Marcelle Proust

http://marcellepwrites.blogspot.com/

"Marcelle" Proust is blogging. What is weird is that I had a dim idea of writing a short story from the viewpoint of a Marcelle Proust from Paris, Texas and paralleling (but nowhere NEAR as long) some of the ideas in Proust ouvre. My idea was to give her a modern malady like chronic fatigue syndrome. Take my idea and run with it. Ideas can't be copyrighted. Ideas, like butterflies, are free.

It is damn near impossible to come up with a really original idea these days. In my work in process, Festival Madness, I had someone flying an ultralight with Monarch butterfly wings and damned if that exact machine wasn't in the paper six months later. I had a lowlife named Earl before the TV show in another, still unpubbed, novel. I set a crime in a parking garage in Cambridge, MA and months later, there was a crime in the parking garage. Last night a woman in my writing group mentioned that a famous mystery novelist is setting a book in the Baltic. Hey, that's my territory. It's taking forever and a day to get these books published, and every day I feel more unoriginal. Next thing I know, someone else will be blogging Proust in Foxborough. Merde.

Second hand Odette

Proust and Pere Lachaise

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=travel&res=9D03EFD81639F934A25755C0A962948260

The link is to an old (1984) NY times article about Pere Lachaise, the cemetery where Proust and many others, the noted and the unknown, are buried. 3000 cats (I assume feral) reputedly live in the cemetery. The writer is seeking Proust's grave, pictured above.

Odette

Join A Proust Discussion Group

Only $220 per year. Such a deal. See link.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2007/04/08/an_old_book_party_grows_young/

Food in Proust

Ye gods! I'm reading the New Yorker this week and Adam Gopnik mentions all the food in Proust, implying there are treatises (but hopefully no blogs) about it. So here is the link. Gopnik is a great writer who has a book about Paris (the city not the celebrity) out.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/04/09/070409crbo_books_gopnik?printable=true

Right now I'm reading the antithesis of Proust: Three Trapped Tigers, about pre-Castro (barely) Havanna. Of course the interesting thing is that it's about young men, one a journalist, the other a musician and their lives. And music. And writing. And women and men. Come to think of it, sort of like Proust. Only in a 1959 vein. Try to imagine. It's a great book. Not a quick read, but the puns and descriptions are fantastic. Like Proust, except for maybe the puns. He does have lots of humor which flew right by me the first times I read The Masterpiece.

Just today in the NYTimes book review section, I read that after a few years, one actually forgets almost all of any given book, hence the need to reread.

Do it!

Odette

Proust in comic Form?

From a blog:

Proust Adaptation Wins Literary Award

I'm on super-shaky ground with any story that makes me try to understand French, contextualize French literary awards and remember what little I know about Marcel Proust, but ActuaBD.com notes that Stephane's Heuet's adaptation into comics form of the Swann in Love portion of the Swann's Way portion of Remembrances of Things Past, which I believe is Heuet's fourth volume in the series, has won a general arts award. The prize in question is the Prix des excrivains du Sud and it's given to a work in any art form, this being the first time it's gone to a work in comics form. I don't have any basis to know if this is important or trivial, but I thought it worth a mention. NBM was publishing the English-language version of this series, last I knew. posted 6:02 am PST Permalink

This is the link this came from: scan for
http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/site/proust_adaptation_wins_literary_award/

Swann and Odette

Still reading about Swann and Odette and the early day of their "love." It goes on forever. Proust uses pages to describe the "little phrase." I have listened to the Sonata a few more times and it sounds better with familiarity.

In the meantime, here is a site with general Proust information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust

I am waiting for some action at the Verdurin's dinner parties.

Au Revoir!

More Proust Sites

http://www.tempsperdu.com/ops.html

Reading along and listening to the Saens-Saens Sonata with nothing to report.

