One of the editors at Cups Magazine asked me to do a brief biography of Proust for their November issue, something I'd intended to do for this issue as well. Cups got the Proust-only version; this one contains P as well.
The Franco-Prussian War had ravaged Paris when Dr. Andrien Proust, a celebrated Catholic physician, married a young, cultured Jewish woman, Jeanne Weill. Their first son, Marcel, was conceived in war-torn Paris, but born in Anteuil a few months after the Paris Commune devastated the German troops, on July 10, 1871. Two years later, a second son, Robert, was born.
Marcel was a fragile and sickly child; his mother had considerable guilt about his condition, which she guessed to be the result of an anxious pregnancy. She coddled Marcel until her death, a habit which taught him the ironic quality of strength in weakness, particularly after his first attack of asthma when he was nine.
He was a good student, winning occasional prizes in composition, but his illness kept him out of school for long periods of time, during which he was tutored by his mother. He knew at an early age that he wanted to be a writer. His parents, however, wanted him to learn a profession, and so he went on to get degrees in philosophy and law, pursued with the sole intent of staying out of the job market.
I knew at an early age that I wanted to be a writer; I wrote my first short story at the age of seven. In high school I became enchanted by journalism, edited the award-winning newspaper at Lowell High, and won numerous scholarships. Never, however, did I really learn to type. If I must have a profession, it would not be that of secretary. My parents were certain that I wouldn't need a job; they had every expectation that I would marry some nice Italian doctor, and spend my life cooking and throwing grand parties in the family tradition. In some ways I didn't disappoint them. I have spent my life cooking and throwing grand parties, and I stayed out of the job market. Graduating from UCLA with a degree in screen writing, I earned a reasonable living as a ghostwriter for many years, but refused to marry a nice Italian doctor.
The high society of the Faubourg Saint-Germaine captivated Proust in his late adolescence, and he devoted most of his attention to admittance to the salons and social functions of the very rich. His father's reputation, friends from school, his sparkling wit and conversation and what some called an Italianate, or an Oriental, beauty provided the opportunity. He had a reputation early in his social life for perfect imitations of his fellow guests, a skill that amused his hosts and indicated his amazing observation of others.
At 18 he took advantage of the French army's enlistment program, soon to be discontinued. University-educated recruits could sign up for a one-year stint, and be considered minor officers, as long as they would pay for their own uniforms. Among the other privileges of this enlistment was having someone to clean your clothing, attending frequent champagne parties in the local hotels, and getting several leaves. Proust used his to return to Paris, where he attended soirees and salons in uniform.
Back to civilian life, he delved once again into society. He had developed, however, the unrelenting proclivity to the late night hours, rising late in the afternoon, and by the time he was dressed and ready to attend a social function, most of the guests were gone. His conversation kept his yawning hosts from ejecting him, or from not inviting him, and he continued to meet and charm members of the aristocracy, like Montesquiou, the subject of Whistler's great portrait that hangs in the Frick Museum in New York, the model for des Essientes in Huysmann's A Rebours, and for Charlus, the Baron in Remembrance.
In my first issue I wrote a piece in defense of nocturnalism. I grew up in a family that had a decided late-night bent; when I left home at seventeen, I became increasingly bent in that direction, I took the latest classes of the quarter's offerings; when forced to enroll in early afternoon sessions, I showed up to take exams during my 36th hour of awakeness, and learned the material at home. Academic concerns took little of my time; what I really learned to do was socialize.
My friends, too, are members of an aristocracy. They are the royalty of the oddly creative.
Proust flirted lavishly with women, particularly the society hostesses whose favor he curried, but his romances were solely with young men. Homosexuality has always been a factor in human interaction, but was frowned upon in European society in Proust's time. Oscar Wilde, imprisoned in England for his homosexual relations with Lord Alfred Douglas, fled to Paris and became friends with the young Marcel. Their association remained somewhat secretive, like Proust's relationships with the pianist and composer Reynaldo Hahn, and Lucien Daudet, son of a markedly anti-Semitic family; Proust fought a duel when accused of a homosexual relationship with Daudet.
