There is a very funny cartoon in this week's New Yorker, the fiction edition, where a man is pointing out his designated Proust reader.
Proust is so big, I am just amazed. Still plogging away at Albertine and Marcel in Balbec. 706 pages into the novel. Savoring. Considering. Contemplating. Wonder what the Proust household was like a holiday time. Was there a Christmas goose? A plump capon? A roast beast. A buche de Noel?
Joyeux Noel, to touts le monde. And pardon my fractured French.
Odette
Showing posts with label New Yorker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Yorker. Show all posts
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Proust and Kerouac revisited
So, all summer I was on a Kerouac kick, along with readings of Proust. Seemed like an unlikely duo. Lately, working through some New Yorkers from the fall, I found "Drive, He Wrote," by Louis Menand.
On the whole, this is a very sympathetic review of Kerouac and "On The Road." But what stopped me in my tracks was the following sentence.
"'On the Road' is as self-consciously a work of literature as 'A la Recherche du Temps Perdu'--and Proust was a writer whom both Kerouac and Cassady emulated, someone who turned his life into literature." Louis Menarnd, New Yorker Magazine, Oct. 1, 2007.
Maybe my reading Jack and Marcel side by side wasn't so weird after all. How did I not notice this, now, when I certainly would have noticed it when I was 21? I don't read so analytically anymore, no longer being an English major. But what a stunning observation.
Truth be told, I did not find Dean Moriarty aka Neal Cassady so enchanting this time around. Manipulative was the word that came to mind. Something I didn't see at 21. This is a good argument for reading works of literature several times in the course of your life. Something new always pops up.
Back to Proust. He may be just the antidote to the holidays.
Odette
On the whole, this is a very sympathetic review of Kerouac and "On The Road." But what stopped me in my tracks was the following sentence.
"'On the Road' is as self-consciously a work of literature as 'A la Recherche du Temps Perdu'--and Proust was a writer whom both Kerouac and Cassady emulated, someone who turned his life into literature." Louis Menarnd, New Yorker Magazine, Oct. 1, 2007.
Maybe my reading Jack and Marcel side by side wasn't so weird after all. How did I not notice this, now, when I certainly would have noticed it when I was 21? I don't read so analytically anymore, no longer being an English major. But what a stunning observation.
Truth be told, I did not find Dean Moriarty aka Neal Cassady so enchanting this time around. Manipulative was the word that came to mind. Something I didn't see at 21. This is a good argument for reading works of literature several times in the course of your life. Something new always pops up.
Back to Proust. He may be just the antidote to the holidays.
Odette
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