far finding it much more enjoyable than Guermantes Way. Book three was a bit on the slow and dry side, as I may have repeated ad nauseam. It dealt almost entirely with long-past current events of Proust's day which, despite having many modern parallels and still bearing importance not only in their parallels but in their historical significance, were a rather tiring topic for some six hundred pages of reading.

Cities of the Plain, on the other hand, has been dealing with topics that I, at least, find much more interesting than the Dreyfus Affair (SIIIIIIGH) and has been imparting those bits of Proustian wisdom every few pages that I have come to adore. Note: I am not cheapening the huge insights I took from Guermantes Way, but I was forced to work for those insights in a fairly serious way. It was much more Proust-ish in its slow delivery and its spider-webbed construction through time, though I'm finding the quicker pacing of Cities more easily read and enjoyed. Anyway, the first sixty or so pages (in my edition) of Cities finally touches on the oft-hinted at topic of homosexuality in Proust's culture and, even, day to day life, though not how I expected at first, knowing his real-life orientation.

My dear buddy Marcel treats homosexuality with reverence, though the obvious confusion of a past era. Granted, he is far kinder in his confused examination than people today often are when they are confused on the topic, but his sentiments in regards to homosexuality are funny in a dated, well-meaning way. I'll not spend the rest of my evening discussing that, however, as I feel that this is yet another area where an entire book could be written in response to Proust's thoughts on a matter.

I will, however, leave you all tonight with this conveniently found quote on page 665 of my second volume, during part two of Cities:

"Wine? In moderation, it can do you no harm, it's always a tonic.. Sexual enjoyment? After all it's a natural function. But you musn't overdo it, you understand. Excess in anything is wrong." 

So tomorrow, as you sit bloated at your table and consider that second slice of pie and fourth beer, remember, "you musn't overdo it." You wouldn't want to disregard wisdom from someone so timeless as Proust, now would you? Plus, you'll thank him on Friday, when your food-coma-ridden friends can barely get out of their own way and you sprint down the street, book in hand, proclaiming the magic of the journey you have taken through Paris that fine morning.

Or maybe not that last part. That's probably just me. 

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

A Footman Who's In Love With A Little Tart

Shit got real today. In the span of under one hundred pages, Proust boomeranged two major sentiments from Swann's Way back into view in understated, beautiful passages. On pages 537 and 573 of Guermantes Way, respectively, we find these two phrases:

"...life is a dreadful business, we spend our whole time doing things that bore us..."

"...the stories I had heard...very different in this respect from what I had felt in the case of the hawthorns, or when I tasted a madeleine..."

As with a time machine of text, Proust has brought us back to his early days in Combray again. His knack for reminding us of subtle, yet important, facets of the story of a life lived shines in these instances. Much like the recent deep-sea plunge he sent me on with mention of Swann, he has again made me lean back in my chair, sigh deeply, and move on through the pages with a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of his, and thusly our, days. 

The first passage above is of some significance to me. While it is the most trafficked entry on this blog (seriously! ten times as many views as any other single post), it represents a moment for me that, I realize now, was vital to the process of figuring out what I want to "do with my life." The night I read that passage the first time, back in Swann's Way, I realized how much of my own life had been a "dreadful business" and how wrong that is. I finally realized that the dull ache I felt when I worked so many hours in a week that I had no time for any serious personal interests or pursuits came from a very real, shared sentiment in humanity. I am not the only one to have thought: "There's got to be more than this..." 

Like Proust's first taste of a madeleine dipped in tea, reading that first passage in its first instance awakened my senses. Never again could I trudge through my days with this gnawing, pestering, annoyance at the way of things without remembering my own first taste of a certain variety of existential madeleine dipped into an existential tea. So, tonight, as Proust remembered his first taste of a delightful baked good, I remembered my first taste of a knowledge I cannot recant. 

And as said by the Duchess on page 537, "It's lovely, isn't it?"

Monday, November 19, 2012

This Imagined Remoteness Of The Past

Societies differ from each other in, here is an understatement, huge ways. Especially when considering societies that exist in different geographical areas and in time periods separated by at least one hundred years, it begins to become like comparing Middle Earth to suburban New England. I've found myself constantly leaning back in my chair and saying, "whoa..." when the gravity of certain off-hand remarks about people and relationships in Proust's work are made.

There is a certain facet of the culture in France during Proust's life that I am having trouble fully understanding. This may display my naivete in regards to life and romance, but I simply cannot fathom a culture where prostitution, the keeping of multiple partners, and the proclivity of the upper echelon of society to accept certain choices as permissible, while some other inherent human attributes are deemed "immoral." In the case of Proust's culture, homosexuality was unacceptable, at least in the circles he moved during the writing of this novel, judging by the reactions of some characters when it arises as an issue in a social situation. However, the keeping of multiple mistresses by a married man, one who is likely influential politically or socially, is typically just one of those things that happens, and no one really has much to say about it beyond, "Well, I've heard..."

In the case of women, however, keeping multiple partners (even if the woman is not married) is frowned upon and a reason for ostracizing the woman in question. Prostitution was rampant in the sect of society Proust reflects on most, and he writes about it in such a way that it appears to be no big deal to anybody, anywhere. Discussions are had about certain brothels and certain girls being superior to others, and to the times friends would visit brothels together.