My own relationships have been of the solely heterosexual variety, although many of the people I love are not. In the manner of Proust, though, I prefer to keep my personal life personal.
His parents badgered him to get a career and keep normal hours. In spite of his degree, he absolutely refused to accept a career in law; "In my days of greatest desperation," he wrote in a letter to his father, "I have never conceived of anything worse than a lawyer's office." He was accepted for an unpaid position with the Mazarine Library, that offered short hours as little as two days a week, but the job itself was uninteresting; before it began, Proust applied for a leave, which was continually renewed for four years. He began writing for magazines and newspapers, and on one occasion, was well paid, an event that impressed his parents enough to keep their badgering at bay. He spent as much time as possible travelling, staying in the country homes of friends, attending social events in Paris, and throwing grand dinner parties to maintain his social obligations.
Proust never had a job in his life. I wish I could say that, too, but I did not have a wealthy family, nor would I stay at home until they died. I can say that I've had very few jobs in my life, mostly during my college years,with a few others here and there. During the many years I lived in North Beach, freelancing as a journalist, I frequently survived by throwing rent dinners for the Beach's bohemian elite. A writer I knew got an assignment from Attenzione, a magazine for and about Italian-Americans, to write about the intellectual and cultural life of North Beach; he wrote a third of it about the rent dinners at my apartment.
Proust's primary interest was the nature of humanity. For the most part, he remained unconcerned with politics, but the Dreyfus Affair was a matter of serious concern. This issue, covered in PST #1, raised a heated anti-Semetic furor in France. The half-Jewish Proust rose from bed in the daylight hours to attend the trials, wrote letters and gathered signatures in defense of Dreyfus, and dealt with this injustice deeply in Remembrance.
I also have few interests more compelling than the human condition; as for politics, I have some opinions, but I know too little about the subject to indulge in heated debate. Only one political issue got me out of bed early enough to attend a protest: the ninety-somethingth trial of Keith McHenry, the leader of Food Not Bombs, arrested so many times in San Francisco for feeding the poor without a license.
My friend Peter Doty, aka Pierre, Le Marquis de Gateau, the brilliant prankster who created the Let Them Eat Cake event, has talked many of us into acquiring 18th century costumes and giving out cake in front of City Hall every Bastille Day for several years. For the last ten years I've earned my living as a caterer; if there is any political issue I feel strongly about it is the politics of food. Giving away food is not a crime, and it seems so pointless to waste a fortune in city funds trying, prosecuting and jailing a person who does it.
I got arrested at the McHenry demonstration in my 18th century gown and hoop skirt; my crime was holding in my hand a tiny poodle tray containing not food, but pastry crumbs. I spent a day in jail, along with my friend Lisa, who also had a tray of crumbs. We might have spent the night, because the computer system in the Hall of Justice was down, and people not booked before 3pm are kept until morning. Fortunately, Peter had called everyone we know and found a savvy friend willing and able o come down and bail us out.
Proust's first book, Les Plaisirs et les jours, is a small collection of hothouse stories of the idle rich, finished when he was in his mid-twenties. The book was illustrated by the society hostess and painter, Madeleine Lemaire, who diddled along at a snail's pace, prolonging the publication, and featured a preface by Anatole France , a literary hero of the young Marcel and a friend made in the salon life of his later years. Lavishly decorated and printed, the book was expensive, and sold few copies.
Proust continued to write for magazines and Le Figaro, and began work on his first novel, Jean Santeuil, a practice run for Remembrance. Although this novel was quite long, and, like Remembrance, had a definite autobiographical quality, it was never published in his lifetime. A fascination with Ruskin led him to undertake a translation of The Bible of Amiens, and write articles about him which he had difficulty publishing.
