I am having so much fun getting into this book and starting to get interested in what it has to say about memory and the act of reading, specifically. Of course, I am still getting into plot and character and all that stuff, but I’m getting extra distracted stopping to find a pencil and underline certain things that I feel would be appropriate to share with my blog readers. And is it just me, or is Proust kind of handsome in that dead writer kind of way? I feel like I need to brush up on my Proust biographical points of interest. And why were these books never tackled in my comp-lit classes? I would have rather read this than Ulysses. Here’s some words to tickle your brain bits:
On memory:
“But, when nothing subsists of an old past, after the death of people, after the destruction of things, alone, frailer but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, smell and taste still remain for a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, upon the ruins of all the rest, bearing without giving way, on their almost impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory.”
A long passage about the nature of reading:
“What does it matter thenceforth if the actions, and the emotions, of this new order of creatures seem to us true, since we have made them ours, since it is within us that they occur, that they hold within their control, as we feverishly turn the pages of the book, the rapidity of our breathing and the intensity of our gaze. And once the novelist has put us in that state, in which, as in all purely internal states, every emotion is multiplied tenfold, in which his book will disturb us as might a dream but a dream more lucid than those we have while sleeping and whose memory will last longer, then see how he provokes in us within one hour all possible happinesses and all possible unhappinesses just a few of which we would spend years of our lives coming to know and the most intense of which would never be revealed to us because the slowness with which they occur prevents us from perceiving them (thus our heart changes, in life, and it is the worst pain; but we know it only through reading, through our imagination: in reality it changes, as certain natural phenomena occur, slowly enough so that, if we are able to observe successively each of its different states, in return we are spared the actual sensation of change).”
Phew! And it just keeps happening like that… cool huh? This is the kind of novel that doesn’t have many resting places. So I am trying to go slowly through it and savor it. Can someone please explain to me why I am only just now reading this???
In other news, I have a couple of things from other book blogs that I need to check out, including Javier Marias, Elaine Scarry, Gabriel Josipovici, Sebald, Richard Yates, Yannick Murphy, Ward Just. A book by Herzog and one called “Literary Landmarks: the Book Lovers Guide to New York” for when I get around to visiting my sister in the big city.
