A Plethora of Proust Sightings

Hardly a week has gone by since the last issue came out when I have not found mail from a reader containing sightings of Proust, or had some book or article handed to me by a friend here in town. This only enhances my conclusion that Proust has permeated millions of minds in the Western thinking (and particularly writing) world. Some day, someone will find Proust references for me in Asia and Africa, and I will not be surprised.

This issue is already too thick, overwhelmed with verbiage of my travel adventures, to include all the references sent. Perhaps the next issue, slimmer, will contain more from the massive piles on my desk, but here, at least, are many...

Two extraordinary books were loaned to me, both worthy of far more than a mere mention, and so I will save them for the next issue, when my travels have not occupied too many pages. Miss Hannah Silver brought A Vision of Paris, a combination of the photographs of Eugene Atget and the words of our Marcel, and Miss Christine Kristen offered Brassai's The Secret Paris of the 30's, containing his photographs of the demimonde and many Proustian references. Here are a single image from each, a preview of coming attractions.

Leslee Sumner has sent me many clippings lately, but one of my favorites is a clipping from The New York Times, date uncertain, by Janny Scott, called "A 90's Revival: Power of Positive Thinking". It describes a group other than my own which came together for the purpose of reading Proust. This company began with an idea by Ashton Hawkins, now executive vice president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and his friend Robert MacDonald, a publisher, when they were undergraduates at Harvard, and they have continued to read together for 25 years. Proust was their first companionable read, followed by other royalty of European literature, but 20 years into their joint activity they re-read Proust.

One silly item in Leslee's finds was a mention in a "Style" piece in The New York Times Magazine, date also unknown, by Holly Brubach, called "Literary Sachet". Brubach notes that Fragonard had brought out a perfume called "A Year in Provence", based on the book of the same name, and suggests that a rush is on "to sign up the olefactory rights to other literary properties..." When she gets to Proust, she speculates that his perfume would be "the definitive translation, with the unforgettable almond flavoring of teatime biscuits from the author's childhood and a whiff of the perfume his mother used to wear."

She also sent the Vanity Fair article in the July 1996 issue, "A Night to Remember" by Amy Fine Collins, about the black-and-white ball Truman Capote threw for Kay Graham in 1966. This was not only the social event of that season, but one that has been remembered throughout the seasons, and the invitations or lack thereof were a source of endless concern in the party world of New York; apparently, the not-invited are still living it down. As for the connection to Proust, Collins writes, "...unlike his Ôsecret friend' Proust (Capote sought to emulate the Frenchman in his projected magnum opus, Answered Prayers, a non-fiction novel biting many of the cafe-society hands that had fed him), who spent the first period of his adult life immersed in the haut monde before retiring to the cork-lined isolation of his bedchamber to write. Capote tried to do it all." Bravo, Truman. I also want to do it all at once, minus alcoholism.

Leslee also found Proust in Less Than Angels by Barbara Pym. Beginning on page 221, there was this: "...once he wrote ÔDo you remember that evening when we went walking by the river and sat on the seat by the elderberry bushes? The smell of them reminded me of childhoodÑ a moment out of Proust.' Dierdre had not remembered the flowers particularly, only that she had declared her love for the first time, and he had seemed to accept it. Must I then read Proust? she asked herself despairingly, seeing the twelve blue volumes with the red labels in Catherine's bookshelves, for she was not much of a reader at the best of times."

In The New York Times, July 5, 1996, in an article about a major Lautrec exhibition, Leslee spotted this: "...his lithograph of Bernhardt in "Phedre" can put you in mind of Proust, whose protagonist, after seeing the actress Berma in the play, wondered what all the fuss over her was about..."

When The NY Times ran a feature of 100 years of book reviews, Leslee, my tremendous source of references, came across the reprint of a piece first published on July 25, 1925, Rose Lee's critique of The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust. In it, she quotes Ezra Pound, who said that the perfect criticism of Proust should be "written in one paragraph, seven pages long, and punctuated only by semicolons."

Once again, Alex Segal, my amazing source of references to Proust in the world of classical music, came up with two more. In The Art of the Piano, by David Dubal, he found this quote from the pianist Artur Rubenstein: "The great pianist smiled. ÔI am now blind, I can't read my beloved Proust and Joyce, nor can I look at beautiful women... I am bored.'" And in the Fanfare Magazine of November/December 1995, in Peter J. Rabinowitz's review of "Evocation: Legendary Encores Played by Roland Pontinen", he writes: "Pontinen has arranged a bouquet of encores Ôin the hope of conjuring up an enchanting atmosphere of a bygone era.' And whether or not he achieves his Proustian goal..."

