Packing Up Proust's Apartment

Another Youtube video, with good commentary.  Oh, to have a cultivated British voice.

Proust's Apartment

A Proust Week

 Here in Foxborough, not far from the Massachusetts coastline, we are preparing for Hurricane Irene.  However neither storm nor earthquake  can keep us from Proust, who received his own share of PR this week. 


First, there was a description with photos of the famous Cork Lined Room.  A Visit To The Cork Lined Room .  Fortunately, the blogger took time to sample some restaurants.  Proust would approve. 


Next, there's a  Proust meetup in L.A.  How cool is that?  Marcel would be intrigued.  I Love Proust in LA.   Unfortunately, Foxborough is too far away from Tinseltown to make it practical or economical to join the group, alas. 


Next, some sad news.  The director of "Time Regained,"  Raul Ruiz has died.  He just had a new movie out too.   Raul Ruiz dies . 



Your faithful correspondent has been reading Proust again, still in Balbec and La Raspelier, and the humor is lovely and subtle and I am enjoying it ever so much.  Proust is so sly and so witty.  


The Other Odette

Proust Summarized on YouTube

I had to idea.  Thought the Monty Python folks were the only ones with temerity to summarize Proust (they failed), but here is another go at it.  Proust Summarized on YouTube   Take a look.

Proust on film

I saw the dramatization of Proust's last "book" in Cambridge, MA several years ago.  Catherine Deneuve played Odette, a casting that would never have occurred to me.  The film was quite good. There were no car chases, no explosions, no blood and gore, and I don't think there was a seventeen year old in the house.  Just a hushed, reverent audience. 

Here is a link to an NYTimes article about the man who created the film. A Mild Mannered Maniac. 


The last volume of the great tome is, to my mind, the best, and I found the great denouement utterly thrilling. 


The Other Odette

The Funniest Man in Paris

The humor in Proust is always surprising and sometimes barbed but often rather diffident.  I totally missed it in my first two passes through the great Oeuvre.  Here is a blogger who didn't miss a thing.  The Verdurins certainly come in for their share of having fun poked at them.  Jeez, sometimes you really have to jump through hoops to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition.

The Funniest Man in Paris

Eating Madelines in Seattle

Or how about a petite madeline with a cuppa tea in Paris?  On the subject of madelines, I must confess that I've had the molds for ever so long, but have yet to screw up my courage to actually make some.  I think this is because I read a recipe saying you must only make enough batter to fill the madeline molds in one baking session, because the batter absolutely did not keep for a second batch an hour or so later.

Seemed like a difficult task with  a high rate of failure.  One of these days I'll throw caution to the wind and whip up a batch.  Take a photo.  Let you know how they are.  I do not expect a Proustian experience, no that would come with my grandma's fried chicken or tomatoes from the garden.  Maybe her strawberry jam.   It would only be something my grandma cooked.  She never used a recipe and her short pudgy fingers moved so deftly, whether she was making bread or flouring a frying chicken.

Here is the article from the Seattle paper.  And many of us have read Proust, multiple times, in English and French and for all I know maybe Croation.  Eating Madelines with Proust in Seattle

Sleeping With Proust - Or Not

Last night, tired after returning from a literary soiree, I headed to bed early, and discovered my trusty Kindle was still downstairs, as was the book we bought at the party.  And this week's New Yorker.  Grrrr.


Good old Proust was still on the nightstand, with its (perhaps) mouse-nibbled cover.  I remembered that I had left off at the Verdurin's dinner party at Raspelier, over-looking the coast and not far from Balbec where Proust often spent part of the summer.  This is Cities of the Plain.


Charlus prefers strawberry juice to  orangeade, both homemade by Madame Verdurin's esteemed cook, no doubt.  By the way he makes his choice, the narrator notes the Baron's preference for men over woman and speculates that he's a woman in a man's body.  Wow!  Was Proust ever ahead of his time!   Transgender stuff.  The Baron goes on to make a fool of Madame Verdurin, not a terribly difficult thing to do.  She's such a fraud and a social climber and manipulative to the max, one of these great characters that we love to hate.  I nodded off after a half-dozen pages, which I would have done with even the most hair-raising thriller, so don't blame Proust.  Tired is tired.  And I like it ever so much.   I am tempted to get Proust on the Kindle, too.  


If you are a Proust scholar (I am not, alas)  or  take an interest in literary studies, I have the monograph for you. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/new_literary_history/summary/v042/42.1.lurz.html

Back in the day, when I had perhaps ambitions to be a scholar, I would have dived into this.   At least Proust and I are in synch in that it is summer in Balbec and summer in Foxborough, although the rains and cool weather are more spring-like.  The calendar says summer.  Now do I want Orangeade or Strawberry Juice?  Hmmmm. 


