Chekhov’s Mistess

In The Shadow Of Young Bloggers Reading

“Nothing in the World can take the place of persistence,” Calvin Coolidge once said. That phrase, which is part of a longer quote, seems trite in a way, but it meant a lot to me over the course of the fifteen years I went to school at night. I often think of it – “press on” – when I can’t seem to get through something long or difficult. I thought of it when I put “Within a Budding Grove” down at page 469.

Dropping a book at that stage is profoundly disappointing, as if I’m letting the author down. I know you’re probably thinking it should be the other way around, but I feel so affectionate toward Swann’s Way, the first volume of In Search of Lost Time, that it’s one of the few books that I, a slow reader, go back and re-read, particularly for writing inspiration. I feel as though I’m not paying close enough attention (an admonition I give my wife whenever she doesn’t like music I like) or I’m missing something.

But the truth is, many of the things I found wonderful about Swann’s Way seem to irritate me in the second volume, Within a Budding Grove, and the characters in Balbec where much of this volume takes place, seem dull compared to Swann and Odette and Gilbert and others. These characters seem more transient, more of a landscape than a flower, and I want to be involved in Proust’s penetrations of the psyche much more than what is a detailed survey of the strata of the aristocracy.

I don’t mean to say the book is terrible, just that I didn’t find myself excited by volume two the way I was by the first. I’ve heard that the last few volumes of In Search of Lost Time are truly great pieces of art and that M. Proust wrote Swann’s Way and the last two volumes first, then wrote the middle volumes (someone correct me if I’m wrong on that). I’m not the type to skip ahead (I don’t know anyone who is) and looking forward to what’s to come is reason enough to press on, hoping that either the coming pages or my attitude will improve.

In fact, I began this post with the idea of merely announcing that Tito has revived the Proust Reading Group, which is meeting live in San Francisco and textually at their Website. I may even switch over to the Grieve translation of Volume two, “In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower,” just to see if that livens things up, and follow along with Tito’s group.

Some Questions:

I’m curious; do you ever feel you owe an author a certain level of attention, or do they owe you to be good enough to capture it involuntarily? Is that idea different for an accepted classic rather than a contemporary author? Have you ever put down a book because it was good but you weren’t able to give it its due attention? Did you pick it up again?

comments

As far as “Budding Grove” goes--all I gotta say is, there’s a delicious payoff at the close of “Guermante’s Way” (book 3), that would make sticking through all of 2 & 3 worth it, even if the pages in-and-of themselves didn’t do it for you. But I read the whole thing one summer when I had nothing else to do; you’re in real time (i.e. job, family), I sympathize.

Answer to (one or two of) your questions: I’ve gone through the put-down, pick-up thing with Finnegans Wake for 15 years now. I went through it with Ulysses for around 3. They were owed my attention, I think that’s a good way to put it; but however much attention I owe FW, it probably still isn’t going to get it.

    – Stuart Greenhouse (08/23  at  01:23 PM)

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About this Post

• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: August 22, 2005
• Filed Under:
  Song of Myself: Diary

• Comments:1
• Links to this Post: Technorati

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