I suppose what I'm most struggling with here is the double standard. Of course, this is still prevalent today, but the societal choice to demonize certain types of sexual behaviors, or in even more unacceptable cases, sexual orientations, while permitting others based solely on political and economic stature and gender, is baffling. Proust spells it out so clearly that it begins to seem like he lived in a fantasy world where typical moral boundaries were largely ignored, while a few remained in place for no apparent reason.

I really wish I had something more intelligent to delve into today, but the past several pages have been, again,  focusing on this girl being had for this much money and this man keeping this many mistresses, and I could no longer contain my confusion. The culture present in these novels is so liberal in some ways, yet so conservative in others, and for no more particularly logical reason in either case, that it almost seems like he's writing from here, today.


Sunday, November 18, 2012

Everything Great In The World Comes From Neurotics

Today, in 1922, Marcel Proust passed away. I did not know this bit of trivia when I began my project, but now, knowing it, my undertaking seems "right" in a cosmic sense. Whether or not he would agree with my express lane approach to his life's work or not, I hope that at least, in reading it, I have done sufficient homage to a truly artistic human being. There are many works of art regarded throughout human history, but few have stacked up to the scale of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past.

There is such a real weight to what I have found so far in Proust's writing. I have begun to question, for example, my initial intent. Thirty days seems so inadequate, now recognizing the depth that exists in each of his sentences. It is fully possible to read this book in thirty days- I'm a bit behind schedule, but not so far that I cannot finish on time (thank you, 13.5 hour shifts)- though I feel that I'm going to have to read this all again.

Yup. One more time. One more spin through the 3,200 pages that used to seem so insurmountable. Being at a point where there is just about the same amount to come as has been completed, I have realized how cursory a glance this project has truly been. Granted, I have become vastly more aware of certain facets of daily life and of my own self that I had very often ignored or simply never taken note of, but there are nights where I read a sentence only to find, hours later, staring at my feet in the swirling water while I shower, that I totally missed the point. The insight was lost on me. The true meaning went over my head while I hunkered down and tried to get to the finish line in time. There is more to life than the finish line. There is more to Proust than the last page. That is the point of his work, and it took me 1,600 pages to figure it out. Somehow.

I can't say how soon after finishing I'm going to begin reading this books again- I'd like to read a few things that have been recommended to me first- but I am positive it will be within twelve months' time. There is so much to dig into, so many levels of understanding I have not yet reached with Proust's work, that I cannot sate my desire to know without immersing myself more fully.

Death scared me for a very long time. Now, though, I understand that death is vastly less frightening if a person has done what they truly desire to do with their time. If Proust died, truly, feeling as though he had not "done it," then there's simply no hope for the rest of us at all. I like to imagine that he passed away knowing he really had done it, no matter how many years he spent morose and hidden away in that cork room.

Marcel, this beer is for you.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

An Extraordinary Power Of Expansion

Yesterday, while confronting my daily reading with a feeling of great dread after what was supposed to be a relaxing day spent at home reading but ended up a day spent at work for an unexpected nine hours, I was absolutely despairing writing about what I read. I then read today and found that, until the final 40 pages of yesterday's and today's combined 215 pages, Proust had focused on nothing aside from the Dreyfus Affair. Still. Hundreds of pages spent on the Dreyfus Affair and its impact on social dynamics, on its place in society. I understand now, more than ever before, just how important this business was during Proust's time in France. However, I would be lying entirely if I said that I was all that interested in it when compared to Proust's other, more lasting observations about...well...everything else in the world.

It took me a night to realize in an appreciable way what Proust did manage to say with all that talk of the Dreyfus Affair. Proust managed to illuminate, likely without this intention, how prone to being caught up in a feeling that our current events are without precedent and are wholly unique. In truth, our societal obsession with the birth origin of our president (stupid), social/commun/anarch/fasc-isms (overblown), and sexuality (unbelievable) is not so different from Proust's era and their absolute single-mindedness over a single man and his alleged activities.

I'm so glad to be done reading about that damn event.

Now, what I found most interesting in the past (what feels like) two million pages (see: 215 pages) is the unsettling juxtaposition Proust draws in chapter two of Guermantes Way. Spoiler alert for those that don't understand that a decades-spanning novel will see the death of a character who is elderly on page one of book one: the narrator's grandmother passes away. Shortly after, and I mean so short as to have me flipping back to ensure I had not missed some hidden bundle of pages and transitional events, Proust brings us to what is basically an evening of making out with a girl he has had some interest in since his time spent in Balbec. The young lady in question denied his advances in Balbec, only now to invite them. Cue making out in bed for a while, then Proust shoo-ing the poor girl home because everybody got what they wanted, didn't they.

There are tens of pages spent discussing the heavy reality of death. Where on page 324, Proust is discussing death's insidious arrival on an otherwise normal day, by page 380 he has his hands up a girl's dress. Granted, fifty pages of Proust pass between there, including the shift from chapter one to chapter two, (whereupon the death itself does occur after a fairly long interval of further pages and novel time), but the seemingly immediate thematic shift from death to, fundamentally, life is jarring and upon inspection, completely brilliant. Understandably, Proust used this change of chapters as a sort of "get out of jail free" pass for getting away from the theme of death to the theme of young romance, but in a work of this scale and sprawl, chapters appear to be lesser demarcations than in briefer, less spanning novels, making the transition quite stark.

