Why it's never too late to read Proust, a century after his death
French writer Marcel Proust is often considered one of Europe’s greatest modern authors. He dedicated his life to writing “In Search of Lost Time” – a 3,000-word opus in seven volumes which many applaud but many more have never read. Why should we bother? Author Josh Landy makes the case.
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I too have referenced Proust’s madeleines – those little French sponge cakes that the narrator Marcel dips in tea in volume 1 of "In Search of Lost Time" and which transport him back to his childhood.
But have I actually read the chapter in question? I have not. I abandoned ship, years ago, at page 10.
This has not been a source of guilt or even regret.
Feminist critic and writer Germaine Greer convinced me years back that reading Proust was a waste of time; wanting to lose yourself in the tortuous meanderings of multitudinous characters and punctuation-oblivious phrases meant you had a problem.
But as the centenary year of Proust’s death draws to a close, writer Josh Landy is convincing when he says it’s time to pick up the journey.
Landy is Proustian and proud of it. In his recently published The World According to Proust he makes a witty, engaging case as to why the writer is as timely as ever.
And he knows how to speak to the Proust-resistant. He started off as one.
“I had to read this book as an undergrad and got as far as page 72, realised I’d forgotten everything I’d read, started again, got back to page 72 and by that time my time had run out to write my essay,” he says on the line from Stanford University in California, where he teaches philosophy and comparative literature.
“That was pretty much the end for many years. I just thought I was defeated.”
Listen to a conversation with Josh Landy in the Spotlight on France podcast
Other worlds
Landy didn’t return to Proust until his early thirties, lured back by some quotes a friend cited.
“They were two of the most beautiful sentences I’ve ever read in my life," he says, referring to Proust's defence of art.
Proust shows us that "art is a miracle that allows you to enter the world of another human being".
Entering those different worlds is like discovering new planets.
It took Landy a while to travel Proust’s galaxy: seven years to be precise. And he didn’t read the book from start to finish, but jumped around.
“It’s totally fine to do that; it’s not a heavily plot-driven novel,” he explains.
Stories that resonate
Proust's novel is set in Paris around the turn of the 19th century.
It revolves around the principle character and narrator Marcel – a man who wants to fall in love, become an artist and enter high society.
It’s set against a background of fascinating social issues: changing salon life in the lead up to WWI, the Dreyfus affair and rise of anti-Semitism in France, homophobia and the trial of gay Irish writer Oscar Wilde.
The narrator is sometimes negative about same sex love, Landy says, but "sometimes he can be wonderfully impassioned and lyrical on behalf of the beleaguered gay community”.
The longest sentence in the novel, which stretches over three pages, is about the plight of gay men in France.
“He has this lovely line where he says: “It’s a really great thing the angels did such a bad job in Sodom of eradicating all the people who were tempted towards same-sex love. It’s a good thing because lucky us, we still have those folks among us”.
The notion of including “folks among us” – be they gay, Jewish or different in whatever way – is as pertinent today as it was in Proust’s time.
And with war back on Europe’s borders, Proust’s world no longer feels a world away.
Sitting with one mind
There are other reasons for turning to Proust – the sheer size of the undertaking makes it rewarding says Landy.
“There is something special about embarking on a big project of reading, of sitting with one mind for months and months,” he argues.
“I can’t promise it will be easy but it’s precisely the ways in which it’s difficult that makes it so important. In a way it’s sort of the anti-Twitter, the opposite of 280 characters.”
He admits it took him a long time to get into it, but “once it gets its hooks into you then you’re in for the long haul and you come out a different person”.
By way of encouraging us on the quest to discover our better selves, he offers some welcome advice.
Rather than reading all seven volumes in numerical order, we can read volume 1 (Swann’s Way) up to the madeleine scene and then jump to the second half of volume 7 (Time Regained).
“You’ll have read more or less what Proust wrote at the very beginning [of the 14-year project] and it’s pretty good.”
So here’s to turning page 11. And a happy, booky, new year.
Read also:
- Proust the PR man revealed in rare Swann's Way sale
- Ancient film clip may be the only moving image of Proust
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