Began this business last November on a deck in the forest. Many lunchtimes with Proust in hand. 10 page stints.
Rare train rides or flights make more inroads.
Proust is perfect for short train rides, as I scribbled elsewhere.
Some bedtime work but progress is slower there. Two or three pages under lamplight, then snoring. At that rate…6 volumes…they are all big volumes…
“How is it?” I’ve been asked. For a while I would talk about how he teaches you how to read him. Brings you to him. The slumberous opening is a good barrier — I fell there 2 or 3 times prior. But it gets you fit, and after that…
For a while I also said that the thrill in Proust is what he will think next, not what will happen next.
At the moment, I am realising how important mood is to receiving the text in all its glory. Some days every page seems full of sparkle and glories. Others, I am counting the pages as I turn them.
There is some much to read – I have given Marcel so much of my short life. Look at the dying Hitchens, for example. I’d like to ask him if he has regrets…about reading Proust for so many of his days.
But I need to slow down. Wait for the moods.
Is Proust funny? People say so. I’ve laughed aloud two or three times at most. Over that many pages it is not a lot.