It would be possible to bog down chapter two of Guermantes Way in pseudo-philosophical musings about death and how it "...may occur this very afternoon," (Proust, 325) since it can be argued that a good deal of books one, two, and three focused on the dynamic between the narrator and his now late grandmother. Instead, though, Proust illustrates the human necessity for moving on- the death of his grandmother was treated, albeit abruptly towards the end of that first chapter, in a fairly thorough fashion thematically and emotionally during book three. I simply cannot "get over" how quickly he transitions a reader from feelings of grief to that semi-voyeuristic feeling one gets reading an intimate scene of a novel.

To be fair, the death of a loved one is an extraordinarily intimate event, and in his genius, Proust has juxtaposed one type of intimacy with another. He has shared two extremely personal events in a span of under one hundred pages, delivering such strong emotional content so quickly that it shook me up. After hundreds of very dry, and at times dull, political discussions and arguments, Proust brings back the emotional heavy-lifting I have found him so capable of by slamming the death of a family member and a budding romance long desired into each other at high speed.

Anyone who says Proust is boring is missing the mark. The excitement of Proust requires patience and time. It is a "big picture" brand of excitement, much like the feeling one gets after a long term personal goal is reached or a project is completed. Proust is not a Michael Bay film. Rather, he is the sunrise viewed from the bottom of a canyon. Wait for it...wait for it...

And there it is. A moment, an insight you are powerless against, and which you can never forget.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

You Can't Possibly Know Me, Because You're A Herd of Cattle.

Embroiled in issues regarding the Dreyfus Affair now for at least 250 pages, with 150 of those being spent in the same room, detailing the discussions going on between the narrator and those present in the gathering he has decided to attend, I found myself quite inclined to write on the topic of parallelism regarding the political division of Proust's France and the divisions found in modern U.S. social and political life. There are several key similarities- two sides, one bound by facts, evidence, and reason, the other bound by emotion, "feeling," bias, and prejudice. Much like the situation in France, on a very distilled, very basic level (as I'm not going to try to attempt to compare the Dreyfus Affair to any ongoing specific U.S. political issues, due to my lack of background, frankly, in both regards) the situation in my own, "modern" country (depending on where in it one happens to be, I suppose...) is a matter of fact versus fiction.

The matter tearing both nations apart, while growing into a full-blown "this party vs. that party" debate in both cases, does not even really boil down to any political issue, but rather, to some vague, semi-ideological issue that has no excuse to be part of any kind of political or social discussion based on its absolute simplicity. We're basically arguing about "is the world the same as it was in 1776, or isn't it" in about a thousand different shades, from economic, to religious, to social, to legal and governmental. France was arguing over a matter of, perhaps, fewer facets at its root, but one which ultimately developed into a very similar argument, albeit with the target year likely being different. Anti-semitism had taken a firm hold in the legal proceedings in the case, ultimately leading to a very stark parallel to our own situation, where entire "sides" of the arguments in both cases are based, in truth, on prejudice and hate.

ANYWAY, what I really want to remark upon, having gotten out of the way this rather obvious bit of word-vomit, is the subtle passage that I nearly missed. On page 235 of my second volume (in Guermantes Way, for reference, in the scene ongoing in the salon early on in the book), during dialog, M. d'Argencourt asks: "I say, though, what about Swann?"

Yes...what about Swann? It's been some time since he's been at the forefront of the events in any of these novels. Swann was so pivotal in his namesake novel, yet I had barely noticed him slip away from the limelight. Of course, this is due to the very real shifting current of life that existed for Proust's narrator just as much for any of us, in which characters (real in life or present in books) pass from prominence as the path and details of lives change. As in Proust's work, though, there is a way in which these once-vital players in our lives resurface. I won't spoil this for you, as I do hope that enough of these little tidbits and glimpses of the beautiful thread Proust has been weaving through time so carefully will motivate at least some of you to read these books, but I will say that one of the very earliest moments of Proust's young life is brought to a clear focus, with connections all at once becoming made in such a way that the magnificent interconnectedness of our lives is finally illuminated.

There have been many times in my life where a person has been of the utmost importance for many years, gradually or suddenly passing from that position to one of less, or no personal significance for a vast variety of reasons to which I'm sure anyone could relate via the vicissitudes of their own lives, only to reappear, whether themselves or in a symbolic way by another person or event representative of that former person's place in my life, shocking me with the nature of life and the nature of spending it with others.

Monday, November 12, 2012

From His Batman, Of Course!

First, let us celebrate the landmark I reached this past weekend by finishing volume one of three in my Proust collection. This plants me squarely, now, about 200 pages into the third novel in the series, titled The Guermantes Way which references both one of the routes through Combray the narrator used to walk with his family and some of the primary characters and locations in this particular installment in the series. So here we are, 1,300 pages or so into the project!

