Can you describe the moment when you conceived of writing How Proust Can Change Your Life?
I had just finished my nightly madeleine and "tisane" and was readying myself for bed ("When one is sad, it is lovely to lie in the warmth of one's bed, and there, with all effort and struggle at an end, even perhaps with one's head under the blankets, surrender completely to wailing, like branches in the autumn wind" Jean Santeuil), when I came across, in the pages of ARTP, a quote from the master: "There is no doubt that a person's charms are less frequently a cause of love than a remark such as, 'No, this evening I shan't be free.'" I was struck by the wisdom of the master anew, his ability to compress insight into sentences at once elegant, profound and witty. It inspired me to write a book that I define as a self-help book based on the life and writings of Proust.
How many times, after reading Proust, did you find yourself saying "Proust said that..."?
The effect of reading Proust is that on an almost daily, even hourly basis, one comes across things that "seem so Proustian," things which Proust has helped one to put a finger on. Only today, an average day in West London, I came across the following things that made me think of Proust - teenage girls buying hats (Albertine), a Philippino maid doing the shopping for her masters (Francoise), bitchiness in a work colleague (the Duchesse de Guermantes)...
Have you been able to internalize the lessons of Proust on the subject of relationships, and feel less emotional pain? Or have these issues been ones that you could intellectualize and pass on, without having yet been forced to see how they work on you?
I always try to read books in such a way that I may change my life at the end of them. I open myself up to the book, I am ready for a transforming experience. In my case, unfortunately the woman that I first loved when I wrote my book on Proust (Kate, whose photo appears in my book) is no longer with me: we were involved in a narrator-Albertine style struggle, alternations of jealousy etc. Proust does not so much give one advice in these matters, he simply helps us to understand the dynamics.
Would you describe your formative years as Proustian?
There were certain Proustian things in my upbringing. For a start, I grew up in a french-speaking household in Switzerland, I had a nanny whose sweetness and practical intelligence are brought back to me when I read of the narrator's grandmother. Many of the foods we ate are in Proust's book, my family used to holiday in a big old hotel in the moutains every Christmas, and Balbec has become linked to this place, which also had its share of horrid posh people and lovely groups of girls - with whom I fell in love very intensely in early adolescence. I enjoyed a first kiss with a girl called Julia in her bedroom in circumstances very similar to the narrator's first kiss with Albertine. She too cancelled things early on, though did not ring the bell.
Are there any questions that you've never been asked, for which you have an answer waiting?
No one has ever asked me if I would have wanted to meet Proust. The answer is no, and I almost take my pride in my lack of desire to meet him. The best things are in the great book!