Odette, the Other One

Pondering Proust in Montgomeryville, PA

A newspaperman in Montgomeryville, PA found a great column piece when he ordered a little package of madelines at the local coffee shop. Ya just never know!

Proust Inspires a Column  

I did like his answers to the quiz, which normally I don't, but these had the right amount of insouciance. 


Odette, the other one

Proust in The Park and the Proust Support Group

Some nice photos and observations:


  Proust in the Park 

And if you live near Venice, no not THAT Venice, you may want to join the Proust Support Group.

  Proust Support Group

Proust Anecdote

Good morning, readers!  It's 10:55 a.m. in Foxborough, and for the first time in weeks, the sun is shining.  I got so excited I cooked steak and eggs for breakfast, hoping that will see us through the day.  The orange cat is patrolling the house, hoping to sneak out and bag a chipmunk or two.
 The Huffington Post review of the new movie that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival (Tree of Life) has a fun Proust anecdote.  Read down a few paragraphs and you'll find it.  Movie sounds wonderful.  How often can one actually say that?

Me?  I am trying to catch up on this season's Treme, which is so good, and I love the multiple story lines that converge and diverge.  Kind of like Proust. 

I'm almost finished with my Traveler's Tales of Spain book, and ready to dive into the narrator's problems again, and everyone is at Balbec, so the reading will even be seasonal.  


Here is the link: 

Fun Proust Anecdote 

Odette 

Reading Proust in Minneapolis

Proust has done it again!  He's listed in the top 10 books of all time.   These are all novels except for one short story collection, by the way, and the list has strengthened my resolve to read Middlemarch,  the only book on the list I haven't read. I'm finishing a book of Traveler's Tales of Spain, as we are visiting there before the end of the year.

It's been a week for azaleas and rhododendrons (not hawthorns) here in Massachusetts.  Rains every day and we see the sun only rarely.  Today, as least was warm and I was able to weed the garden.   The narrator would still be bundled up in coats and scarves.  Perhaps I put the winter coats, gloves and scarves away prematurely.   

 Here is the link to the best books:

Top 10 Books of All Time

Odette

Fortuny and Proust Revisted

Fortuny Dress

Photographe à Dublin  has reminded me  of the relationship  of Fortuny and Proust.  A Google search has provided the following links.  Google is actually supposed to be sending me Proust links, but the well has dried up lately and my reading of Proust has been temporarily suspended due to lots of projects at home and an upcoming trip to Spain and Portugal which requires some in depth reading about those two countries.  The nice thing about Proust is that you can pick up the book after long intervals and come right back into the story.  I left my friends in La Raspeliere and now as summer approaches (here in New England it seems to be a long time coming) I will try to return to the narrator and his mild adventures. 


Here are the Fortuny links.  When I traveled to Venice, I had no idea there was a Fortuny museum there, alas.  Venice, like Paris, was one of those cities which lived up to its billing.  San Francisco always has, as well.  Without more ado,  some great Fortuny links, many with mentions of Proust. 
Mariano FORTUNY Y MADRAZO:     http://www.senses-artnouveau.com/biography.php?artist=FOR 

Fortuny in Wikipedia:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariano_Fortuny_%28designer%29   

  Fortuny Museum in Venice: 

http://www.whattoseeinvenice.com/fortuny-museum-venice/  

The Fortuny gown: http://www.chick.net/proust/fortuny.html   

Fortuny museum photo:   http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevharb/3309836553/in/photostream/   

Proust Inspires Pulitzer Winner

Janet Egan's novel, A Visit From the Good Squad, inspired by Proust's great work, has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize.  Egan's novel, like Proust's is obsessed with time.  For all of us Proust People, this is an exciting day.  Congratulations to Egan on her stellar achievement. 


Read about it here: 
Egan Wins Pulitzer

Reading Proust in Arizona

Aside from the warm weather, this would be a good week for Proust fans to be in Arizona!  Hey, it's not all guns, cacti and canyons.  I love Arizona, the scenery and the sky and the warmth.  Here is the link: 


Proust in Arizona  


You find people celebrating Proust in the farthest corners.  Flagstaff as well as Foxborough.  Isn't it wonderful?   

I spent a fantastic week in Flagstaff at the Indian Powwow many many years ago, a week  I should write about.  The area around Flagstaff purportedly has mystical powers.  The peaks (San Francisco, I think, but memory is treacherous) are holy.  Sedona is so lovely it breaks your heart, all those red rocks, the high desert, the light, the possibilties.  

Odette