Those of you who are familiar with me in "real life" are likely aware that I have a few obsessions. I keep the number relatively low out of a mix of disinterest in most things and a degree of self control. My short list includes: electric guitars and amplifiers, vintage synthesizers and electric pianos, motorcycles, and fixed gear bicycles. Depending on the time of year and my mood, you can insert bourbon into the list. While I've been spinning my tires, so to speak, on the process of becoming licensed to ride a motorcycle, and, you know, buying one, my brother moved in with me from Brooklyn, NY. He's spent the bulk of the last decade (or more?) in major, urban areas. I came across a passage in Guermantes Way last evening that struck a chord with me, and perhaps would with him as well.

"Down there at least you feel you're alive; you don't have all these houses stuck up in front of you, and there's so little noise at night-time you can hear the frogs singing five miles off and more." (Proust, 19)

This passage is especially relevant for my brother, who leaving Brooklyn, has found that the Pioneer Valley is positively a different place from the big city. The sky is dark at night, punctuated by stars, and there are trees, rivers, and forests abounding. Bike rides through farm land, hikes up mountains, and the sound of wildlife can be experienced daily here. Part of the motivation for his move was taking advantage of these realities, of this difference from New York (Proust was referring to a difference between Paris and Combray) to Easthampton, for the purpose of riding a motorcycle. 

I feel that reading Proust and motorcycles go well together. Bear with me here.

Proust has been teaching me to slow down, observe my surroundings, and appreciate the subtle, beautiful details that I had been taking for granted for so many years now. Motorcycles, likewise, are not built (today) for the utmost efficiency, for the most practicality, or for serving a necessary purpose per say in modern society. They are built as a means to get from A to B, yes, but to do so in a more... Proustian way. Slow down, take the back roads, soak up the view, and appreciate those subtle, beautiful details that you simply don't give a shit about while you're driving a car. 

More and more, I'm seeing that reading Proust is a gift. Understanding him, where I can, is a greater gift, still. I have had hunches all my life that, perhaps, modernity has taken a dark turn towards machine-like efficiency and serving necessity. Motorcycles and Proust, however, are teaching me what I knew as a child but was told to forget by maturation and adulthood- it is not necessarily about the destination; it is about the journey and the view during it. And the far reach of this realization is only just coming to me. This must go for more than getting to work, or to dinner, or just going for a joy ride (metaphorically speaking, as well, in terms of "life," and not just riding a motorcycle); it is very possible that this would also apply to art

Once again, Proust, you have arrived in the nick of time. 

Saturday, November 10, 2012

We Don't Ever See You Playing Golf

It got late.

The funniest thing about being "too busy" to do anything creative is the inherent juxtaposition that occurs. Simply, the busier I am, the more creative I become. This is not exactly a new idea (see: Imagine by Jonah Lehrer, as well as, likely, countless other works and studies on the matter of human creativity and problem solving) but for me, the contrast between my productive times and my less productive times is always tinged with tragedy.

Until I began this project, I had been facing down massive amounts of spare time. Coincidentally, when I began my hours-of-reading-a-day project, I also came into a great deal more hours at my job. This has left me with much less time to indulge my creative impulses. Largely, I expected no issue in this, as I had very little creative impulse to speak of until ten days ago when I started all this. Tonight, however, and all the ten nights barring one since this began, I have been positively electrified by ideas and creativity.

I think this reflects back to a sort of vital middle ground. There is a fine line between "doing too much" and "doing just enough," as well as "doing just enough" and "not doing quite enough." I felt I had long been on the "too much" side of that line, but have recently realized that I was on the "just enough" spot on the spectrum. Since August, I was most certainly on the "not enough" side, whereas just recently I have come back to the "just enough" point. I remember, and am so glad to experience again, this frustration- having ideas and not having the time to execute them. Without it, I felt like a shadow of myself.

This all does, thankfully, relate back yet again to my good friend Marcel and his brilliant work. Tonight, I reached a passage that resonated with me instantly:

"And since complete inactivity in the end has the same effect as prolonged overwork, in the mental sphere as much as in the life of the body and the muscles, the steadfast intellectual nullity that reigned behind Octave's meditative brow had ended by giving him, despite his air of unruffled calm, ineffectual longings to think which kept him awake at night, for all the world like an overwrought philosopher." (Proust, 939)

A few things here... First, I slept like absolute shit for months; specifically, the gap between leaving my last job and beginning this project. Second, I spent those nights awake with a shifting, swirling sea of ultimately pointless trains of thought, if they can even be called "thought," and strings of linked self-indulgent anxieties. Since busying myself with something, though, in my idle times, not only have I found my waking hours to be more "awake," in that my creative side is finally functioning once again, but sleep has at last returned to me, and I wake up knowing that I did not spend the bulk of every hour counting backwards from miserable until I fell back asleep. 

Of course, there is a desperate need for a middle ground as previously mentioned. As I have found it by doing more, some must find it by doing less. This is dependent less on one's composure or nature, but rather, by the circumstances one is in. I suspect M. Proust would agree here, as he stated it outright in these final pages of Budding Grove, that we must make sure to let our minds lay fallow for sometime, in order that during a productive time, we can fully reap the benefits of a healthy mind. 

Achievement unlocked: 1,000 page mark surpassed! 



Friday, November 9, 2012

Pleasures More Tempting Than That Of Jumping Over An Octogenarian

Seven long volumes of text. Over fifteen years spent writing and revising. And this is for but one work. One unified vision. One fully articulated thought. Though, passing away before he could make final revisions to volume seven, Proust may argue with me over "fully articulated."

