I am wondering whether I should just put away all the extraneous biographies, reading guides, art guides and other miscellany about Proust and just read the book.
On the one hand, "the book" is really the main course, if I may use gastronomic metaphors, and all the rest are little side dishes and condiments - tasty in themselves, some quite delicious, in fact. However, are they adding flavor, umami, if you will, or masking it? This is my dilemma.
Proust, of course, who is adamant that the man is not the book, would without hesitation tell me to cease and desist all my extracurricular reading. And he does have a point. All these guides and biographies are incredibly fascinating - Proust and his environs, the rich panoply of people and places in his life, on whom so many characters and places are modeled - and provide the reader with a great deal of "inside' information. But having all this information also invariably leads to comparisons between the book and the man, the fiction and his real life. And once read, cannot be erased from one's mind, perhaps creating a bias that would not be there otherwise.
On the other hand, the side dishes and condiments can also add to and complement the flavor of the main dish, enhancing and bringing out subtle flavors that might be missed without them. I am certainly finding Proust's life to be intriguing, and seeing the parallels to it in the book.
I have read that when Proust realized he was not ever going to have the life that he desired, he decided to create it in his book: in his introduction to the Moncrieff translation, Joseph Wood Krutch wrote, "Having come at last to reject completely that active participation in life which had never, in his case, been very full, he was determined to construct for himself out of memory and imagination, a more than satisfactory substitute. That is what Remembrance of Things Past is."
So, perhaps it is better to just read what it is Proust wanted his life to be, rather than what is was. Kind of like seeing the movie first, then reading the book. Because, invariably, when one reads the book first, the movie is often disappointing - they've cut things out and added others, changed the plot, added new characters, taken others (always your favorites)... things you'd never notice if you hadn't read the book first (the bias I mentioned above....).
I'd love to hear what you all think... I'm torn!! I do know, however, that just reading the book would simply my life immensely, as I often do not know which book to pick up first, and so end up reading a chapter out of three or four.....but it is all SO fascinating!!
Help!!!
I too would like to know how other Proust newbies are coping.
ReplyDeleteI too have temporarily stopped reading about the book and the author at length. Unsurprisingly, there's more written about him and the book than the book itself.
I don't regret the info I've read so far (but I don't want to come out of the 365 day experience having spent more timing reading about Proust than having read ISOLT itself).
That it might feel "tainting" is obvious, but I think it's useful to know some things about his characters in advance, especially about the portrayal of gender and to make up my mind about how convincing those portrayals are as I encounter them (a bit like understanding how odd Michelangelo's female sculptures look).
I'm comparing Proust to Caravaggio. Having looked at the paintings (and been mystified) and even having seen the film, it's useful then to read the Peter Robb biography which explains all (or as much as anyone can reasonably guess).
Or the female painter, Artemisia Gentileschi. You wouldn't rely on just the film or just any one of the literary biographies (e.g. Anna Banti) - you have to have read ALL the biographies to come to grips with the artist and her work.
Michael - At the moment, I'm formally studying literary perspectives on the Fall of Paris (WW2, le piege/l'exode) and I'm surprised that for such a major event in recent French history, I've come across only a handful of literary and diaristic accounts: Irene Nemirovsky, Bruce Marshall, de Beauvoir's war diary; such a small number of first-hand accounts given so many people fled Paris at the time and in contrast to the reams of stuff written by historians. Perhaps it was just too shameful/terrible for Parisians to write about. Similarly, I'm hoping Proust will shed some light on the times in which he lived, as he experienced it.
Rod