Yet Another!

http://www.involuntarymemory.blogspot.com/

A whole blog of people reading and discussing Proust. The second I've found. It's more than a movement. It's a cult!

Odette - the other one.

The Whole World is Blogging Proust

This is so cool. It's a movement. A non-violent revolution, like singing Alice's Restaurant. Everyone is blogging Proust. Here's another one.

http://lettersfromalibrarian.blogspot.com/2007/05/some-fragments.html

And yet another potential Proust blogger: http://annarubanova.blogspot.com/2007/05/i-was-gonna-finally-consider-possibly.html

Let's all tell her to get cracking. Open the book and read. And write. Zowie!

Lift an elbow with Proust at the Pub

From an Australian newspaper article. What would Marcel have to say about being discussed in an Aussie pub? With Homer, yet. I think he would be all right with it. Sorta.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/entertainment/another-epic-session-at-the-pub/2007/05/03/1177788305144.html

Writing Down the Tubes

Posted to the wrong blog. This was for my writing blog, Suck It Up. Oh well, maybe Marcel would understand about the writing angst and the snobbery. Actually, it's not even snobbery, it's the icy New England soul which never warms up. Brrrrrr!


So. . . a few more queries to send out, concentrating on World of Mirrors, since foreign settings seem to be pretty hot and due to Lives Of Others, maybe agents know who the Stasi are, and so on. Last feedback is that no one likes my character. I made her kind of in your face and not a shrinking violet. She's made some mistakes but she's trying to get on the right track. I dunno, I dunno. I have my new synopsis and we'll see what happens, if anything. I have an ace in the hole (I think), which I will play after 100, count 'em, 100 rejections. Quite a ways to go.

After a visist to the Norfolk County Jail, I found out that Festival Madness had a few errors in the jail visit scene, so I corrected those. Nothing beats research and the horse's mouth. Nothing.

Had lots of non-writing "stuff" this week. Doing a daily walk or a health club visit. I have noticed that no one at the health club, so called wellness (that word sets my teeth of edge) is very friendly. The staff exhibit what I consider a false heartiness, like someone who has been drilled to speak to you when you come in the door, whether they want to or not, and it's usually or not. Somehow, one can tell.

But that sugary sucking up pales beside the patrons. I don't think I've had more than one or two friendly smiles in 3 years. I've sort of given up smiling in return. Is this because it's the Boston area? Is fitness such a damned serious thing that requires total concentration and grimness? I don't think so. Nobody smiles. Nobody laughs. Sober faces all. God, it's depressing. The trainers seem to be bored out of their minds unless a studly guy gets a gorgeous girl which doesn't happen all that often. I'd find another club but the last one wasn't very congenial either.

When we were in Georgia earlier in the winter, of course everyone spoke and acted friendly (genuinely so) and it's always kind of a culture shock. It takes me a while to be friendly in return after New England's icy demeanor.

Cell phones are in theory banned, and everyone yaks on in the women's dressing room. I can't begin to describe the triteness of the conversations I've overheard. Right up there with those in the grocery store. "I'm standing by the produce."

Enough grumping for one day. Maybe even the week. Smile a bit. Say hello. Like you mean it. What have you got to lose?

Grapeshot

The Fool and the Gold Digger

Last night I read deep into the sordid business where the Verdurins drop Swann and co-opt Odette. Swann is so ridiculously in love that he is completely blind to what he needs to do to bring Odette back into the fold, so to speak. Cut the purse strings. He realizes it, but then makes some stupid justifications. If a man ever told himself egregious lies, it is Swann. All the while he is thinking that Odette is fat, stupid, has inexecrable taste in art, theatre and friends.

One wants to slap Swann silly. Reading becomes painful. I'm 250 pages into Swann and hoping the torture will soon be over. Bring on Albertine, Charlus, just about anyone but the lovesick Swann.

