from eric!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/science/05brain.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Monday, September 8, 2008
Thursday, July 17, 2008
SJP, je t'aime.
Allo my little cream puffs, my adorable cabbages, my honeyed bloggeurs,
Since you have not been entertaining me in this, my glorious "inter-net" afterlife, I have been forced to find my own modern heaven: the multiplex. I have wiled away these long hours regarding the magic lantern shows of your culture, and croyez-moi, mes amis, they are so very, ver-ray magnifique! The colors! The music! The clothes! The drawling voices of your shiny, poreless, flawless screen people! It is so much all at once! Ah! I am overcome.
I have seen so many things, my darlings. I feel as though I understand you now. Of course you cannot understand me - I am from a different time, one in which we thought deeper thoughts and spent more time thinking them. My feelings are more elaborate, special, and long-winded than yours, if you pardon me for saying so (and of course you do, for it is so true). I will therefore be patient with you, as I see now the difference between us.
So take your time, dear friends, and let me know when you are ready to discuss my oeuvre. I will be in the theatre watching "Sex and the City: Le Film" a second time.
bisoux,
marcel
Monday, July 14, 2008
le blog: le bog, le slog
hello fellow proust-heads. i am writing with an admission: i am stuck. i am bogged down just about 2/3 of the way through volume two and need help. what have people been thinking about the book? this is in no way a constructive post, but rather a weak call for help . . .
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
il est arrivé.
Before I forget, my book is here. Note how easily it dwarfs the innocent Spanish pocket dictionary that cowers in its shadow. I suspect that it may start preying upon my other paperbacks.
Good one, Marcel.
Monday, June 23, 2008
blague!
and before i forget! proust jokes! i took that early post to heart and have been putting little hearts and smiley faces and dragons in the margins next to all of the proust side-splitters. here are a few. i´ll put them in french first because that´s what i´m reading in and then attempt a rough translation. other french speakers, feel free to correct. i´m terribly lazy and haven´t been carring a dictionary with me ever since the berlin map and grammar book supplanted it so things are a little sloppy over here.
having written all of that, i can find only one of the three kickers that i remember underlining. i´ll give you this one and find the rest later:
"´Je trouve ridicule au fond qu´un homme de son intelligence souffre pour une personne de ce genre et qui n´est meme pas interessante, car on la dit idiote´, ajouta-t-elle avec la sagesse des gens non amoreux qui trouvent qu´un homme d´esprit ne devrait etre malhereux que pour une personne qui en valut la peine; c´est a peu pres comme s´etonner qu´on daigne sourrfrir du cholera par le fait d´un etre aussi petit que le bacille virgule."
"´I find it fundamentally ridiculous that a man of his intelligence could suffer for a person of her sort, someone who isn´t even interesting - people even say she´s an idiot,´ she added with the wisdom of those who are not in love and who think that a man of spirit ought not be lovesick except for those who are worth the trouble; it´s a bit like those who are surprised that one would deign to suffer from cholera for the sake of such a small bacteria."
now that´s funny.
also, and before i forget (because i have to get off the computer now), i want to talk about these things in future posts:
sentiment-sadism
music
baking - sense of things developing under heat
illness metaphors
the shudder (damn you, adorno)
detachment, the ideal, the imaginary
having written all of that, i can find only one of the three kickers that i remember underlining. i´ll give you this one and find the rest later:
"´Je trouve ridicule au fond qu´un homme de son intelligence souffre pour une personne de ce genre et qui n´est meme pas interessante, car on la dit idiote´, ajouta-t-elle avec la sagesse des gens non amoreux qui trouvent qu´un homme d´esprit ne devrait etre malhereux que pour une personne qui en valut la peine; c´est a peu pres comme s´etonner qu´on daigne sourrfrir du cholera par le fait d´un etre aussi petit que le bacille virgule."