Now, who was it who sent me the review, by Peter Brooks, in The NY Times (date, once again, not visible) of Julia Kristeva's Time and Sense: Proust and the Experience of Literature?

My Proustian life has grown heavy and the result is that this little magazine has sprawled far beyond the limitations of a single person to operate, particularly a single person who shares Proust's conceptions of order, stacks of papers everywhere, with a special presence of stacks around the bed. I adore getting mail, but I get a lot of it, which lands on my desk, on the pile closest to the telephone, "things to do something with as immediately as possible", as I check the phone messages.

Immediately as possible, of course, is a designation of secondary necessity. There is the conflicting order of things to do now, not when possible, and they are engraved on the desk calendar next to the telephone that is the brain center of the life of P. What I must do, who I must see and call, and why, is there, encoded in personal cryptography. When the lists on each day's space are long, as they always are in fall and winter, the heap of "things to do as immediately as possible" grows until it teeters, and is pushed slightly to the left of the desk-top to accommodate a space for a fresh stack. The first gets buried under packages I have carried in with the mail and dumped for future use; then, as the weeks go by, the first stack will be sifted through many times in search of one of those things I have found time to do, or must suddenly do now. Those are the dangerous moments when things that have come in mails past are separated from the envelopes in which they came, and I can no longer absolutely remember who sent me what.

By the end of the holiday season, there will be at least three stacks of things to be dealt with, and only thin strips of desktop visible. When the holiday season, my least favorite time of year, coincides with the assemblage of an issue of PST, I am hard pressed to ferret out the things Proustian from the rest. In January, if there is an empty, haha, day, I may begin to sort and conquer. One thing has become increasingly clear: PST needs an intern, badly. Once again, I use this forum for all my interests, activities and desires: is there an intern out there for me?

Well, I can't recall who sent me this review. Was it G. Richard Hill? Leslee? Whoever sent it gave me a smile as I read what Brooks had written: "Proust continues to be the Mount Everest that French critics want to conquer... This work... has in the three quarters of a century since his death become the very definititon of the modern in art." Thank you, Peter Brooks. So much for those who think of Proust as something of the past; I have personally always viewed his comprehension of the realities of human behavior as guidelines for the future, modern indeed.

I do remember who sent me the Time Magazine cover story of July 1, 1996, "Hilary vs. Liddy: Who would be the better First Lady?" That was my dear friend Lin Haley, who couldn't believe that I hadn't seen it already. The author, Richard Lacayo, comes up with a great line: "Like the little cookie in Proust, the words bring on a flood of memories, most of them foul."

Last fall, I missed an event I had really hoped to attend, a Cacophony Society tour of the Rosicrucian Museum in San Jose. Little did I expect that Lisa Archer, who did go along, would turn up a Proust sighting in the Rosicrucian bookstore, hidden in a volume called The 3-Pound Universe by Judith Hooper and Dick Teresi, with a forward by Issac Asimov. Lisa, who is now a Reverend of The Berkeley Psychic Institute, couldn't figure out why this book drew her, and why she thumbed through the chapters, until she came to number seven: "Memory: From Sea Slugs to Swann's Way." It was for me.

I must quote the item in Leah Garchik's "Personal" column in San Francisco's own Chronicle on August 7, 1996, which was noticed by several of us. The New York Review of Books had run a story about synchronized swimming routines suggested by literature, and Rod Ottinger sent Garchik this one: "Proustomania: While the corps de ballet presents its narrative of ÔA la Recherce du Temps Perdu," one lone swimmer at the side expresses the solitary nature of artistic creation, exquisitely demonstrating the difficulties of social commentary for one who is a neurotic agoraphobic." While I personally don't think Proust had the slightest difficulty with social commentary, it still made me laugh.

Also, in the last few days, I got email from one of my oldest friends, Miss Vicky Pelino, with a Proust sighting in Henry Miller. I am saving this one for the next issue, though, and just teasing you fans of these sightings with the fact that it exists. Henry Miller was one of my first literary loves, and he will have an article to himself in the next issue, which will sail blithely into several issues of political incorrectness. I am in many ways politically incorrect myself, and do not wish to slander Miller in the least, merely to suggest that, in his brilliance, he hadn't the slightest concern with what was considered "right" for his times, one of the many things that made him one of my life-long heroes.

I also heard the other day that Proust finally made an appearance on "Jeopardy", the game show that requires contestants to know a lot of stuff. The friend who told me couldn't remember what the reference was, but it was almost enough to know that he'd appeared.

Do, please, keep those sightings coming! Notes of the dates they appeared are most welcome. I am just glad that this publication has no academic pretensions, so I can blithely mention these citations without the requisite footnotes and their essential information. Hah! The former unsuccessful scholar in me, who financed education working in a library, still wants to know.

P Segal