PROUST ENCORE!
Since in my first new blog piece in quite a while I mentioned that my “To Do” list included guest-editing a piece on Marcel Proust, I’m proud to say that I actually did it and will prove it by putting a version of it here. In emailing a number of friends about this, I used as the subject heading, “Un GRAND merci to Marcel Proust who turned out to be very good company while I was trying to hide in our guest room from Jim’s very mild case of Covid.”
In addition to wishing them well I said, “As you probably know, Proust is a guy who knew how to spend productive time in bed. How proud and delighted am I at the way this piece turned out? MOLTO! It has taken many decades for Marcel and me to see eye-to-eye. But today I am raising my teacup to him and to Kathy Czepiel who invited me to guest-edit her excellent Substack, Better Book Clubs.” In a previous post, Kathy and several of her readers had alluded to trying to come to grips with Proust, an issue that I could well understand because I had long been there myself. Kathy is a brilliant editor who tightened up my draft, but here it comes in a more complete version that I originally sent to her under the subject of “Proust and all of us?“ In the published version it became
PROUST ENCORE: A counterargument
Kathy’s post today about why she feels newly able to appreciate The Canterbury Tales gives me the nudge I needed to respond to her previous piece about trying to come to grips with Marcel Proust. He and I had a thorny relationship from when I was forced to try to digest every word of his multi-volume work. Not at all my cup of tea—his sentences seemed to go on forever, and there were way too many words, none of which went down easily. This was in grad school where I did not have the option of jumping ship.
Although Kathy was concerned about alienating Proust fans in her remarks, I think that she was generous and onto something when she mentions that one’s reaction to Proust may depend very much on the stage in life when one reads him.
I was pleasantly surprised by the creative, positive responses of my Yale students to their first contact with Marcel, and these added to my ever-evolving feelings about him. Even my most resistant students could relate to his concept of the tea-dipped madeleine as a personal touchstone. One student chose to meditate on two photos of herself with her father. In the first photo, the summer prior to her trip to Ireland and then to college, she and her dad are cozily seated together at a cafe. She feels like a queen, but recognizes that, because she is at the point of making an important transition, this will be the last time the two will be able to sit together in such a carefree way. The dad’s finger looms large as it points something out to her, marking “the last moment when I would question the direction in which my father would guide me.”
The second photo shows a twisting Irish roadway emblematic of her wilder encounters with the unexpected: abandoned castles, glasses of Guinness, intriguing accents. She finds herself looking petite in both photos, especially in comparison to the orienting hand of her father, but notes that the two snapshots reflect the difference between a girl who follows the directions of others, and an independent navigator.
Among the things other students cited as their own petite madeleine: “The rock song, American Pie, and the legendary Red Chevy of my father’s youth”; “ The clink of my mom’s ever-present gold bracelets”; “the perfume of the California pine trees inside and outside the home of my grandfather during our Xmas visits;” “the books I constantly reread—impossible not to think of the circumstances when I first read them.”
How I went from being a skeptic to a defender of Proust is the through line of the letter I write to him in my books. I’m no Proust expert, but among the questions I ask myself thanks to Proust are: What if everything that ever mattered to each of could be restored? Regained? Resurrected? Although everything we have the illusion of possessing is actually “on loan” during our lifetime, what if it could be recovered? For what, and by whom do we wish to be remembered? How can we be reassured in the face of our own mortality? Marcel has something to say about all of this. With respect to literary heavy-hitters like Proust, I believe that it’s never too late to fall in love with a great writer—even one who at first feels too tough or challenging.
When the Yale language Laboratory was being closed, I noticed a pile of audio tapes that the staff was about to discard. One was of a reading from Proust’s Combray by Jacques Guicharnaud, a favorite professor who had been a professional actor whose brilliant reading makes Proust accessible and fully alive. I wish I had come across that when I was struggling with this author. That cassette now resides in a box where I keep my treasures! By the way, I’m on board with Proust’s many French contemporaries who threw up their hands saying the equivalent of “Let me out of here!” before listening to his work being read to them on the radio by a great reader. Proust even had to resort to anonymously composing his own reviews. Kathy’s positive experience with The Canterbury Tales after hearing it on Audible is a case in point, as was mine when I was trying to get a foot in the door of Middlemarch.
Kathy knows her readers best. She was initially hesitant when I proposed to write something like a counterpoint to her own experience with Proust. But I mentioned that her own comments would have felt reassuring to those of us who have had trouble engaging with a major author. When I think I’m not “getting” something I read, I like to know that I’m not the only one to be confused. BTW, When Kathy and so many other smart readers praised the new Sally Rooney book, I started to question my contrary opinion. But isn’t this part of what makes a dynamic book group?
Thanks as always to Kathy who said, “I totally agree about the exchange of ideas between readers with differing opinions. That’s why we talk about books with each other!” I love this group and am grateful for the opportunity to appreciate the views of other members, and to occasionally express my own.
PS: With respect to "why the world’s most difficult novel is so rewarding," I can’t do better than this article
I can say the same about Benjamin Taylor’s short (167 pages) and wonderfully accessible, "slim but rich" Proust: The Search published by Yale Press. I also highly recommend it for those who are already fans. So does none other than Philip Roth who calls this book “dazzlingly elegant.”
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300224283/proust/
Photos: tea with madeleines from Juliane Amimer on Unsplash/ me in the Grove Street Cemetery in front of the headstone of Jacques Guicharnaud, whose voice on my cassette would enchant anyone. His imitation of James Dean as Hamlet may have been legendary, but he is best known as “a human being of immense decency”—a justly deserved homage from a former student
Diane Joy Charney
November 1, 2025
Castel Giorgio, Italia
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