Princess Alice Comes Into Her Own in NOLA

Marcel Proust used Princess Alice as a model for one of his female characters, Princesse de Luxembourg.  Proust had many models in society and in the demimonde.  Recently Princess Alice was honored in New Orleans, her birthplace.  What a stretch for a Proust character!  Or is it?
Read about it here: Society Lineage Lives 

By the way, in case you are interested in a Proust summary, not done by Monty Python (remember them?), Wikipedia does a decent job of describing the plot (such as it is) of Proust's great work.
Take a look.  Wikipedia on In Search of Lost Time

Catching Up On Proust

Whew!  Busy writing, cooking, gardening, doing the holidays, and racing around in general.  I have neglected Reading Proust in Foxborough, but here is a catch up post, because all the interesting Proust "stuff" that's come into my mailbox has been saved.  

Here are some cool links, in no particular order.  Read on. 

From November 11th.   Who was the woman who made Proust swoon?  Who was the model for the Duchess of Guermantes?

 France Marvels At a Class of Woman Who Made Proust Swoon

From November 19th:  The Albertine Workout.  What is heaven's name is that?  Read on and all shall be revealed.  Not what you think.  No weightlifting or wind sprints.  Some mental exercise involved.  Hey, it's Proust!

Enigmatic writer Anne Carson shares ‘The Albertine Workout’

Anne Carson Reads the Albertine Workout  

Proust: The Search by Benjamin Taylor review – scintillating narrative 

Swooning, scintillating, enigmatic:  we are definitely in Proust territory here. 

A new Proust biography from Yale University Press. 

 Searching for Proust and also lost time 

The Search: A Review 

 Are you exhausted yet?  Read on. 

December 10th, 2015  Proust Forum in Boca

My New York friends who spend part of the winter in Florida are always dismissive of its culture.  You probably were not in Boca Raton on Dec. 10th, but if you were, you, alas, missed an insightful lecture on Swann's Way.   Read on.  Proust and Swann's Way Discussed at Boca Forum 

Lastly, not strictly Proust, but tangential to Proust and I found it interesting to see Proust influencing the third world and you might also. 

January 11, 2016  Delhi, India

The popular writer-blogger talks about Delhi, Marcel Proust, and his days as a hotel waiter. 

 Mayank Austen Soofi is an interesting man.

 

 

 

When Proust Met Joyce

NOT like "When Harry Met Sally."  Proust and Joyce met at the Hotel Majestic in Paris in 1922.  They didn't particularly take to each other.  Well, opposites don't always attract.  Wouldn't you have liked to have been a mouse in the woodwork or a fly on the ceiling? The hotel hosted other famous guests.  Ah, Paris!

Read all about it. Where Proust Met Joyce

Reading Proust Aloud in Amherst

I have to hand it to this book group.  Reading Proust aloud (with a nice cup of tea) was a singular accomplishment.  The second time around they skipped a bit.  In my book (third reading) I'm going to skip the rest of Albertine.  Seems awfully repetitive and I have totally bogged down.  Onward.

Here is the link to the Amherst group.  They are a hardy, persistent group.

Reading Proust Aloud in Amherst

Amherst, like Foxborough is in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts where they know a thing or two about literature and persistence.

Photo of Proust in Venice

I can just imagine Proust all bundled up on a warm day in Venice.  How it must  have thrilled him to be there.  The first view of Venice, when traveling down the Grand Canal, does not disappoint. 
Take a look. Proust on Travel 
I wonder what he ate.   My two favorite Venetian meals were the "Treasures of the Adriatic," a fantastic plate of seafood whose memory makes me want to drool, and the appetizer of ravioli with cheese sauce at Harry's Bar.  The Bellinis were nothing special, but ye gods, that heavenly pasta and the incomparable cheese  sauce against which all future sauces must be compared and found lacking. 

The pizza, however, was molto mediocre.  Dumb to order pizza in Venice, yes?

Proust and Food

The young narrator Marcel is fascinated by the peas and asparagus in Aunt Leonie's kitchen. 

The Vicarious Foodie Blog

Proust talks about art and literature and is not above a good gossip, but he also notes the work of the kitchen maids and observes the preparations and color and texture of the vegetables.  Such great writing.  The asparagus, of course, is the white variety, so beloved in the springtime across Northern Europe.  Proust was no exception.

Pinter Reads Proust. Pinter produces Proust.

Drat!  I had no idea there would be a Pinter/Proust performance at the 92nd St. Y last week.  It's not all that difficult to nip down to the Big Apple from Foxborough, and there's a friend with a sleeper  sofa!  Oh, she was actually visiting us.  Well,  crap.  Anyhow I missed it.

Here's a fun write up, that even mentions Monty Python's Summarize Proust contest. 

Pinter and Proust   This is a good article both for Proust and Pinter fans.

