Dave’s Comments (group member since May 24, 2014)

Dave’s comments from the Reading Proust's In Search of Lost Time in 2014 group.

Following through on Will Buckingham's Blog I linked yesterday, now I am reading a book of essays he referenced by Ursala K Le Guin titled "the wave in the mind Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination". In an essay titled "The Writer and the Character" I was impressed with the following quote in which Le Guin talks about Charles Dickens' relationship with David Copperfield to illustrate a point. I have often thought about David Copperfield when I have struggled to understand Proust's use of a First Person Narrator.

"Another way to come at this matter: In so far as the author’s point of view exactly coincides with that of a character, the story isn’t fiction. It’s either a disguised memoir or a fiction-coated sermon. I don’t like the word distancing. If I say there should be a distance between author and character it sounds as if I’m after the “objectivity” pretended to by naive scientists and sophisticated minimalists. I’m not. I’m all for subjectivity, the artist’s inalienable privilege. But there has to be a distance between the writer and the character. The naive reader often does not take this distance into account. Inexperienced readers think writers write only from experience. They believe that the writer believes what the characters believe. The idea of the unreliable narrator takes some getting used to. David Copperfield’s experiences and emotions are very close indeed to those of Charles Dickens, but David Copperfield isn’t Charles Dickens. However closely Dickens “identified with” his character, as we glibly and freudianly say, there was no confusion in Dickens’s mind as to who was who. The distance between them, the difference of point of view, is crucial. David fictionally lives what Charles factually experienced, and suffers what Charles suffered; but David doesn’t know what Charles knows. He can’t see his life from a distance, from a vantage point of time, thought, and feeling, as Charles can. Charles learned a great deal about himself, and so let us learn a great deal about ourselves, through taking David’s point of view, but if he had confused his point of view with David’s, he and we would have learned nothing. We’d never have got out of the blacking factory."

Thanks a bunch Marcelita. Now I have to get some Rhino-Gomenol to complement my Vetiver and Orris-Root in my Proustian oils and ointments kit.

I take deep satisfaction in conjuring up Mme. V (although my favorite conjuring device is the Ouija Board) because if she appears I know that, at least for today, I am not a bore!

I relate to your work experience Jonathan. I was a technical writer for the government for 14 years. My natural style is several long sentences punctuated with a short sentence for emphasis. People squawked about sentence length when I sent drafts around for review. I considered their comments but mostly kept the style as it was.

As for people not reading emails, I relate to that as well. I was seeing that back in the 90's before Twitter existed. Back then everyone wanted to receive information through PowerPoint briefing. They would daydream through the brief and then ask for a copy of the Powerpoint slides to take back and squirrel away in their desk.

I'm a dinosaur, I don't text, tweet or call. I communicate via email that I draft, edit, and spellcheck.

And here is my answer on the Hemingway question. The Internet is almost as good as Marcelita in answering Proustian questions!

http://marcelandbill.wordpress.com/20...

Another link, this time from a blog. I found these articles searching the web to see if Hemingway read Proust. This is hilarious!

http://willbuckingham.com/short-and-m...

A fun article I found from The Telegraph that headlines our Hero

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...

Ah, so the definitive English Edition would be the one translated from the Portugese - Renato, YOU are our translator of choice!

Abigail's Party looks interesting.

Yes, the hostess everyone loves to hate. And she has a long memory too. She didn't forget The Queen of Naples duplicity in protecting Charlus - spies, all spies! What was her version of their plot - and invasion of Balbec by Germans, Italians and Japanese?

Attending a Verdurin Wednesday would surely kill me!

I took that to be a thinly veiled allusion to Proust own writing experience. I loved the other quote you mentioned about Saint Loup and Charlus as well.

Harumpf, I still don't agree that Cottard goes there. Guess I'll have to arm wrestle the translators.

Has anyone identified where in the story Cottard dies and where he comes back to life? Last time I saw him he was writing a prescription for croissants for Madame Verdurin for relief of headaches so she could dodge wartime rationing.

And thankfully without a smartphone! As much as he liked to talk to friends he may have spent 7 years texting his friends.

Thank you Marcelita, I knew you would help us sort through it. For me it is a testament to Proust's genius that he worked on this novel so many years yet remained so stylistically consistent and kept track of such a mass of details. Yes, things got misplaced or turned around at the end, but the dedication and good faith of so many to bring it together after his death is very heartwarming.

Good point Marcelita. You always have the option Sunny of asking the group to help sort out characters and plot points. There is a lot going on here and it would be a shame to just soldier on as the book moves toward conclusion without remembering what events and relationships brought characters to their current circumstance.

Yeah! Sunny has caught up with us!

You can probably just Goggle the characters name and Proust to find who is who on the web. i.e. "Brichot Proust"

Ah, that would be because all the doctors were drafted.

Ah, that would be because all the doctors were drafted.