Letter to Marcel Proust

Dear M. Proust,

First, an apology. When I tried to read excerpts of your tome In Search of Lost Time as an undergraduate French major—well, let’s just say I wasn’t your biggest fan. Your sentences are often very long, and as a student of French, it seemed impossible to keep track of the subject and predicate of each sentence, let alone come to any deeper understanding of your meaning. I complained a lot, and am pretty sure I read some Cliff’s Notes in the bookstore on more than one occasion, although in my defense, I never bought them.

Fast forward ten years. Several months ago, I saw that a local independent bookstore, Skylight Books, is hosting a Proust reading group that over the course of the next year is dedicating itself to working through all six volumes of In Search of Lost Time. I signed up immediately, thinking that if I’m ever going to get through all six books, I will need a support group. Plus, the book group is reading you in translation instead of in your original French, which is a definite bonus.

Tonight, I’m headed off to the third book group meeting and I can only describe my feelings for your work this way: I am in love. Granted, I’m only a couple hundred pages into Volume II, Within a Budding Grove, which technically means we’re still in the honeymoon phase of our relationship, but so far, I’m in love. I’ve actually said in the course of an ordinary conversation with other people, “This reminds me of something I was just reading in Proust.” And in describing your work, I think I have actually used the phrase, “my Bible,” which probably made you throw-up in your mouth a little. I know this means I’ve entered some strange new circle of the elitist world of literary snobbery with which I already run, but I can’t help it. I’m in love. And here’s the thing: I thought I would be the youngest person in the book group, that it would be me and a gaggle of octogenarian women (my interests—and sometimes my clothing—tend towards the 80-something crowd), but I was totally wrong. I’m not even closest to the youngest person in the group, which apparently has had record community interest.

And in this world of Twitter communication and overly busy people answering email while waiting in line for their coffee, isn’t it wonderful to spend seven pages reading a description of a woman’s dress? Isn’t it wonderful to make the time to relish four pages of description of one flower in a vast garden of flowers? One phrase in a musical composition? You write with such wit about social interactions that I’ve actually laughed out loud while reading your words, and your writing about love is nothing short of amazing. In just the first two volumes, you’ve already touched on classism, homosexuality and even disability, subjects I didn’t expect to discover in a work written almost one hundred years ago.

I’ve said it already: I am in love. And I want to thank you for your keen eye on the intricacies of the world, how we interact with and honor and hurt other people, how memory works, how we fall in love and grieve and rally ourselves beyond unbearable pain. I feel transported every time I open your work and while I’m eager to get to the end—to find out how Swann and Odette actually ended up married, what happens with Gilberte, how young Marcel finds his way in the world as an adult—I also feel so grateful for the journey. This time, there won’t be any Cliff’s Notes—I’ll take every page you wrote.

Most Sincerely,

Andrea

Andrea Scarpino is the west coast Bureau Chief of POTB

You can visit her at: www.andreascarpino.com

Author: stevekuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University View all posts by stevekuusisto