Arrrrghhh! Swann in Love? Swann in Denial? Swann Being Stupid? Swann's Song? Swann Clueless.

Odettte (not that one!)

The Infamous Proust Questionnaire

The Infamous Proust Questionnaire! Seems to be making the rounds of the Internet.

I found it at: http://www.chick.net/proust/question.html. She was undoubtedly quoting from another source, so I'm not sure where this came from, except maybe Vanity Fair. Vanity Fair. Fair Vanity. So apt. Voila!


In the back pages of Vanity Fair each month, readers find The Proust Questionnaire, a series of questions posed to famous subjects about their lives, thoughts, values and experience.

A regular reference to Proust in such a major publication struck me as remarkable, and it was only until I'd read Andre Maurois's Proust: Portrait of a Genius that I understood what this was all about.

The young Marcel was asked to fill out questionnaires at two social events: one when he was 13, another when he was 20. Proust did not invent this party game; he is simply the most extraordinary person to respond to them. At the birthday party of Antoinette Felix-Faure, the 13-year-old Marcel was asked to answer the following questions in the birthday book, and here's what he said:

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
To be separated from Mama
Where would you like to live?
In the country of the Ideal, or, rather, of my ideal
What is your idea of earthly happiness?
To live in contact with those I love, with the beauties of nature, with a quantity of books and music, and to have, within easy distance, a French theater
To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
To a life deprived of the works of genius
Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
Those of romance and poetry, those who are the expression of an ideal rather than an imitation of the real
Who are your favorite characters in history?
A mixture of Socrates, Pericles, Mahomet, Pliny the Younger and Augustin Thierry
Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
A woman of genius leading an ordinary life
Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
Those who are more than women without ceasing to be womanly; everything that is tender, poetic, pure and in every way beautiful
Your favorite painter?
Meissonier
Your favorite musician?
Mozart
The quality you most admire in a man?
Intelligence, moral sense
The quality you most admire in a woman?
Gentleness, naturalness, intelligence
Your favorite virtue?
All virtues that are not limited to a sect: the universal virtues
Your favorite occupation?
Reading, dreaming, and writing verse
Who would you have liked to be?
Since the question does not arise, I prefer not to answer it. All the same, I should very much have liked to be Pliny the Younger.
This questionnaire tells us much about two things, the character of petiit Marcel, and the amusement of the young in the Belle Epoque. We see Marcel as a sweet and dreamy Mama's boy, brainy, aesthetic, a young citizen of the world with much sympathy for the feminine. What he sees in Pliny the Younger, famous only for speaking and writing letters, is hard to grasp.
What is fascinating about this questionnaire is that it was considered so great an amusement to very young people in Proust's time. It is hard to imagine a party of 13-year-olds in these times being quizzed about their favorite virtues, painters or characters of fiction and history. If the questionnaire were not to smack of exam, it would have to ask "what's your favorite TV show?" or "what's your favorite band?"
Seven years after the first questionnaire, Proust was asked, at another social event, to fill out another; the questions are much the same, but the answers somewhat different, indicative of his traits at 20:
Your most marked characteristic?
A craving to be loved, or, to be more precise, to be caressed and spoiled rather than to be admired
The quality you most like in a man?
Feminine charm
The quality you most like in a woman?
A man's virtues, and frankness in friendship
What do you most value in your friends?
Tenderness - provided they possess a physical charm which makes their tenderness worth having
What is your principle defect?
Lack of understanding; weakness of will
What is your favorite occupation?
Loving
What is your dream of happiness?
Not, I fear, a very elevated one. I really haven't the courage to say what it is, and if I did I should probably destroy it by the mere fact of putting it into words.
What to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes?
Never to have known my mother or my grandmother
What would you like to be?
Myself - as those whom I admire would like me to be
In what country would you like to live?
One where certain things that I want would be realized - and where feelings of tenderness would always be reciprocated. [Proust's underlining]
What is your favorite color?
Beauty lies not in colors but in thier harmony (oops!)
What is your favorite flower?
Hers - but apart from that, all
What is your favorite bird?
The swallow
Who are your favorite prose writers?
At the moment, Anatole France and Pierre Loti
Who are your favoite poets?
Baudelaire and Alfred de Vigny
Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Hamlet
Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
Phedre (crossed out) Berenice
Who are your favorite composers?
Beethoven, Wagner, Shuhmann
Who are your favorite painters?
Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt
Who are your heroes in real life?
Monsieur Darlu, Monsieur Boutroux (professors)
Who are your favorite heroines of history?
Cleopatra
What are your favorite names?
I only have one at a time
What is it you most dislike?
My own worst qualities
What historical figures do you most despise?
I am not sufficiently educated to say
What event in military history do you most admire?
My own enlistment as a volunteer!
What reform do you most admire?
(no response)
What natural gift would you most like to possess?
Will power and irresistible charm
How would you like to die?
A better man than I am, and much beloved
What is your present state of mind?
Annoyance at having to think about myself in order to answer these questions
To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
Those that I understand
What is your motto?
I prefer not to say, for fear it might bring me bad luck.