I have often wondered how and why Proust came to the point where he said to himself, "Now, it is time to begin writing a single story for the next decade and some." By now, though, nine-hundred pages into what I am beginning to see in what is (at least partly) a catalog of one man's journey to an understanding of art's purpose in his life and the purpose of his (and others') creations in the lives of others, a sort of thesis statement forming. As can be gleaned from a few quotes in Budding Grove (and surely many more I have missed, including in Swann's Way while Proust expounds upon Bergotte's gifts as a writer and their effects on Proust's psyche and heart) as in, "...in the state of mind in which we 'observe' we are a long way below the level to which we rise when we create," (Proust, 825) it grows more apparent to me by the page that Proust truly believed art and its creation to be a vital aspect of human existence.

It would appear that, while I reflected some days ago on the value reading these volumes would have held for me some years ago in light of some emotional truths present in my life at the time, I was missing the mark to a fairly large degree in terms of the importance and value that, had I removed the blinders of nostalgia and the power of memory, I would have immediately found available to me in reading these pages today. It is too simple to use Proust's work as an excuse to revisit the past and to reflect upon it, while ignoring the power that these books provide in regards to developing an objective analysis of the past, and thusly for the cognizant (I hope I am at least this much) mind, the ability of these books to develop within an astute reader the faculty to more fully realize the terms and the details of the present.

I'm afraid that I might be losing some of you, as I nearly lost myself twice up there in that wall; Mrs. Fast of seventh grade English class, I am sorry for my run-on sentences; I have been unable to fully remove them from my person.

There is absolutely no possibility for me to ignore, in discussing Proust's treatise (if no scholar will scourge me for calling it thus!) on the realities of art and creation, this particular gem with which I cannot decide I vehemently agree or disagree as yet:

"Although it is rightly said that there can be no progress, no discovery in art, but only in the sciences, and that each artist starting afresh on an individual effort can be either helped or hindered therein by the efforts of any other, it must none the less be acknowledged that, in so far as art brings out certain laws, once an industry has taken those laws and popularised [sic] them, the art that was first in the field loses retrospectively a little of its originality," (Proust 896)

Proust deserves a wholesale attack in regards to some of this statement, i.e. the entirety of the statement up until "...it must none the less be acknowledged that..." due to my (here, I am sure) disagreement with them on (creative [moral, perhaps]) grounds, but has earned my full admiration for his remarks following that point. First, though, the issue standing with part one of that remark is that, in my experiences, which I cannot be sure Proust would either justify or condemn as a grounds for judgment as yet, due to the early stage of my acquaintance with him, there is certainly "progress," and "discovery" in art and that any artist starting "afresh on an individual effort" is of course "helped or hindered therein by the efforts of any other" insomuch as it is impossible for any current creator to engage in the act of creation without being profoundly influenced by thousands of years of creation that he or she has been inundated by since youth. 

To assume that any artist could, somehow, avoid the help or hindrance of the entirety of creative human production in the recorded history of our species, with help and/or hindrance being subjective entirely to the artist and to the audience concerned in regards to the creation,  flies in the face of not only my own experiences, but the experiences of countless other artists (and creators in general) in multiple fields. However, there is a kernel of truth in Proust's sweeping statement, though, in the latter section. His statement here that, as art uncovers or elucidates certain truths or, perhaps, trends and structures (for lack of an immediately available "better word") the first works to undertake these uncoverings and elucidations (which I would brand as progress and discovery, M. Proust...) are typically viewed as, over time, exponentially less daring in their undertakings as time marches on and further works by other creators broaden the exposure to what were once unique insights and findings.

To finish my earlier thought, and the seed from which this wall of crap I am so sorry to put you through, dear readers, grew: I was, as I began this project and for some months prior, at a total loss as to what art's place in my life was. I was unsure as to what I was doing, why I was doing it, and what I was "supposed" to do in the future. I had fully lost my bearings; my compass was on the table before me, the needle spinning while the map underneath it seemed to blur and smudge. As I dive deeper into these books, however, I am finding both agreeable and not-so-agreeable insights in regards to art and its role, not only in my life but in the lives of all people, in such quantities that at the very least, I have come to recognize certain truths regarding art, for me. 

The value to these recognitions has been nearly limitless; I have felt a great weight lifted from me, and witnessed a great darkness wiped from my field of view. Having spent many of my aware years in pursuit of creation, it is a refreshing turn for me to find what I have thus found in these volumes. 

Art is good.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Those Fields and Orchards Whose Outlines I Knew By Heart

Some days more than others, I fear the end of this project. As I was passing through Balbec today, courtesy of M. Proust, it struck me how easy it is for this daily reading to affect me in a few ways. As a whole, positively- my attention to my surroundings is certainly much higher. With that attention has grown my appreciation of my surroundings, as well, which has led to, certainly, more enjoyable days.

Of course, there's no denying that even in just these first eight days, I have found myself dreading the prospect of sitting down to one hundred pages of reading. Largely, this is due to my feeling of "and I'm going to spend 3 hours reading, now, and won't be able to do anything else." Each time this feeling hits me, though, it is followed by the no-longer-an-epiphany of "and I have nothing of any greater importance (without even ascribing any over-importance to this task I've put upon myself) to be doing, so shut up and read," which makes me generally feel like a whiney little baby.

