Letters... and Email

Quel plaisir de trouver votre oeuvre! I am new to the Web, and had begun to despair of finding anything but masses of popular culture, if that is not an oxymoron...what a delight it has been to read your literate and literary work! The layout is quite perfect, as well...I have the sense of reading a literary journal which is not on-line, and I am sure that I will find myself smiling over it for several days to come.
Thank you!

Alisa Bearov Landrum

I have been blessed with a shining vision of Proust. As I woke up from a long nod which lasted a few hours, I got a glimpse of Marcel Proust walking on a small street in a country town (Loir, I believe), he turned into a small alley where I followed him, and we both entered a small cafe with only three tables and pictures of Marcel Proust hanging from every bit of space on the wall. He preceded me into the cafe. I followed, primarily because I wanted a cup of coffee, and only secondarily in pursuit of Monsieur Proust. We each sat at different tables. I tried to avoid meeting his eyes; I didn't want to make him uncomfortable and I didn't want to give him the impression that I was a worshiper or groupie, still less did I want him to think that he was so important as to have captured my attention. I looked in my bag for a book to read; that would give me the independence from the surroundings which included the little man seated across from me at a distance of about 10 feet. I took a book out of my sachtel and after having ordered my coffee and roll, sat back snugly in my chair, took out a cigar, and opened the lifesaving book. But the one thing I had not foreseen was that the book would be Du Cote de Chez Swann, which, when I realized my faux pas, I blushed and became disoriented. The aroma of the coffee fell to the floor, the cigar smoke became bitter, my white shirt became dirty around the collar, I began to smell my own body odor, and the waiter, who had been quite gracious when he took my order and served me the coffe and roll, became surly and began to shoo away flies with his white table napkin and gave me that look which seemed to be saying "drink your coffee and go; I will be needing your table, and besides here is Marcel Proust who requires all of my attention." I tried to regain my cozy feeling of just a minute past, and I read from the book, "Cela prouve bien que c'est un esprit faux et malveillant" At this very point that I finished that sentence, I looked up at the man seated at the table eating a madeleine and drinking tea, and as though by intuition he looked up at me, and he bowed his head slightly and took out a cigarette from a slim gold case. He lit the cigarette and took a long, deep draw from it and called out to the waiter, who came running softly and obsequiouly to hear the command of the great master. Proust whispered something to him, and the waiter looked at me, at first somewhat prplexed, but then he smiled at me and drew near my table. I tried hard to read another line from the book, but everything became a blur on the page. I was reeling in my mind. I was upside down at my table. My heart beat so, that I thought it would give me away. But try as I may to conceal my pleasure, I dropped the book, at which Proust again smiled his understanding as he exhaled the gray smoke which rose up to join the beautiful blue smoke of my Cuban cigar.

The waiter by now was standing at my table. He bowed somewhat deferentially, and to my great astonishment he said to me almost in a whisper: Monsieur begs that you do not reveal having seen him here in this cafe. He is most anxious to remain anonymously dead. looked at the little man smoking his cigarette, and I said to him aloud across the room "Of course I promise, Sir, if only you will oblige me with a few dollars to buy some more of these wonderful cigars. He smiled again, and from a wallet which he took from his coat pocket he extracted a few French franks. He came to my table and very inconspicuously slipped me the bills so that the waiter could not see. And without any further ado on his part or mine or the waiters, he left the cafe in a hurry.

As I write you this letter, I am enjoying a good Cuban Cigar and fully awake from my nod. How could I keep such an encounter a secret?

Allen Dronet

Congratulations, Monsieur, on a visit from Proust, and the availability of good Cuban cigars!

...I'm sure you're aware of the fact that your zine has a distictive charm all its own. It's very warm and engaging. You're quite a good writer--by the way, are you still working on the novel? How many pages by now? Is it enjoyable? Torture? Both? A tout a l'heure, cheri!

Christine

To my friend Christine, and to all of you, I must confess that I have finished a novel for the first time in my life, nearly 400 pages, and perhaps a few more by the time the rewrites are done. In fact, writing it was a huge pleasure, once I got started. To all of you who have written or told me how much you have enjoyed this magazine, and the writing in it, I must give my deepest thanks. It was your encouragement that made me turn my skill to the novel, and without you, it may have remained forever on the list of "things I will do someday"!