"´I find it fundamentally ridiculous that a man of his intelligence could suffer for a person of her sort, someone who isn´t even interesting - people even say she´s an idiot,´ she added with the wisdom of those who are not in love and who think that a man of spirit ought not be lovesick except for those who are worth the trouble; it´s a bit like those who are surprised that one would deign to suffer from cholera for the sake of such a small bacteria."
now that´s funny.
also, and before i forget (because i have to get off the computer now), i want to talk about these things in future posts:
sentiment-sadism
music
baking - sense of things developing under heat
illness metaphors
the shudder (damn you, adorno)
detachment, the ideal, the imaginary
my first kiss (woodacre, california)
i am starting to think that no-one ever really can win with proust. yes, one can finish the book ("can" might be the wrong word here? perhaps an impersonal construction suits the endeavor better? "it is possible" to finish the book? in the same way, of course, that anything is possible, like unicorns, or, my personal favorite, griffins. but i digress. which is, of course, the point.), but proust still wins because in finishing one has submitted to his work. i rather think, sarah, that your re-reading and re-living is the greatest sort of victory that one can have with proust. after reading your post, i was filled with a sort of guilt because i am almost done with the first volume and have been a more conventional sort of reader than you have. when i first started reading it, in berkeley, i could only stomach 15 pages a day. my attention span for that sort of writing ("he has too much time on his hands" - more on that later) was diminished. it was all about him! there was nowhere for me to get in! (exactly the opposite problem from that which sarah had).
when i arrived in brussels, though, and then when i got to berlin, the reading became a million times easier. i´m not completely sure why, maybe because there are fewer distractions here - no internet at home, few friends, no cell phone (until yesterday! whee!) - but i rather think more because my life isn´t here. you see, for me, reading proust is about losing myself in l´histoire de marcel, about losing my own past for his. instead of identification, i feel erasure. i regret this - it sounds so much richer to relive the moments of one´s own past via the book. what i hope is happening, though, is that i´m writing some sort of new history, one in which this summer will be the summer of proust. this idea is disturbing on a number of levels (number one, i never want to be like d.a. miller, with my very own proust and suntan oil story. blech.), but still maybe alluring. the point is that i think that reading proust in berlin, where i have no history, helps me sink even more in the story. i am starting to find myself, against all odds, wanting to read more before i go to sleep, wanting to KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT despite the fact that nothing ever bloody happens.
i´ll try to circle back to my point, which was simply that getting sidetracked by one´s own history sounds like a marvellous way to read proust. there are a multitude of ways to experience a book so much about memory and the senses and i think that it will be fascinating to see how everyone does it.
when i arrived in brussels, though, and then when i got to berlin, the reading became a million times easier. i´m not completely sure why, maybe because there are fewer distractions here - no internet at home, few friends, no cell phone (until yesterday! whee!) - but i rather think more because my life isn´t here. you see, for me, reading proust is about losing myself in l´histoire de marcel, about losing my own past for his. instead of identification, i feel erasure. i regret this - it sounds so much richer to relive the moments of one´s own past via the book. what i hope is happening, though, is that i´m writing some sort of new history, one in which this summer will be the summer of proust. this idea is disturbing on a number of levels (number one, i never want to be like d.a. miller, with my very own proust and suntan oil story. blech.), but still maybe alluring. the point is that i think that reading proust in berlin, where i have no history, helps me sink even more in the story. i am starting to find myself, against all odds, wanting to read more before i go to sleep, wanting to KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT despite the fact that nothing ever bloody happens.
i´ll try to circle back to my point, which was simply that getting sidetracked by one´s own history sounds like a marvellous way to read proust. there are a multitude of ways to experience a book so much about memory and the senses and i think that it will be fascinating to see how everyone does it.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
You should know that I am something of an expert.
I have now read the first 50 pages of Swann's Way, alternately the "Overture" or simply "Combray: I," four times. Each time I have been distracted by one thing or another; each time I have failed to move on to "Combray: II." The first three times were in translation, and for this, my fourth, and admittedly rather desperate, attempt to manhandle Proust, I tackled it in French (which, um, may or may not be the foolhardy key to my undoing - shh, don't tell Marcel!).