The second set of questions and answers give us Proust as a young man, mad for conquest, drawn to love crossing conventional sexual lines, still fixated on Mama. His aesthetic sensibilities have grown more serious (I, however, would not give up Mozart for Schumann, with all his interminable faux endings.)

In these responses are early threads of character found in the narrator of Remembrance.
The Vanity Fair Story...When the editors of Vanity Fair gathered to discuss a regular interview format for coming issues, one staff member suggested creating a "Vanity Fair Questionnaire." The magazine's London editor, Henry Porter, and Editor-in-Chief Graydon Carter, brought up the idea of the Proust Questionnaire, which met with the hearty approval of the numerous Proust afficianados on the staff. Senior Editor Aimee Bell , a fan herself, took on the task of researching and producing this feature, with the assistance of the University of Kansas professor Theodore Johnson, a noted authority on Proust. Since July of 1993, a major celebrity has responded to a version of the questionnaire, found in the back pages of each issue.
I mentioned to Ms. Bell that I had not dared to contact Professor Johnson, or any of the other university Proustians, because my own work was so unacademic. "Why?" she said, "Proust would have liked it."

P Segal

Filet of Sole and Japanese Salad

Finally, last night, a hint of what the diners at the Vintieul's might be eating. Lots of conversation and insights into Mme and M's petty minds, but damn little vision of the table and what's on it, what the guests wear, stage directions, and so forth. Interesting. Not how I would have written it, well, of course not. Maybe it would be interesting to write it in a more modern idiom. Hmmm. Think I'll pass on that. Sole and Japanese Salad. No idea what the Japanese Salad was (Daikon?) but I'll try to find out.

More Proust bloggers. The whole world is blogging Proust, and this is so cool. I feel like part of a movement. Son quatre gats, so to speak.

Here's another nice blog:
http://nhw.livejournal.com/834067.html?view=3126547#t3126547

Odette

I keep seeing something called a Proust quiz that I will report on next. Suspect it has nothing to do with our narrator.

O

Proust and Vermeer

Proust and his writing are alive and well and living all over the world. Before I began this blog, I had no idea. Now I feel at one with a great wave of readers, working their way thru the volumes, reading and talking about In Search of Love Time.