Strange to know now that technology was the solution to my isolation. I'm not speaking merely of my geographical location in Alaska, but of the ambiguous territory I inhabited after reading In Search of Lost Time on the north slope years ago. I have since taken a graduate seminar on the work and reread it (for the most part). It is nice to know there are others like me out "there."

I must say that "support group" is exactly the phrase because while what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, there is a certain period of recovery from trauma that precedes the supposed benefits of pain... Thanks for the site. Your tireless and unrewarded efforts shall earn you a spot in the great beyond without a doubt.

William J. Thompson
University of Alaska-Anchorage

I will no doubt be happy to have a spot in the great beyond, but I'd rather make a living as a writer.

I just finished No. 5, which I went to City Lights bookstore last Sunday to find--and did. (I had seen PST in Berkeley (I think at Cody's) last fall on a trip north, and didn't buy it because I was afraid I might not like it, and wanted, instead, to imagine, for a while, what it might be like. By this trip I felt foolish, thinking I'd never find it.) I particularly enjoyed the recounting of last year's Proust Wake, and laughed out loud at the "resurrection."I will be sending cash for all the back issues. By the way, although it's probably not current enough to be a sighting (more probably it's now a citing), you may be interested in John Ashbery's comments on Proust's novel in an interview with Peter Stitt for the Paris Review (c. 1980), found in the collected Writers at Work (Seventh Series) and in their poetry number, Poets at Work. A snippet: "I also identified, on account of [a] girl in my art class, with the narrator, who had a totally impractical passion which somehow both enveloped the beloved like a cocoon and didn't have much to do with her."

Joseph Mihelarakis
Los Angeles

Just visited your Proust site and wanted to tell you it made my day.Wonderful. Such a labor of love and so beautifully done. Proust would beproud; you've certainly stirred tender feelings in me. Bravo.

Douglas McMullen
NYC

Unbelievable this site, if only Proust could see this. He certainly would have gazed at it.I was brought up by Proust, my master. It's good to see he is not a forgotten man.

Reynier Molenaar

When you have a moment, please check out my Selections From Proust, which is on my home page.

Jim Hammond

Hi. I'm just letting you know about a small group of us in Seattle whostarted reading Remembrance last year and plan, slowly but surely, to makeit through the whole thing. We are a little book discussion group which formed almost five years ago, specifically because I needed some people toread Ulysses with. Where did I find these people? In a University of Washington Experimental College class on Faulkner, where else? I figured ifI were ever to find such people, that was my chance. So it came about, we of course annually celebrate Bloomsday, etc., etc. But enough about Jimmy,what about Marcel. Someone got it into her head to read Remembrance. We agreed to start with just one volume, which we read last year. We readslowly and discuss, like sipping a fine wine, or whatever. Anyway, everyoneloves the thing and so we do hope to make it through - over the years. When I came upon the Proust Support Group it was interesting to see the math -that one could read it in eleven months by reading 10 pages a day (I think that was it). We will probably take a few years - but what better way to spend them? So, I'm just getting around to contacting you, so you know of another small cadre of the obsessed . . .

Leah Kosik

Read on, my friends! I only hope that our mutual attempt will inspire others.

I'm not sure what I was expecting when I clicked on the Proust button(thingy, whatever). I like Proust, so I thought I could legitimately select a focus group who liked him. I have to say that I REALLY enjoyedyour writing. It was liberating, thoughtful, and exacting rather like,well, Proust.

Jim Philipchuk

What would Marcel have made of E-mail? There is his essay on the telephone, in which the demoiselles are assimilated to remote goddesses.He found the disembodied human voice, conjuring up as it does a whole personality, to be a notable phenomenon. Celeste made all his calls, and Celeste/Francoise carried his messages tirelessly. He liked their interposition and mediation, and relied heavily on it to insulate himself from the wear and tear of the everyday, while he made a new world. So perhaps he would have used E-mail...Pretensions to the mastery of technology amused him; Brichot would have been a notable bore on the subject of RAM and throughput.

Laurence Pope

I just wanted to let you know how much I've enjoyed Proust Said That.... I have sadness about no longer having any more articles to read. I hope issue 6 comes out soon..

G. Richard Hill

"How kind of you to have written me that magnificent letter! I could have no greater honor....but... what a strange idea you have of my life! 'Huge dividends' makes me smile sadly, for I earn nothing from my books." -Letter to Robert de Montesquiou, end of April 1921

P Segal