Reading in Proust (The Guermantes Way) last night about the trials of Mme. Villeparisis and how she fell in society due to a neglect of the niceties, shall we say, and when she wanted to make her way back up the ladder to the top, the rungs were no longer accessible.
Snobbery tried and failed to rule on Jane Austen last night, as Pride and Prujudice and love triumphed.
I suppose we will always have snobbery. Right now, people look down on the new McMansions. Some suburbs are better. The right car, the right summer home, the right this, the right that, and above all the right school. The right shoes, handbag. It goes on and on. We are just as bad as Proust's or Austen's snobs. New money, old money.
Or as my very snobby (Mother was DAR, he likes to sail with the "right" people, i.e. the New York Yacht Club) friend said, when I talked about Burning Man. "I wouldn't have anything to saw to those people." Burners? You can say anything to Burners.
Ohmigod, the right yacht club, the destination wedding, the right table in the right restaurant even, if you write, the right genre.
I am a snob, too. I look down on people with no books in their houses, people who eat takeout 24/7 and people who drive enormous black SUV's. So there.
I'm leaving for a writing conference. Not taking Proust. Instead, I am taking a novel called Pasadena. I'll be back in a week, with a week's worth of Proust blogs, should there be any of interest, and there usually are.
I will be able to give a blow by blow of writer's snobberies. Chacun a son gout. Sorry for the lack of the proper French accents. I have never figured them out for Blogger except to cut and paste from word and that is just too tedious.
Odette
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I started a Proust blog which might interest. However, I'm reading it in the original French. Although I was born in Boston and raised in Framingham, I can read it. I'm interested in finding others who are reading it as written.
Post a Comment