Four times! I can't think of another book that has managed to flat-out defeat me so consistently. Even Women in goddamned Love only withstood two attacks before giving in, and believe me, comrades, I am no friend of Lawrence. What, you may ask, has prevented me from proceeding in my three prior attempts upon this book? To answer that question, I take you back to Jessie's earlier post, "Overpriced Beer and Crackerjacks." I agree wholeheartedly that Proust would be totally into the kind of moments she described so clearly (though he might not be a huge baseball fan, considering his aversion to the outdoors and his supposed proclivity for ANTM) - after all, he's all about that giddy-making, visceral feeling of time travel that links sense to memory. I love reading these pages because they communicate so clearly that instantaneous and uncontrollable jerk between present and past (again, as per Jessie, cue madeleine reference). However, I can't help but experience these pages a little too directly, too intimately. At the risk of sounding kind of, well, reductive and idiotic about it, I think I just take Proust a little too personally.
Reading that opening section, I'm a good sport - I go along with Marcel into the darkened bedroom of his childhood, I feel with him the anxiety of an early bedtime exile. I eat the crumb of madeleine, I let it dissolve in the spoonful of tea. I remember the sickly aunt. Everything's all fine and peachy keen. But then (damn it!), I go off on my own; I leave Marcel in the dust and go a little crazy. I can't help but think of things that make me time-travel: I taste the edge of cigarette smoke on velvety, thick summer air, then fall into a memory of smoking and talking and kissing and smoking again in a Cleveland Heights parking lot in a now-distant August. I catch a hint of the perfume I wore in high school and find myself again, somewhat incongruously this time, in a packed box of sweating, dancing bodies somewhere in English clubland. I feel the burn of smoke and sharp, frigid air in my throat, and lean once more against the wall of the Taft Apartments in New Haven, the infuriating weight of both unrequited love and unfinished senior essay settling into a familiar hollow in my gut. Now I'm distracted, and the book is forgotten. I get up, wander around the house, and ponder my mortality. Perhaps I eat some ice cream and loll around for a while. Undoubtedly I realize that most of my vivid memories involve smoking, and half-heartedly curse the day I quit. What - huh - Marcel? Marcel who? Proust shmoust. Get out of my way, I've got to go get a pint of Coffee Heath Bar Crunch and a pack of Camel Lights.
All in all, this is a long-winded way of saying that I agree with Jessie - Proust's style does far more than simply invoke memory, it creates the past and brings it to the present. Andre Aciman has all the right in the world to be sick of hearing about Proust and senses, Proust and memory, Proust and sense memory, blah blah (aren't we all just a leeetle bit sick of hearing about all that?), but even if he doesn't want to dwell on these things any more, it can't be denied that memory and style are inextricably, lovingly, carefully intertwined here. Yes, Proust's greatest joy is in the aesthetic experience of the every day - but it's the re-creation of gorgeous moments past that allows him to attain this joy. And to me, the real triumph of the opening pages of the book is the seductive, coercive impact that they have on my memory - all of a sudden, I find myself reading Marcel's memories and my own; I take my own languid excursions into the scents and tastes and ticklish sensations of my unrecorded personal past. I put the book down.
ANYWAY, now that that's all out there, this time I intend pick up the book again and move on, despite this past week of guilt-ridden delay (and let's face it, German homework is no excuse: simply put, ich habe viel Angst vor Proust). The resplendent moustache and doleful eyes of our friend Marcel regard me with a infuriatingly casual skepticism, as though he is just soooo sure I can't/won't make it through - but I swear to you, sisters in bloghood, I WILL prove him wrong. The war isn't over - sure, it may be Marcel:3, Sarah:0, but this fourth battle is still up for grabs. This time, I won't get lost in my own private no man's land of introspection, and I WILL WIN!
Four times! I can't think of another book that has managed to flat-out defeat me so consistently. Even Women in goddamned Love only withstood two attacks before giving in, and believe me, comrades, I am no friend of Lawrence. What, you may ask, has prevented me from proceeding in my three prior attempts upon this book? To answer that question, I take you back to Jessie's earlier post, "Overpriced Beer and Crackerjacks." I agree wholeheartedly that Proust would be totally into the kind of moments she described so clearly (though he might not be a huge baseball fan, considering his aversion to the outdoors and his supposed proclivity for ANTM) - after all, he's all about that giddy-making, visceral feeling of time travel that links sense to memory. I love reading these pages because they communicate so clearly that instantaneous and uncontrollable jerk between present and past (again, as per Jessie, cue madeleine reference). However, I can't help but experience these pages a little too directly, too intimately. At the risk of sounding kind of, well, reductive and idiotic about it, I think I just take Proust a little too personally.
