I am now on page 142 in my Gallimard Folio edition - far beyond where I expected to be, but still, I have been in a definite slump the last week. I'd like to blame it on being sick, which I have been, but to be honest, I've not had much to say.
Don't get me wrong, I am still as much in thrall of the writing as before and am enjoying reading every day. But the foundations of such a monumental work are just beginning to be laid out, characters developed, places described...
I also just finished the chapter on "How to be a Good Friend" in de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your LIfe and found myself rather disturbed by his revelations on Proust's dim view of friendship as a fraud, an insincerity, a polite hypocrisy. And not because of the idea, so much as the grain of truth that lies within. He felt that friendship was no more than "...a lie which seeks to make us believe that we are not irremediably alone."
It is no wonder then, if he felt that true honesty in friendship would be its undoing, and he sought to conceal it by being overly generous, fawningly attentive, self-deprecating, amusing, extremely witty, and modest to a fault. This, of course, resulted in his being described as the greatest of friends, munificent, the ultimate listener... when one is a good listener, then people concentrate on talking about themselves, diverting attention away from what they may think of you. He had very low self-esteem, with a pathological need to love and be loved, which paradoxically drove him to such behavior, yet only served to reinforce his dim views of friendship and love. "Friendship does not exist," and "Love is a trap and only reveals itself to us by making us suffer," he said.
Such sentiments can, in part, explain his retraction from the world and his retreat to one of his own making by writing La Recherche. He said, "In reading, friendship is suddenly brought back to its original purity. There is no false amiability with books. If we spend the evening with these friends, it is because we genuinely want to."
Quelle tristesse... quelle vérité...
À bientôt,
Michel
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