Another informative article apropos Proust is here: The Nation wrote about Proust. And wrote and wrote and wrote


Odette

Update:  yet another article linkWhen Pinter adapted Proust 

100 Years of Everything Proust

In spite of the 100th anniversary of the first volume of Proust, Swann's Way,  relatively little in the way of anything new has come across my desk or  via the computer as it were.  Nonetheless, a new articles for  you to peruse.

Here is one.  Proust as Wizard: Look Out Harry Potter!                          

The Nation has wisely been following Proust for almost 100  years.  What other publication can make that boast?   


   

Happy Anniversary, Marcel

Lots of brouhaha about Proust's100th  anniversary of the publication of his great novel.  Proust in the Wall Street Journal

The university of Alabama is also celebrating Proust:  University of Alabama to celebrate Proust's Centennial Work

And lastly, a Duke professor analyzes Proust.  Analyzing Proust

I hope some people are actually READING Proust rather than just talking about him. 

Remembering Proust and His Literary Masterpiece

Just to keep you 100% informed on all things Proust this month, Highbrow Magazine has a Proust article.  Don't you just love that name?  Wonder if there has ever been a Lowbrow Magazine.  Well, how about People and all the celebrity dreck that graces the supermarket checkout line. Bizarre magazines and faux news only a lowbrow could read or love or even write.  You will never see Proust on the cover of any of those scandal sheets.

Take a gander at this:  Remembering Proust and His Literary Masterpiece

Here is a photo of my Proust bookshelf.  Volume II of the novel is on my nightstand where I have been stalled with Albertine for an awfully long time, alas.

I am neither a scholar nor a literary writer,  but I do have a thing for Proust.

A Quantum City

A great Proust post, quoting the master himself.  We should read Proust, really, not read about him, and here is a blogger who lets us do just that.

Quantum City

Happy Belated Birthday, Marcel

Alas!  I missed Proust's birthday. Too frantically busy trying to get my novel formatted, final proofs, final spell check, final edits, and some PR.  Crazy time. Heat wave, too.  

Found a good birthday post which I'm passing on to you. 

The Proust news of late has been ho-hum. Waiting for something rip-roaring to happen, although Proust and rip-roaring are not usually juxtaposed together.  

I'm still working my way through the Albertine book. One of thse days. In the meantime, I read other stuff, some good, some just O.K.  Do pick up the novel, HEFT.  It was really good. You'll like it. 

In the meantime, here's Proust: The Greatest Novelist of the 20th Century: Marcel Proust

The New York Times blog had a great post on the 100th anniversary of the pub date of Swann's Way.

Happy Anniversary Marcel!  NY Times Proust Blog


This is a wonderful blog with great, great comments.  The perfect posts for Proustians.

Finally, another interesting Proust Blog

Jacqueline Rose on Marcel Proust

This Jacqueline Rose blog has some interesting food for thought.  Of the more provocative:  Proust's novel is a "feminist Gothic horror story. "  I don't actually know what this means apropos Proust, but I'll think about it.  The other perhaps revolutionary thought is that "the 'intermittencies of the heart' section of Volume Four: Sodom and Gomorrah is the greatest ever piece of writing on grief."  I am still reading the Sodom and Gomorrah section of Proust, stuck there, is possibly a better description.  Will try to find the passage.  I believe Proust has a big anniversary this year with Swann's Way, but I have to look this up, too.

Here in Foxborough, we just came through the mother of all storms with 27 inches of snow and huge drifts and all public and private transportation shut down for a day.  Lots of citizens still without power in the cold and tonight, rain is predicted to add insult to injury.

The weather was always nice in Proust's Normandy, wasn't it?  I don't even recall too much rain in Combray or Paris, but there must have been some.  It is society that is turbulent, not the weather.  

I'm still reading the work, M. Proust's Library. Alas, there has been reading and writing to do that has nothing to do with Proust as well as writing and rewriting.  I produced a short story that has been submitted to an anthology.  No idea if they'll accept it, but it was a novella that I had to smash down into a short story, never a fun process.  Nonetheless, I enjoyed writing it, although it consumed November, December and January, which is difficult when one has holidays and house guests.  No wonder Proust has been consigned to my nightstand stack of books.

Follow this just discovered link to interviews with people who actually knew Proust. BBC program of Proust topics




Onward,

Before the snow really came down.  Now one cannot see out the window for the drifts.

Odette, the other one

The Marquise de Saint-Euverte’s Musical Soirée

It was a brilliant decision for A Curious Invitation: The Forty Greatest Parties in Literature by Suzette Field  to pick this party, with the fun poked at invitees and servants alike, and with the social jockeying and snobbery as evident as the men's monocles and the ladies outrageous hair ornamentation.