Reading that opening section, I'm a good sport - I go along with Marcel into the darkened bedroom of his childhood, I feel with him the anxiety of an early bedtime exile. I eat the crumb of madeleine, I let it dissolve in the spoonful of tea. I remember the sickly aunt. Everything's all fine and peachy keen. But then (damn it!), I go off on my own; I leave Marcel in the dust and go a little crazy. I can't help but think of things that make me time-travel: I taste the edge of cigarette smoke on velvety, thick summer air, then fall into a memory of smoking and talking and kissing and smoking again in a Cleveland Heights parking lot in a now-distant August. I catch a hint of the perfume I wore in high school and find myself again, somewhat incongruously this time, in a packed box of sweating, dancing bodies somewhere in English clubland. I feel the burn of smoke and sharp, frigid air in my throat, and lean once more against the wall of the Taft Apartments in New Haven, the infuriating weight of both unrequited love and unfinished senior essay settling into a familiar hollow in my gut. Now I'm distracted, and the book is forgotten. I get up, wander around the house, and ponder my mortality. Perhaps I eat some ice cream and loll around for a while. Undoubtedly I realize that most of my vivid memories involve smoking, and half-heartedly curse the day I quit. What - huh - Marcel? Marcel who? Proust shmoust. Get out of my way, I've got to go get a pint of Coffee Heath Bar Crunch and a pack of Camel Lights.
All in all, this is a long-winded way of saying that I agree with Jessie - Proust's style does far more than simply invoke memory, it creates the past and brings it to the present. Andre Aciman has all the right in the world to be sick of hearing about Proust and senses, Proust and memory, Proust and sense memory, blah blah (aren't we all just a leeetle bit sick of hearing about all that?), but even if he doesn't want to dwell on these things any more, it can't be denied that memory and style are inextricably, lovingly, carefully intertwined here. Yes, Proust's greatest joy is in the aesthetic experience of the every day - but it's the re-creation of gorgeous moments past that allows him to attain this joy. And to me, the real triumph of the opening pages of the book is the seductive, coercive impact that they have on my memory - all of a sudden, I find myself reading Marcel's memories and my own; I take my own languid excursions into the scents and tastes and ticklish sensations of my unrecorded personal past. I put the book down.
ANYWAY, now that that's all out there, this time I intend pick up the book again and move on, despite this past week of guilt-ridden delay (and let's face it, German homework is no excuse: simply put, ich habe viel Angst vor Proust). The resplendent moustache and doleful eyes of our friend Marcel regard me with a infuriatingly casual skepticism, as though he is just soooo sure I can't/won't make it through - but I swear to you, sisters in bloghood, I WILL prove him wrong. The war isn't over - sure, it may be Marcel:3, Sarah:0, but this fourth battle is still up for grabs. This time, I won't get lost in my own private no man's land of introspection, and I WILL WIN!
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
that is BIENVENUE to you, my friend.
Ahem. I would like to take this opportunity to extend my most gracious and exuberant (yet still elegantly languid) greetings to our charming nouvelles amies - it has been some years since I last had the opportunity to match wits with such an exceptional group of brilliant ladies in the blossom of youth. Ah, you glorious flowers recall images of duchesses long past...
I am glad to see that you have finally embarked upon my oeuvre - savor it! You will love it, I am sure. So very sure. Let me know what parts you find particularly ravissant; perhaps we can compare notes. Until then, I shall be busy in my room - I am finally, as you say, "ditching" the cork walls and getting a flat-screen T.V.! I adore your century!
Bisoux!
Marcel
P.S. - babsmonet, I am flattered by your extravagant praise - I admit that I myself have wondered what the glorious Tyra, Ferocity Incarnate, might think of my moustache. I feel certain that she would love it as much as you, my dear, will love my book.
