There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book.

MARCEL PROUST

 

If You’re More of a Movie Person

I just finished book 2 of In Search of Lost Time , and learned that Harold Pinter wrote a screenplay of it in 1972. A producer got the rights to film the novel, and commissioned a screenplay with the idea of first publishing it as a book. I read that if a lot of readers clamoured for the film, the producer hoped to get the money to finance it.

Pinter did try to cover the 3000 or so page book in 120-some pages. It’s sort of a poetic visual rendition. I’m happy to say Pinter avoided voice overs. Most writers would have indulged in them for this. Bravo!

Related articles

• Iconic Playwright Harold Pinter on Truth in Drama (and in Life) (brainpickings.org)
• Harold Pinter sketch rediscovered (nation.com.pk)
• After a 51-year pause, Harold Pinter’s Umbrellas is put on – by you (guardian.co.uk)
• Italian wins free-speech prize for mafia expose (sfgate.com)
• Harold Pinter sent sarcastic letter to pupils who sought hidden meaning in his plays (telegraph.co.uk)
• Charlie Kaufman BAFTA lecture [Part 5] (gointothestory.blcklst.com)
• Pinter, Beckett, Batsheva bright blips on radar (sfgate.com)

 

In Search of Lost Time

He looks rather cute here. Not so neurotic and hard to live with. I finished reading Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, which is like climbing Everest in some ways. I’m a Also I finished William Carter’s Marcel Proust: A Life. What to say? Obviously, whole books have been written on Search, which has its peaks and valleys to continue the mountain analogy, banal as it is.

Here are some quick comments.

1. Thank God, I’m not a hyper-observant person. Granted one can make perceptive observations about every aspect of life, but that’s quite a cross to bear.
2. Wow! Talk about beautiful sentences and masterful descriptions by the dint of perfectionism. (That’s sort of an inside joke since Proust uses “by the dint of” a lot—in some spots three times in two pages.)
3. I loved Françoise, the servant. She was so funny, probably my favorite character. There were times that I had to take a rest because there would be so much about the Narrator’s ruminations or (mis)perceptions on Albertine, which echoed Swann’s relationship with Odette and the Narrator’s with Gilberte. I guess two obsessions per work is my limit.
4. Read a biography before or along with the book (or in lieu of). Some would disagree, but I found Proust’s life fascinating. He was quite neurotic, wearing fur coats inside in the summer, eating little and strange combinations of foods at odd hours, needing his mother so much, and never finding love. The biography will tell you about his relationship with money. He never held a regular job, though his parents encouraged him to find a career. He wound up inheriting a fortune, but frequently had money problems due to lavish spending and poor investments. He had a vexing and contentious relationship with his financial advisor after his parents died. Definitely, a father figure. Yet the book neglects the theme of money, while how we view money does reveal so much about our psyche, though it’s not something we remember the way we remember past loves, friendships.By reading the biography, we learn about the incredible task of editing and publishing this opus, who helped him and how they had to literally cut and paste and decipher Proust’s handwritten pages for the resulting 3300 plus page novel, which sadly wasn’t finally edited when Proust died (so we don’t really have what he finally approved). Proust thought he was going to die and his last months were a race to finish checking the manuscript. another bonus the biography provides is insight into what other writers and Proust’s friends thought of the book. Since some of the characters in the book are patterned after real people, it’s interesting to see what those individuals think of the book.

If you’re not up for a seven volume novel or 800 page biography (that does read much faster than the novel), do try Alain de Botton’s How Proust Can Change Your Life. It should amuse, enlighten and maybe pique your interest in Search.

 

Part Explanation, Part Rant

Nicolas Poussin's oil "Dance to the Music of Time" inspired Powell's title

One thing that has really burned me up about this recent bad job is that I’m working ’round the clock and have so little time to read. On top of that since I’m surrounded by construction noise and just a weird environment that’s got and gives off ADHD, it’s oddly sort of psychically impossible to concentrate and finish a book.

Thus I haven’t been able to read much at all and I do resent this sacrifice.

Happily I’m back home and able to read. There are so many books I’d like to cram in to this month. I’ve got to choose wisely. From the Writers’ Almanac I learned of Anthony Powell‘s A Dance to the Music of Time, a series of 12 novels that Evelyn Waugh says is better than Proust‘s In Search of Lost Time (a.k.a À la recherche du temps perdu). So far it’s splendid. I expect it’ll take a year to read it all since I want to intersperse this read with other books I need to finish.

One of those books is Gifted, which called to me at the library. It’s a very well written young adult novel about an Indian-English girl who’s mathematically gifted and somewhat cursed by a father obsessed with frugality and achievement.

Related articles

• From “The Writer’s Almanac” (conjecturesguilty.wordpress.com)
• The Way By Proust (thehaints.wordpress.com)
• Brideshead Revisited 2: This Time It’s Interiors (viciousimagery.blogspot.com)

 

Proust, My Dictionary and Me

More words from In Search of Lost Time

vade-mecum, p. 250: ‘come with me’; n. guide-book; manual

florilegium, p. 292: n. (pl. -gia) collection of flowers; description of flora

beadle, p. 294: n. officer of parish, church, court, etc., for keeping order; mace-bearer. beadledom, n. petty officialdom

sursum corda, p. 295: n. ‘lift up your hearts’; versicle in church service

to take French leave, p. 313: To take without asking leave or giving any equivalent. The allusion is to the French soldiers, who in their invasions take what they require, and never wait to ask permission of the owners or pay any price for what they take.

The French retort this courtesy by calling a creditor an Englishman (un Anglais), a term in vogue in the sixteenth century, and used by Clement Marot. Even to the present hour, when a man excuses himself from entering a café or theatre, because he is in debt, he says: “Non, non! je suis Anglé ‘ (“I am cleared out”).

“Et aujourd’huy je faictz soliciter
Tous me angloys.”
Guillaume Creton (1520).

French leave. Leaving a party, house, or neighbourhood without bidding goodbye to anyone; to slip away unnoticed.

ephebe, p. 334: A youth between 18 and 20 years of age in ancient Greece

Aspasia, p. 335: Greek courtesan and lover of Pericles who was noted for her wisdom, wit, and beauty

ukase, p. ?: Russian edict

proleptic, p. 387: The anachronistic representation of something as existing before its proper or historical time