Remembrance Of Things Past 2008 discussion

(I'm posting this here in case you're not my "friend" and you'd like another perspective on this volume. I know I'll enjoy keeping up with others' impressions as they finish -- this is a book that begs revisiting -- searching for lost time and all of that.)

Reading Proust may be the ultimate narcissistic exercise. I like to think that I’m no more narcissistic than the next guy, but sheesh – how many hours have I spend in the last two years reading this? How many months?

I’ve been putting off writing this attempt at a review for a couple of several weeks. The night I finished the book, I just sat and sat and thought and thought, and I probably should have gone ahead and written it then, but I thought I should keep digesting it for a little while. Even though I haven’t fully digested it, it’s weighing on me, and I need to set down a few of my thoughts before my own memory fails me and I start the whole blasted thing over again. (Which is inevitable – and I am NOT the type to re-read books typically, so that’s saying a lot.)

SPOILER ALERT
I love writing that in this context– as if there are spoilers in Proust, the anti-plot writer – but there are. Not so much a spoiler in terms of plot this time, but a spoiler in terms of technique. So proceed ahead at your own risk.

I had figured out the project of the book much earlier – the whole reading-the-book-being-a-form-of-reading-yourself thing – because it worked like a charm on me. (Hmmm – I really may be more narcissistic than the next guy.) And even when the foibles of his characters annoyed me, I obviously wasn’t too turned off, even though our narrator provoked my anger on more than one occasion. But when he comes out and says in the last two pages that this whole project may have resulted in his characters resembling monsters, I think I may have gasped aloud. Did anyone else have this reaction? I’m not sure why this was such a revelation for me – I know that Proust ≠ Marcel/narrator (see my reviews of previous volumes of the book for my appreciation of the fun he has with this). And I know that the narrator doesn’t enjoy the company of most of the people that he encounters, so the monster characterization may be warranted in their cases, especially given the traits he emphasizes in them. Maybe it was the ultimate unreliability of the narrator that threw me, or the monster within him. And, this being the ultimate narcissistic exercise, by extension the monster within me….

It makes me look back on all of those dinner parties (finally described as “barbarian festivals” toward the end – YES!), and the jealousies, and the abyss of death between old lovers, and the narrator’s ultimate dissolution into a pedophile, and fully appreciate the nudge-nudge-wink-wink of it all.

The main monsterly feature of our narrator that bothered me throughout the book was his HATRED for other people. How he only feels pleasure when he’s alone, how he views the social contract as being sterile. I’ve read plenty of books before about misanthropists, but maybe the reason it bothered me more here is that there is this incredible tension between that and his urge to produce eternal value for his readers through recovering lost memories. It’s ultimately such a social project, a narcissistic-yet-generous venture, to create this opus in all its ghoulishly reflective detail. Yet the life he chooses to explore most fully, that of his narrator, seems not all that much worth savoring. If “the true paradises are the paradises we have lost,” where is Marcel’s paradise? At those dinner parties? In the throes of jealousy? Waiting for that kiss? But, like pretty much every other thought I’ve had in relation to this book, he even anticipates that observation, saying that he feels his “exaltation and joy” only by probing the hitherto anguish-filled and dissatisfying incidents of his past life.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, is the project that much richer being told in the voice of a depressive misanthropist? Is all that hatred-of-humankind necessary? And I guess, since Proust anticipates my every question, that answer would be yes. Because it wouldn’t be so powerful if some person who had had the gall to be happy with a lover were able to access joy by recovering that memory. The discontent of the narrator’s life puts the transformative nature of his reflective abilities into higher relief.

When I looked back on my review of the volume prior to this one, I realized that I barely touched on any of the plot -- and there actually was some! – because what was more important was the action of the mind. No big revelation there, but a little funny given that there are some major plot twists there. But I had already finished most of this last volume when I wrote that review, so I was already thinking globally. And it’s the action of the mind that sticks with you when all is said and done.

But boy, there were exciting gossipy parts here, parts reveling in the scope of the world he created – Verdurin on morphine! Saint-Loup on coke! The Duchess calling Gilberte a bitch! (I need to look up the French version to see if that translation is fairly accurate.) Having grown to know these people so intimately, it is so much fun to see these sides of them.

And I love how at the end Francoise is implicated in the writing process, mending his torn “paperies.” I have always rooted for Francoise.

Ultimately, the final image at the end was hard-won – the image of the monsters/giants on stilts touching distant epochs of their own pasts. He is so adept at making his readers experience that vertigo for themselves – at least in my narcissistic case. And in the end, maybe the particular philosophies of his narrator are not the point – just the monstrous, exhaustive, and gorgeous vehicle.

Robin wrote: "(I'm posting this here in case you're not my "friend" and you'd like another perspective on this volume. I know I'll enjoy keeping up with others' impressions as they finish -- this is a book that...And in the end, maybe the particular philosophies of his narrator are not the point – just the monstrous, exhaustive, and gorgeous vehicle."

That closing line is wonderful, Robin -- the whole post/review is wonderful, but that line is so powerfully perfect. My own resoponse was to think: "just the monstrous, exhaustive vehicle" -- which could be construed as living through all of one's life both the positives and negatives and the reforming of those ups and downs through the musings of memory.

I have so enjoyed your posts and reviews on this marvelous book. Thank you.