I am glad to see that you have finally embarked upon my oeuvre - savor it! You will love it, I am sure. So very sure. Let me know what parts you find particularly ravissant; perhaps we can compare notes. Until then, I shall be busy in my room - I am finally, as you say, "ditching" the cork walls and getting a flat-screen T.V.! I adore your century!
Bisoux!
Marcel
P.S. - babsmonet, I am flattered by your extravagant praise - I admit that I myself have wondered what the glorious Tyra, Ferocity Incarnate, might think of my moustache. I feel certain that she would love it as much as you, my dear, will love my book.
welcome...
welcome to ali and margo, and thanks to hannah on getting us started with serious proust discussion (although i agree with ali that we should continue the tradition of so-called "jokes" by proust, even if only in our interpretations of our friend marcel). the mystery of my book has been somewhat solved but by no means remedied - it got "missent" by the usps and ended up in the wilds of south san francisco (the industrial city!). anyway, i went ahead and got an ancient copy of "swann's way" en anglais to start with before the french behemoth arrives... soon i will be ready to post on the text! huzzah!
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
overpriced beer and cracker jacks
I went to a baseball game this evening, and decided that Proust is all about baseball. Or rather, he is all about that sensation you get when you walk into the stadium and everything expands from a cement corridor into a green swath full of bustle and voices and life. Or the feeling that trumpets summer, when you ride in a car at full speed with all the windows open and the sun beating down (burning your left arm but not your right), singing at the top of your lungs. What I mean to say is that Proust seems to be interested in capturing the moments that are full not only because they are beautiful but because they are essential - prototypical, repeatable, emblematic. When he launches into the epic similes it is always because something quintessential has occurred. Cue madeleine reference here. While I agree with Andre Aciman that style organizes and radiates energy into things, I might argue with his definition of style. One interesting point about Proust's writing is the way in which memory and "style" move closer and closer together: one might think about Proust's style as a way of remembering.
Mais quelle moustache féroce!
As a hitherto virgin blogger I am both honored and delighted to have my first go at it with such a splendidly mustachioed specimen as Marcel. That being said I must register my surprise/shock/dismay/horror/etc. upon discovering that there was no possibility of casting a vote in favor of the the 'stache being, well, fierce. But a blog that offers both reflection on Proust and Top Model invective certainly seems nothing if not promising. Merci de m'accueillir! Now I suppose I should start reading as the serious postings have begun to appear...
Andre Aciman on Proust
I emailed the man who wrote Call Me By Your Name, the book that inspired me and Ali to read Proust, and asked him if he could provide some thoughts.
This is what he wrote back:
This is what he wrote back:
Though you certainly didn't ask for a disquisition, there are many things I could say about Proust. Most importantly, let me just start with this: that Proust is really an easy writer. He is especially easy once you've accepted that his writing is what it is and that you're going to put up with it and even grow to love it. To ask Proust to court you all the time—else you'll put him down!—is pointless, which is why some readers shouldn't read him at all. He's not for them, and they're not for him.
Proust is about the search for happiness, and as a corollary to this, about the search for enchantment. But Proust is not happy, Marcel isn't happy, and Swann certainly isn't. Sometimes the only happiness Proust can find is in the beauty of language; or, conversely, in having the beauty of language reflect the happiness and enchantment which ordinary people and things were unable to provide. The beauty of style—or let's call it just "style"—organizes and radiates on the life around him and turns the ordinary into an object of enchantment. Things are beautiful, or interesting if they just promise to become material for a book, the purpose of which will be to confer a more enduring form of beauty (and therefore of happiness) on life. Proust's work is about the artistic temperament, which looks to validate itself by revealing how everything it touches is a preordained object of the artist's enchanted gaze.
Here is my Proust. One could write a whole book on this subject. I have grown tired of people talk about time, memory, smells, etc. The question Proust asks is: what makes life worth living: and his answer is twofold: happiness and art—and both are ultimately synonymous. The easiest question to ask is: why is love impossible in Proust? Or: Why are people not to be trusted?