Helas

Odette

Swann Song

Still reading up a storm about Swann and Odette and the Vinteiul Sonata. I've been listening to the Saens-Saens Sonata which is reputed to have inpsired Proust, and I think I've identified the "little phrase" but I really need to sit down and just listen to the music without distractions. The narrator never mentions what the Verdurin's serve for dinner. Hmmmm.

The thing is, with a whole nightstand full of books, I still pick up Proust regularly.

Odette

Proust on Ebay: The Ultimate Weirdness

This is a cool Proust site that you will want to investigate.
http://www.themodernword.com/scriptorium/proust.html

I am reading about Swann and Odette now, but nothing has piqued my interest enough to post about. Mme. Verdurin is an interesting type and I wrack my brain to figure out if I have actually known anyone like her. The hostess with the leastest. Somehow, she seems very modern with her self-absorption and her pretense at intellectualism and her pushing of minor musicians and artists. And her jealousy. One could write an entire book about Mme. Verdurin, n'est pas?

Odett

Blogger hosed my "Odette" profile when blogger went to it's new software. Lots of grousing among the rank and file. What's a blogger to do?

Proust Film

Here is a review of one of the attempts to film Proust. The movie was actually very good. We saw it in Harvard Square (where else) with a few others. Not exactly SRO, but a decent crowd.

http://www.filmscouts.com/SCRIPTs/review.cfm?File=tem-ret

Proust and Food

Some quotes I found.

Proust, Marcel Quotes
"Bourbon does for me what the piece of cake did for Proust."Walker Percy (1916-1990)


"In the light of what Proust wrote with so mild a stimulus, it is the world's loss that he did not have a heartier appetite. On a dozen Gardiner's Island oysters, a bowl of clam chowder, a peck of steamers, some bay scallops, three sauteed soft-shelled crabs, a few ears of fresh picked corn, a thin swordfish steak of generous area, a pair of lobsters, and a Long Island Duck, he might have written a masterpiece."A.J. Liebling

I'm chronicling all the references I found to food, and there are more than Walker Percy or A.J. Liebling imagined. I am interested in the Verdurin's dinner parties. Will the narrator mention the menu? Good stuff coming up.

Monet had the perfect life in his later years. A beautiful kitchen and dining room, a fantastic gardens, and many friends who came to visit ON HIS SCHEDULE. The whole household ran on his schedule, even more so than Marcel's Aunt Leonie. It's hard for me to imagine anything running on MY schedule. Women accommodate others. So be it.

Odette

Madamoiselle Vintieul

I real the narrator's account of Vintieul's only daughter and her female lover spitting on the composer's photograph. A sad scene, and yet the narrator seems to have a strange sympathy with the daugter, and he feels that although she is trying very hard to be evil, she at heart, cannot be. People in Proust are very strange, almost like in real life. Tante Leonie finally dies, and Francoise, whom she terrorized, is bereft.

I like how Proust compared Francoise and some of the denizens of Combray and environs to medieval sculptures in the churches. Haven't you ever seen a face or recognized a character that belonged to another age? Happens all the time. How clever of Proust to see it. I admire Proust more with every page I read. His genius shines in every sentence.

Go ye forth and read Proust.

Odette

Proust News

I don't have any news, but here is a link to the NY Times, which has update on Proust. How cool is that?

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/marcel_proust/index.html

Two Beautiful Phrases

No, it's not the "petite phrase" from Vinteuil!

". . . experience of life stored up and slowly ripening in one's heart."

About the rain coming up suddenly.
"Its drops, like migrating birds which fly off in a body at a given moment, would come down out of the sky in close marching order. . . . the sky would be as greatly darkened as by the swallows flying south.

What fantastic images. I love the word "Montjouvain." Wouldn't you like to live in a place with this name? Montjouvain The word makes me see fountains and hills and beauty, like Tuscany. Montjouvain.

I live in Foxborough, which sounds nice until it's abbreviated "Foxboro," which is short and turgid.