I am reading all of Proust for the second time, somehow that sounds better than saying I am re-reading Proust. The first time I read Proust; it almost sounds like something one would have done at Oxford, with Proctors and tutors, and a nearsighted professor who probably was unsure what decade it was. I was in my mid to late twenties. During that time my family kept a sail boat on the Great Salt Lake which I named Swans Way after the first book. The books, which I still have, were under the title of “Remembrances of Things Past” and was based on quote, the definite translation by
C.K. Scott Moncrieff. I could say something about be weary of somebody with too many names, but I will not. Since then, a new Proust has come out, and although it is still based mostly on the same translation, Terence Kilmartin, a solid British name, and a D.J. Enright have also been involved and the whole thing is now called IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME.
In this series, I actually read the last book first, Time Regained, and am now reading Swann's Way again. I suspect this whole undertaking will probably take me at least a year and a half, I am not just reading Proust, I find I need to think about it as I read it. The new books for whatever reason seem more readable to me, that and the fact that I have had decades of experience in my own life to bring to this undertaking. My heart has been broken, at least once or twice and repaired , at least medically with stents, I have suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. So maybe one should not read Proust before they are either of a certain age or have suffered and experienced life.
I have always been interested in time and memory and certainly Proust deals with both of these in extreme detail. I read a wonderful book a couple of years ago called Proust was a Neuroscientist, it pointed out that modern science and brain chemistry has confirmed several of Proust's precepts about memory and the fallibility thereof, almost a century after his death. Proust was always rewriting, and never did see his complete books in print, on the day he died, he dictated changes having to do with the death of somebody in the book, because as he was dying, he suddenly was aware of things he had not known before.
Another interesting book is My Year of reading Proust. It follows the author in the rest of her life, as she reads Proust and how she brings or tries to bring Proust to bear in dealing with other people in her life and their needs, wants and frustrations.
I use to joke that I was probably one of a few people who read Proust and ride motorcycles, but once I did a Google search of Motorcycles and Proust and was amazed at the number of references I found relating the two.
To Proust there are two types of memory, the more common memory, is just remembering something, the more advanced and more important are those things we remember because of some sort of stimulus, whether it being food in the famous Madeleine Cookie, or catching your foot on a brick, but alas not a cattle guard. Both of these happened in the books that make up in Search of Lost Time.
Many times on Motorcycle trips in different parts of the west, something has triggered this Proustian memory, Suddenly remembering the smell of the night air in a motel in West Yellowstone when I was about seven Stopping several miles from the Mokie dug way in southern Utah as we said good bye to some friends who were artists in Taos in 1963. Because these memory examples were triggered by an emotional response, they were vivid and alive in a much different way than mere memory. How a person who spent the last few years of his life, almost completely bed-ridden in a cork lined room, could glean all of this knowledge about life and the motivation of people, etc. is beyond me.