The thought of reading one hundred pages a day, at first, seemed simple. After three days, it felt daunting. It now feels "regular," as though it is nothing extraordinary or unusual for any reason, and that I should have no reason not to do it, anymore than any reason other than enjoyment to do it, either. While it is true that my amount of "free" time, hours spent doing nothing idly, has certainly diminished and thus so has my ability to, say, practice both piano and drum rudiments for several hours a day or kill dragons on Xbox as to keep myself occupied, I cannot say that I have felt all too "put out" by this so far.

I fully anticipated writing about Proust today, honestly. It was going to be, in all likelihood, the most intellectually stimulating entry thusfar, as it related to the very real parallel of M. Proust's society to our own in regards to social position, wealth, and self-deemed importance as they relate to advancement professionally or socially, with tie-ins to the recent political events in this country and abroad. Instead, though, I decided to reflect upon the details of my little jaunt through Combray, Paris, and Balbec thusfar.

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to, etc.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

The Gentleman Who Pockets Your Spoons


-

"I don't play golf...like so many of my friends. So I should have no excuse for going about in sweaters as they do" (Proust, 668)

-

Absolutely related to nothing at all that I've found of weight in today's pages. But, in light of finding entirely too much to write about in the past 100 and some more pages I read today (after, Justin, so decidedly stating that I did not want to read today at all) it seemed as though I could not lead this with anything but some tangential and unrelated quotation. 

Throughout today's bits of text, Proust further asserted that Budding Grove is a faster, more gratifying read than the first part of his work. Certainly, this is a reflection of my modern, Western sentiments, whereupon I place heavier value upon the dramatic, quickly-paced sections of plot than in the slower, and perhaps more lucid, sections. That, however, is a shortcoming I have already berated myself for, good DAY to you sir.

Some years ago at exactly this time, I attempted to read Swann's Way, in hopes of, eventually, tackling all the installments of the major work. Halfway through it, I fizzled and moved onto Nabokov. In that time, I found many relatable sentiments; however, I could not have known how crucial the reflections of Budding Grove would have been to me at that time. Though this importance may have only been imparted to Proust's musings via the lens of memory and nostalgia, I suspect that, even then, I would have caught a scent of their importance.

Perhaps, too, he could have spared me some heartache, some complication, and some embarrassment, as the young Marcel proceeded through a love affair so similar to one of my own (in his mind and heart, that is, but far different in terms of physical reality - though even that, perhaps, is closer in parallel than I see even now) that as I read, I am catapulted back in time and forced to realize my own follies and delusions. The view of the past, so sharpened by the tightening perimeter of the image by the closing of years around it as an aperture around a given field of vision, is "adorned with the halo with which we are bound before to invest her, and is imparted if not with the frequent solace of hope," (Proust, 675) to the chagrin of historical accuracy in nearly all cases. 

Not to cheapen the power of memory, or the value of nostalgia; but rather, I must constantly remember the power of that tightening focus, and all that its closing begins to eliminate from the frame. For as the subject becomes clearer in some ways via a narrower field of contrast, many of the details which allowed a true view of the given subject are entirely eliminated and lost to that black perimeter of time past, time lost.

And any further, I'll just fall right off the edge. 

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

The Main Thing Is That A Man Should Find Pleasure In His Work

After breaking the 500-page mark, which seemed to me to be the first major landmark in my travels, I realized that I had been "in" Within a Budding Grove for some time (in my collection, at least). As I sped through the pages, it struck me how much "faster" this book seems to be. The pacing is much more lively, the character interactions more frequent and more intense. There's also a very real depth being added to the narrator, complemented by the developments in some radiant characters made during Swann's Way.

There have been a large number of underlined phrases, bracketed portions of text, and dog-eared pages forming in my volumes. I often think, "ah, here's one for the blog!" but, by the end of the night's reading, have found so many other possibilities that it grows difficult to go back to that first thought, or even any of the first five, that grabbed me during my plod.

Inevitably, there is a wealth of analysis to be made upon this work which can, and already has been, undertaken by far more qualified readers. However; as a rather...unlearned type, comparatively, I like to imagine that my own reflections are perhaps more relatable to other people of equally "low" intellectual status (as deemed by the socialites I'm encountering in Proust's work, at least) in that I am not comparing Proust's more vivid observations with conceptual truths or other literary works, but rather, with my own daily hike through the mire, the doldrums of ordinary life.

Thusly, though, I am forced to realize that my foot is in my mouth. For if anything so far, I have learned that no part of any life is "ordinary," and that with the proper lense, every moment, every passing particle is, truthfully, extraordinary.

Post script: Oh. And to touch on a post from before, my book has now decided to lighten its page burden by 509 units. I have, in fact, fewer pages still bound in this book than in a loose pile on my coffee table. Charming.

Monday, November 5, 2012

Life Is A Dreadful Business

Often, once the lives of characters in any novel I'm reading begin to become "real," insomuch as they are developed sufficiently for me to understand them on a day-to-day, human level as I would someone I encounter in my waking life, I begin to compare and contrast their lives to my own, and to the lives of the people around me. In the case of Swann, Proust develops him (and many other characters, of course) so thoroughly that it is quite easy to forget that Swann was not a real man. There is no historical M. Swann. His life is so vibrant, so real, that it has grown nearly impossible for me to avoid visualizing his world in a way that seems almost as though it is within my own memory.

