Letters... and E-mail

Thanks for the lovely third issue of PST.. "When I went to Venice I found my dream had turned - incredibly but quite simply - into my address." I'm still interested in a Proust list. Anybody else?
annie@garnet.berkeley.edu

At last, someone has proposed setting up the Proust list. It may take a while, but it's coming!

What can I say, I love dogs. Proust was the cutest dog I ever did see. They say that a human's best friend is the dog, but I think they're wrong. A man's best friend is Proust. Not all Prousts can be dogs, but you knew that.
Love,
aasgaard@well.com

Hmmm. That was the most eccentric Proust letter I've received yet.

Binging on madeleines...
A good friend of mine termed his condition as "Prousticide." In other words, he didn't leave his bed for days because he was so determined to finish. He did.

A few weeks later I also bit the cookie. My great fear, however, was that it would take me forty years to finish. I didn't know if I could commit prousticide. Forty years to finish Proust seems to me a bit like drawing a life size map. Somewhat startling in likeness, but definitely a bitch to fold.
Severine

To Miss Severine I wrote that The Marcel Proust Support Group recommends a mere ten pages a day, not a month or more in bed, and that we are here to cheer her on through eleven months of mini-Prousticide.

What in the name of Mt. Tamalpais does an old timer/mountain biker know about Marcel Proust... not much, I reckon, but there he is down there on that red bike a-peddlin' up the dirt road woven through the tapestry of redwoods and pines ... Marcel Proust (1871-1922), wait, how did I know that? Must have been that PST magazine someone inadvertently left near my bed. That means Proust and my Dad were the same age when they died. Hey, Pop, I'm still down here riding a bike, thinking of the day you taught me to ride my two-wheeler under the warmth and redolence of the sun, long ago under suburban blue skies. (By the way, have you met in the heavenly hereafter an intellectual type name of Marcel, perchance?) Merely a superficial brush with a few mosquitos has got me remembering things from my past in a most curious and beautiful way.
Rich Di Giulio

If there is a heaven, and a St. Peter at the gate, I can see MP seated beside him, assisting with the examination of the new recruits.

Academic treatises... No. But the inclusion of recipes strikes me as cloying...
Phil Ehrens

What bona fide Proust reader would fail to see the importance of food in Remembrance?

Your Proust pages are wonderful. I feel the warmth and love for him eminating from the screen (and mine isn't even color!).Wonder if you can advise on following: I'm a composer who has just completed a large song cycle, mostly inspired by Primo Levi and using all original texts. Only in the last movement do I quote briefly from various pillars of civilization/s, from The Bible through Geothe to Lorca and Mann, including two lines from "La Prisonierre"... The quote is in the original French. Do you know what the copyright status of the text is? public domain? My use would be a "fair use" anyway, and be gratis 99.9%, but I want to use the lines in liner notes for a planned recording of the composition, and want to do this right.
What do you think?
Sincerely,
Ari Frankel

I couldn't answer this question... Does anyone have the answer?

On The Possibility of Untortured Love, in issue #3:
You are writing about whoreamonging, not about love.
Andreas Von Arx, Pratteln, Switzerland

I simply cannot say how delighted i am to see that a Proust homepage is in existence... reading Proust matured me as a student, a reader and as a person capable of loving... what is Proust about, friends often ask... I tell them it's about everything and nothing, just living and loving and being hurt an awful lot... Swann's Way became to me what Odette became to Swann... a possession, yes, an obsession, most definitely... the greatest, most looked forward to hours of my day were the hours I could be with Proust...Swann's Way taught me that it's not the characters one becomes att ached to but rather the text and the writer... his words and his style still echo in my mind.

How did Proust Said That actually come about? It's a great idea, by the way,and discovering it on the net was a lot like the discovery of Proust was to my life... it made me extremely happy and put me in the best mood that i've been in all summer..
Amy Johnson

To hear that this project, which makes me so happy, should make an unknown reader so happy, was positively thrilling. On the other hand, it was distressing that she should not have more to please her. Seeing her return address was in Wisconsin, it reminded me of my visit to Madison about ten years ago. When I arrived, my darling friend Miss Linnie wore a t-shirt with a cartoon woman in tears, with a man saying, "You're not depressed, it's just Wisconsin."

I'm a member of what I assume is a pretty rare breed, a mechanical engineer who has read all of RTP. As much as I (sometimes) enjoy my job, it's pretty much of a cultural vacuum, more so for being in South Florida. I just wanted to let you know what a pleasant surprise it was finding Proust Said That. Sometimes I forget how much fun it is to be around witty, literate people.

I've only found a few authors who have completely personal styles and yet who can bring characters and events to life in totally convincing and enlightening ways... and Proust combined that ability with the most beautiful and haunting imagery that I've ever read. And with so much out-and-out smut! Amazing.
Chris Zucker

Proust is one of those authors that I've always meant to read, but never have gotten around to it. Your wonderful and quirky zine has persuaded me to begin today.
Bob Conway

P Segal