Proust is hilarious!

Nobody is going to believe this, but Proust's 3000-page-long In Search of Lost Time is absolutely fucking hysterical. When it's not profound, that is. My only complaint--and it is minor--is that someone should have insisted on splitting it up into chapters. I understand why he wouldn't want to do that--he wants the freedom to express a thought in its fullness, and that's fine, but even his thoughts are not 200 pages long. Really, Marcel. There are events; there are sub-thoughts--chapters would not have defeated your purpose.

Aside from that slight quibble (that of one who is reading many, many pages in one sitting and would like to come upon a convenient place to get a snack, ahem) there is so much that is wonderful going on that I begin to wonder if maybe I wouldn't have been better off having been born a modernist, not a post-modernist. I feel such allegiance to Woolf, Faulkner, Joyce, and so on. But maybe that's why Melville's so important--he proves that it does not matter what era you are born in...you can write yourself light years ahead of your time.

One of the many amazing things about reading Proust, is that he's a real vocabulary builder--in French, of course, but also, much to my shame, in English. Truly, he is alone with Melville in sending me running to the OED multiple times per sitting. "Anfractuosity," anyone? (Def. a winding channel or course; especially: an intricate path or process (as of the mind).) Very nice. Going to have to use that in a sentence sometime soon. Also, "velleities?" Any takers? (Def. a wish or inclination not quite strong enough to lead to action.) I know some people who need to be hit with that one, hard. Truly, he has inspired me to elevate my French for the first time in years and I am honest to god making flash cards of difficult French vocab on my iPhone.

But to return to the fact that he is hysterical, consider this description of one of the main characters (a courtesan, to put it nicely): "I'd rather have it in my bed than a slap with a wet fish!" Hah! I do so hope that is an accurate translation of a genuine French expression. It captures something so perfectly, like, I wouldn't refuse, but it won't exactly be pleasant. There's also, somewhere in the latter half of Swann's Way a good 500 words devoted to analyzing (and making fun of) different styles of monocle. Honestly, he makes fun of monocles the way we do of...well...all the many things middle aged men do to try to look dignified. I would so love to take Proust with me to a faculty party. He'd have enough material for yet another book.

Coming up...why, if you read Proust and Tina Fey simultaneously, you will learn the secrets of the universe. I kid you not.