Such a journey through a "donated memory" as given to me by Proust has illuminated a dichotomy within my own life that I had as yet not noticed. I spent many years working at an automotive repair shop, with between 40 and 50 hours a week spent at the shop. This equated to the hours, the life, spent outside the shop seeming few and far between. Generally, the time I had to myself for pursuits of real importance to myself seemed stolen. The hours whizzed by, without adequate time for many of the things I wanted or needed to do.

When I moved to my current town and found a new job, there were of course many contrasts to my past life as a mechanic / desk person/ all purpose employee at the shop. I am doing vastly different work, I am working fewer hours... And, for the first time, I can relate to a man like M. Swann, who appears to spend the bulk of his time on his personal pursuits. Swann does not appear to have any kind of "day job," as he possesses a vast fortune that allows him to indulge in intellectual pursuits and absorb works of art at his leisure. Pages upon pages are spent detailing his days. It struck me as very odd that at no point could weeks be omitted because "he was just at work."

To spell it out: The dichotomy I have detected is that there are, in fact, two "lives" to live in this life. There is my former, whereupon the entirety of it is spent in an orbit around work, and all other things are simply radiant details of minor importance or weight. Then there is my current. The focus is not "get up, go to work, work all day, come home too exhausted to do anything but sit, go to bed, wake up..." 6 days out of 7. Instead, it is, "get up, go to work, come home, do things you care about, interact with people you care about, go to bed, repeat." While both have been boiled down to their most basic syrups, it is clear, at least to me, that they are fundamentally different by nature. The focus, for me today, is much less narrow. This does not mean that I see things less clearly in my life, but rather, that I can see a wider plane of view. This is a richer life. I was unaware that there was anything but working to exhaustion until very recently.

If there were a novel about the last 7 years of my life, most of it would read, "and you can skip ahead to chapter 11, because Austin just goes to work, comes home, makes dinner, and goes to sleep for the next several weeks without anything really happening that you need to be aware of." On the contrary, daily M. Swann encounters people, things, thoughts, and feelings that are worthy of note. Is it simply that I am not taking note, myself, of the things in my own life that are similar? Or is it that Swann has the time  to make observations that, in my past life, I did not?

I'm going to go with the latter. As I now work about half the hours I did at my former job, I can say that I am finding many more things "of note" in my own daily existence. While I am not "doing" more, per say, than I was at that time, noticing the fine details of life has been enabled by the shift in my lifestyle. While I had not caught on to this reality until this very afternoon, it is true and has been since I arrived here and took this new job. Perhaps, Proust has something to teach us all; slow down, notice the small details, and pay attention to things we would otherwise deem inconsequential. There is more to life than our day jobs. We must make as much effort to live as we do to work. After all, aren't we working to live? Or have we somehow become so scrambled that it is now the opposite?

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Coarsened And Vulgarised

"...so M. and Mme Cottard, typical, in this respect, of the public, were incapable of finding...what constituted for them harmony in music or beauty in painting." (Proust, 232)

Religion, politics, sports- topics we're all told to avoid in polite discussion, as to avoid unpleasantness and unnecessary arguing. It seems to me, though, that art should be added to the list. Preference in art, especially music, seems to be one of those issues best not discussed at all, or rather, only discussed with people one can be sure they agree with. The fierce allegiances people form to certain styles of art, again, especially music, can lead to rather heated discussions. The section of the chapter Swann in Love that covers his discovery of a new piece of music and its effects upon him got me thinking along these lines.

As the piece is played, he begins to wonder what about it makes him feel the way it does- what powers a certain magical phrase holds. He asks the others present at the performance a variety of valid questions about the artist's mindset while composing the phrase, what he meant by it, and how exactly his work comes to affect its listeners so deeply. Responses include rather contemporary sounding cop-outs about not wanting to put things under a microscope, not to over think, and not to analyze, but rather, simply to absorb or consume and be done with it.

This response is common, still, in regards to art. I find that often, if something grips me, I allow my mind to run where it will in regards to my curiosity about its abilities to affect me. However, many individuals do not respond well to the questions I raise about the piece, and often default to a canned response along the lines of: "I don't really think about it like that. I just like it."

It's so simple to say why I like pizza, cake, tube amplifiers, dark beers, sex, music on vinyl, bike rides, vintage motorcycles; yet, it is so challenging to explain why the opening 8 bars of Thursday's "No Answers" or the chorus of Radiohead's "Lotus Flower" absolutely take me. 

There's something less immediately quantifiable there, but perhaps more powerful even than the magical combination present in the perfect slice of pizza. So common, even today, for someone to claim to love something, some work of art, without being able to say why. Not being able to say why, even in Proust's time, most "connossieurs" would shirk the responsibilities of even attempting to identify what resonated with them in their favorite works. Easier, I suppose, simply to default to not-thinking. We are as much today a species of non-thinkers as when Proust made his very astute commentary upon art culture; content to consume and defend without analysis or clarity of vision, never fully, then, appreciating these things we claim to love and believe in.