This is one of Proust’s shorter (and therefore better) parties.  The writing also contains quantities  Proust's snarky humor.  The narrator outdoes himself with his witty, exacerbating descriptions of the guests and the music, so many of which are imminently quotable.

 Of one of the many footmen and grooms who attend the guests, Proust singles out the hair of one of them. “. . . that a head of hair, by the glossy undulation and beaklike points of its curls, or in the overlaying of the florid triple diadem of its brushed tresses, can suggest at once a bunch of seaweed, a brood of fledgling doves, a bed of hyacinths and a serpent’s writhing back. “

Of a guest, Proust writes, “M. de Palancy, who with his huge carp’s head and goggling eyes moved slowly up and down the stream of festive gatherings, unlocking his great mandibles at every moment as though in search of his orientation, had the air of carrying about upon his person only an accidental and perhaps purely symbolical fragment of the glass wall of his aquarium…”
 Quoted from Swann’s Way, “Swan in Love” translated by Scott Moncrieff.

One bows to the master.

A Curious Invitation: The Forty Greatest Parties In Literature

An intriguing book has flown into my radar.  Suzette Field's A Curious Invitation . . .  arrived right before we left for Los Angeles on a research trip for my own work in process novel.  Significant Other grabbed it and read it the entire  time we were away, and I am just now getting to it. 

Of course the first chapter in A Curious Invitation that  I read was about Proust's account of the Marquise de Saint-Euverte's Musical  Soiree in Swann's Way.  If you have read this blog at all, you know I frequently get bogged down in Proust's parties, but his writing about the Marquises's party is absolutely sprightly, with spot on characterizations and comments about the guests.   Oh the snobbery!  The jockeying for social position!  The servants!  The music! 

And guess what "little phrase" Swann hears just as he is itching to get out of there and head back home to find out news of Odette?  Vinteiul's little phrase, of course. 

The Curious Invitation's description of the party is also spot on. And this soiree is not as long as many of the parties in Proust, perhaps because Swann is so impatient to leave.  I love these books (both Proust and  A Curious Invitation) and you will hear more about them when I get my own dinner party out of the way this evening (no live music and very little snobbery).  There is also a book signing tomorrow at the Boston Book Festival.  I will be in the Sister's In Crime booth signing World of Mirrors.



Then it's back to Proust's party where we will dig the dirt, as it were, and on to some more "marvelous parties" in A Curious Invitation.  Reading about the various parties brought back a few I remember.  Seventh Floor Adolphus in Dallas before the Cotton bowl, and some high school blasts in McCarthy's basement.  When did I grow so mature and even . . staid?  Great party, by the way, at Santa Anita race track in the Turf Club Saturday afternoon.  The "dress code" brings out the best. A very lively crowd, friendly, too.

Even if the blasted hurricane comes up the East Coast, we'll have the 40 Greatest Parties, Proust and an assemblage of hurricane lanterns and lamps to read by. 

More anon,


Grapeshot

Would Proust Have Won?

The McArthur genius grants have just been awarded, and two novelists were selected.  Junot Diaz and Dinaw Mengestu Win $500,000 Genius Grants.

Do you think Proust would have  qualified?  I do.  With his great work, he did something no one has done before or since.  The characters, the settings, the stories, the words, his subtle humor.  Think about it.  Proust was truly a genius.

Proust as Voyeur: Forbidden Places

A new book is out about  "the love hotels of Paris between the 19th and 20th centuries."  Marcel Proust frequented the Hotel  du Saumon to gather material for his book, setting scenes there.  My take is that Proust's interest was not entirely literary.  Well, so it goes.  This is the link to the Forbidden Places. 


A honky-tonk for men????   I thought honky-tonks were for loud music.  Isn't  "Honky Tonk"  a cool word.  Where do you suppose it originated? Apparently know one is sure.  It's been around since the 1890's and was first seen in print in 1920.  I do believe I will use it in my novel-in-progress.

This book, Nicole Canet's, not mine, is called an "erotic thriller." Sounds like something Toulouse Lautrec might have devised.  Canet is a painter and artist.   BTW, the book isn't on Amazon.  Sorry about that.  

Cheers!


Odette

 

Proust Plays Air Guitar on a Tennis Racquet

I honestly don't know if this is a real or a doctored photo, but it's a riot. Marcel Proust playing air guitar on a tennis raquet

We know Proust had a good sense of humor, so why wouldn't he act a little goofy in the presence of friends?  Sometimes he seems to be this great god-like master of fiction, but he was all too human.  This is a great example.

In Search of "Good Reads"

Good Reads,  a web site for book lovers has a discussion devoted to Marcel Proust.  Who knew?   I never realized they were into anything except current fiction and non-fiction.  The site can be hard for a newbie to navigate, but here is the link to the Proust discussion.  Marcel Proust and Good Reads                


ISOLT is, of course, In Search Of Lost Time.  Explore Good Reads

Onward with Proust.