I have written for many magazines over the years, and started more than one novel. Magazines have asked me to write pieces for them, but the subjects that have mattered most to me are the ones that no one has wanted to buy.
Proust's health continued to deteriorate, although he primarily used it as an excuse to avoid unwanted social obligations, and to justify his night-into-day existence. He continued to stay in bed all day, waking in the late afternoon, and entertaining guests in his bedroom in the evening, leaving the house late at night to patronize the grand Parisian cafes.
The death of his father in 1903, and his mother in 1905, gave Proust the luxury to devote his time to writing, and to begin the work for which he'd spent his youth in the careful observation of French society. His friendships with aristocrats and infrequent publications gave him the reputation as a snob and a dilettante, but after the deaths of his parents he moved to his most famous address, 102 Boulevard Haussmann, where his life's real work would begin.
Most of the next 13 years would be spent in the cork-lined bedroom on Boulevard Haussmann, with far fewer appearances in society. When Proust did rise to attend a function, he barraged others with questions about their lives, lineage, clothes, and numerous other details that would fill in the holes of his work in progress. Proust retained a staff in his household, a succession of male secretaries and a driver who would convey him to events, to the location of a subject about which he was currently writing, or to dine at the Ritz. Although he saw friends more infrequently than before, he maintained his relationships through active and effusive correspondences. One biographer suggested that Proust's correspondences, often requiring numerous exchanges before an engagement could be determined, put off the necessity of leaving home and socializing.
The years of my life spent in North Beach, and the years in Los Angeles, were notoriously social. In Santa Monica, it was my house that functioned as a social meeting place, but in North Beach it was the cafe life that established my social presence. When I moved to this grand old house in the middle city, built by a family of architects for themselves in 1902, I no longer felt the need to socialize so much. My household, six charming and talented friends, provides so much good company that I feel little need to seek it out. For years we threw at least one huge party every few months; now we have cut back to a social season from Halloween to Twelfth Night, with the annual Proust Wake in between, and a few birthday celebrations scattered through the year. I attend less and less social events, prefering often to stay in the redwood paneled back parlor of home, staring at the computer.
I have several beloved friends who live within a few miles from my door, but the obligations of work, families, creative endeavors and other concerns keep us from many visits. Several of us are more likely to put a letter in the mail than to play tag-you're-it on the answering machines, or to stay perfectly in touch via email.
By 1912, Proust had finished the first 800 pages of Remembrance, the two books entitled Swann's Way and Within a Budding Grove, and began to seek a publisher. The details of this part of his life are covered on page 7, the tale of Rotten Rejections.
During the last nine years of his life, Proust was attended by Celeste Albaret, the wife of his driver, Odilon. Celeste's function was to stand by Proust's bedside frequently through the night to converse, to deliver messages, to paste together the scraps of writing that comprised his untyped manuscripts, to deal with the visitors who came to Boulevard Haussmann, and to bring him his coffee, one of the few things he consumed in the last years of his life, and the only thing he permitted to be prepared in the kitchen.
Proust had a chronic distrust of doctors, and rarely took their advice. He refused to enter a clinic for treatment, insisting that Celeste was the only person he would allow to care for him, and that his own curative measures were more appropriate than the doctor's prescriptions. He died on November 18, 1922. A few hours before the end, he asked someone to get him a cold beer from the Ritz, but it arrived too late; his last meal was a cup of coffee.
I was born on November 18, although not in 1922. I share Proust's attitude towards doctors, even though one of them has saved me from a nasty incident earlier this year. On the whole, I have found the care of my beloved acupuncturist, Carol Francois, considerably more valuable. When I first became her patient, a series of medicos had told me that surgery alone could cure an annoying and recurrent disorder. Carol made it go away, with funny cupping glasses, painless needles, and inexpensive Chinese pills. I only wish Proust had met an acupuncturist; he might have lived to write again.
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