In Swann's way, Swann toys with an essay on Vermeer.

http://beggarsofazure.blogspot.com/2007/04/book-seventeen.html

Yesterday, 4/29/07, Quillhill of Angstadt (what a nom!) writes in his blog (link is above):

"The last trip Marcel Proust made out of his apartment was to see three Vermeers on display at a museum in the Tuileries. In his early years he also traveled to Delft and saw View of Delft. Though we are never told any details about the essay on Vermeer that Charles Swann is ocassionally writing, likely it would have included the epiphany described by the narrator and incorporated with Proust's own experiences in the sixth part of his novel. As in Mr. Jost's film, we quote in conclusion a passage from Proust that sends shivers down our spine:
All that we can say is that everything is arranged in this life as though we entered it carrying a burden of obligations contracted in a former life; there is no reason inherent in the conditions of life on this earth that can make us consider ourselves obliged to do good, to be kind and thoughtful, even to be polite, nor for an atheist artist to consider himself obliged to begin over again a score of times a piece of work the admiration aroused by which will matter little to his worm-eaten body, like the patch of yellow wall painted with so much skill and refinement by an artist destined to be forever unknown and barely identified under the name Vermeer."

And in the Boston Globe yesterday, an interview with a so-called "avant guard" artist, Lydia Davis, who has translated Proust, Swann's Way.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/04/29/qa_with_lydia_davis/?page=2

Everyone is reading Proust!

Is it spring? Is it because we are all fatigued by dystopian novels and Iraq and the weird globally warmed weather? I found yet another Proust blog, with good discussion in the comments.

http://somanybooksblog.com/2007/04/26/proust-and-i/

Marcel is kind of a whiny butt, however, there is a kind of order in his world, at least until society crumbles and reforms, and the middle-class Mme. Vintieul becomes high society. She is such a great character, and not at all likeable.

I am bogged down 170 pages into the novel, and am trying to get through Three Trapped Tigers first. Meanwhile everyone is reading Proust and blogging Proust. How cool is that?

Odette

Yet Another Proust Blogger

http://www.newfred.com/2007/04/more-proust.html

I don't know whether you know about the facility Google has that will search the net for you and bring any mention of a topic to your mailbox. That's how I have been finding my fellow Proust readers and bloggers, the literary and the obsessed.

Proust generates many mentions per day, most of them somewhat frivolous, but every now and then one finds gems, pearls among the swine, as we say. The swine appear to have eaten melamine, too, alas. This little piggy doesn't go to market. Speaking of food, I noticed a cookbook advertised somewhere like Proust's mother might have written.

Who knows? Terribly disappointed by the books I have recently begun, so I'll trudge back to Marcel, who puts together such beautiful sentences.

Odette

Another Proust Blog

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/04/looking_ahead_to_things_past.html

I liked the voice of the blogger. Lots of comments. Didn't read them all. Just back from the Big Apple. Saw the "Barcelona" show at the Met. Good stuff, some of which reminded me of Marcel.

More anon.

Clive James likes Proust

Recently I paraphrased Clive James in my "other" blog, and now I find out that he likes not just Henry James, but you know who. From the New York Post Online edition.

By WILLIAM GEORGIADES

April 22, 2007 -- CLIVE James' "Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories From History and the Arts" (Norton, $35) is a fascinating and endlessly re-readable collection of biographical essays that range from Charlie Chaplin to Margaret Thatcher. Often, a subject is merely a jumping-off place - an essay on Rilke becomes a meditation on artists' political convictions. Elsewhere, his passion for Proust leads the reader to re-explore the French intellectual's work. Like the very best books, the author's well-considered passions help ignite our own.

Discussing Proust and Plato

Turn off your TV week is soon upon us. Bruce Watson, in the Amherst Bulletin speculates what might happen .

"This year, TV Turn-off Week will once again change America. For one whole week, sets across the country, whether plasma, HDTV, or old black and whites, will be turned OFF! Americans will spend their evenings in deep discussion of Proust and Plato. And no one will even care who the father of Anna Nicole's baby might be."

For the full story see his article.
http://www.amherstbulletin.com/story/id/38447/

Do YOU think America will be discussing Proust and Plato? Do YOU think Americans will turn off the TV?

I'll bet my dog-eared copy of Proust that they will not.

Odette

Serendipity

I found a cool French blog with a great painting of Proust: http://ausgezeichnet.over-blog.com/