Friday, November 2, 2012

Echoless footsteps on a gravel path

Used books are great. Particularly, they are great for specific "things," i.e.

  • Being cheaper than new books
  • Falling the fuck apart while reading them
  • Waking you up, due to pages 41-180 falling all over the floor, when you have started nodding off for the third time that afternoon because you've slept like dick for 9 (and/or a billion-million) consecutive nights, largely because you've decided that drinking on weeknights is a bad idea (it isn't) and that you shouldn't go to bed drunk (you should) as often as you had been last month for whatever reason ("growing up," and/or your dreams being crushed like small bugs by an obnoxious, boogery child on blacktop outlined for playing Foursquare)
While the beauty of Combray is, without doubt, as certain and true as the beauty of Proust's prose, neither one has been able to keep me from falling asleep in all manner of uncomfortable positions, assumed in order to prevent myself from falling asleep, in the past two days. This is largely due to my insistence upon beginning this project during a week where I have had to work exactly double the amount of hours as usual, with a few unexpected morning shifts that have insidiously robbed me of that blessed last hour of sleep. -  (Note: that was a bullshit excuse) - That final, vital hour that seems to matter more than the seven (yes, I get 8 hours of sleep quite often...! Or when not "sleeping like dick" as per above) prior to it despite the small volume of dreams it holds compared to its numerous siblings in the night.

Of course, my inability to stay awake while reading one of the foremost works of literary art is no reflection on the writing, as a customer at work suggested today in the elevator, but is rather a reflection of my own inadequacies. This is not meant in a, "Oh, I'm no good!" kind of way, but in a manner that expresses what I believe to be a deep-seated, cultural issue in the modern west. Insomuch as...

I could sit on my couch for, as I mentioned yesterday, about five hours while switching back and forth between my iPhone, my computer, and a pair of drum sticks with which I am pounding obnoxious, rudimentary patterns to a metronome on the surface of the antique trunk full of blankets I use as a coffee table. I cannot, however, focus on reading one hundred pages of what is arguably the greatest literary offering by any single man in Western history in about half that amount of time.

I'm great. I'm entranced by meaningless tripe (Instagram? Even the word sounds stupid- think about what it is for more than thirty consecutive seconds and smoke will likely pour from your ears as the futility of your entire modern existence crashes into the pocket-size display that has usurped the throne of culture from art and creations of true intention with mindless, easy-bake photos and personal overshares from people obsessed with their cats [me] or the horrific atrocities they conjured up in their kitchens after a few hearty joints and a couple of stiff drinks) that offers absolutely minus-sub-zero when it comes to intellectual or emotional sustenance. 

But can it ever hold my attention. Sorry, M. Swann. Maybe if you were 3.5" and backlit, I'd be able to pay better attention.

We're all great. Goddamn it.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

I'm Done For!

I've tried to read Marcel Proust's sprawling masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time / Remembrance of Things Past four times now. I've read part one, Swann's Way, one and a half times, about half of part two, and then gave up rapidly the first time I read it at about 35 pages into part one. This time is going to be different. I hope.

I dropped out of college four years ago this December for a multitude of reasons. Upon leaving university, I decided I wouldn't let my mind atrophy. It was in my best interest, I decided, to attempt to read as many classics and Western "masterpieces" as I could. I handled easy ones first- Wuthering Heights, 1984, Huck Finn, and so on. The things you were assigned to read as a teenager but inevitably underappreciated, if you read them at all. Eventually, though, I reached a point where I had encountered references to Proust's work numerous times, but had no idea what exactly they meant.

Thus began attempt one, which I segued from by reading the entirety of Vladimir Nabokov's literary output in about a year and a half. I now realize that, in that time, I could have read Proust's expansive novel multiple times over. It was not, however, until last night that I realized just how many times it could have been. At just over 3,000 pages, Proust's work would require a fairly minimal daily investment, I realized. A mere 100 pages per day. I'm a fairly quick reader, and when I reflected upon how much time I spent...say...staring at drumsets or guitars on the internet, or perhaps slaying dragons on xbox, it dawned on me that I could, instead, invest my time in a way that would have a more real return.

By the way, the amount of time I spend daily, on average, between those mentioned pursuits added up to about five hours daily.

Seriously. Five. Hours.

My few run-ins with Proust had already, in the case where I read up through about half of part two, changed how I looked at my world (much more than, for example, killing that dragon last night in my attempts to save Tamriel). I saw details in new depth and clarity, and appreciated what my memory was really doing in my life (Joe: "memory palace" never meant more to me than it did while reading Proust that time).

So, today I began my hundred-page-a-day journey into another man's memory palace. It's possible that I won't be able to finish it all in 30 days, but I do best with goals and deadlines. As it is, I've already come to see how much of my time I've spent on autopilot the past few months. Er...years.

As I progress, I'm sure to find more truths and possibilities that, without the careful, attentive lens Proust gives to the simplest details, I would have otherwise taken entirely for granted. Consider my posts your speedpass to these same experiences. Because, let's face it, not everybody's going to want to read 100 pages or more a day of some shut-in's moment-by-moment replay of a life spent thinking too damn much.

Maybe it'll keep me from thinking too damn much, though. And if nothing else, I'll owe Marcel for that.