------
So there's that from him. More from me sometime soon.
Jokes by Proust
There are a lot of Proust blogs out there! And their names range from the boring (proustreading.blogspot.com) to the poetic (involuntarymemory.blogspot.com) to the...uh, seductive (proustwhore.blogspot.com). Suffice it to say, my perusal of alternate Proustian options on the Internets only served to solidify my commitment to Marcel: Le Blog.
But I did come across two gems that I wanted to share...
1. One blogger posted what she calls a "joke by Proust:"
...For the folding seats on its shore and the forms of the monsters in the stalls were mirrored in those eyes in simple obedience to the laws of optics and according to their angle of incidence, as happens with those two sections of external reality to which, knowing that they do not possess any soul, however rudimentary, that can be considered analogous to our own, we should think ourselves insane to address a smile or a glance: namely, minerals and people to whome we have not been introduced.
She labeled this post "Jokes By Proust: One," suggesting that she would continue to post jokes in subsequent postings. Alas, she dropped the project. I motion for us to continue it.
2. Proust Discovers Livejournal
see http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2008/5/21kumar.html
________
Oh, and also - Hannah, you can skip this part - a brief introduction, since I've never met most of you:
I'm Ali. I live on a boat in Seattle. I work most of the time for an ex-Moonie who hired me to help him write his memoir, and occasionally for the Cascade Bicycle Club, and on weekends at a farmer's market selling various and sundry tomatoes. I went to Middlebury with Hannah's friend Maren, which is how I know Hannah, although I could probably have known her before that, since we recently discovered we grew up a block away from each other in NYC. My In Search of Lost Time was a bit of an impulse buy; I finished Andre Aciman's Call Me By Your Name, was so floored that I didn't know what to do with myself, wound up on Amazon...and three days later, a very large box arrived.
Anyway, thanks for having me in your Proust group (Proup?).
But I did come across two gems that I wanted to share...
1. One blogger posted what she calls a "joke by Proust:"
...For the folding seats on its shore and the forms of the monsters in the stalls were mirrored in those eyes in simple obedience to the laws of optics and according to their angle of incidence, as happens with those two sections of external reality to which, knowing that they do not possess any soul, however rudimentary, that can be considered analogous to our own, we should think ourselves insane to address a smile or a glance: namely, minerals and people to whome we have not been introduced.
She labeled this post "Jokes By Proust: One," suggesting that she would continue to post jokes in subsequent postings. Alas, she dropped the project. I motion for us to continue it.
2. Proust Discovers Livejournal
see http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2008/5/21kumar.html
________
Oh, and also - Hannah, you can skip this part - a brief introduction, since I've never met most of you:
I'm Ali. I live on a boat in Seattle. I work most of the time for an ex-Moonie who hired me to help him write his memoir, and occasionally for the Cascade Bicycle Club, and on weekends at a farmer's market selling various and sundry tomatoes. I went to Middlebury with Hannah's friend Maren, which is how I know Hannah, although I could probably have known her before that, since we recently discovered we grew up a block away from each other in NYC. My In Search of Lost Time was a bit of an impulse buy; I finished Andre Aciman's Call Me By Your Name, was so floored that I didn't know what to do with myself, wound up on Amazon...and three days later, a very large box arrived.
Anyway, thanks for having me in your Proust group (Proup?).
Monday, June 9, 2008
Deine Mutter!
My dear Marcel,
I am *shocked* by the tenor of your response - do you imply that my mother has a moustache? My mother was a saint! And her face was as bare as the Sahara desert! She did, however, have a fine pair of eyebrows, passed down to me (see right).
Now that we have descended into the arena of the ad hominem, allow me to riposte that Tyra Banks couldn't spot America's Next Top Model if she strutted scantily clad before Tyra's tiny eyes! The show has never recovered from the loss of Janice Dickinson. There, I said it! Yes, that's right - Janice Dickinson!
With that, I take my leave, of this blog, and of our nascent friendship.
Good day, sir!
Sunday, June 8, 2008
ta mère! or, euh, YOUR MOM.
fighting words, my dear robert. i must inform you of some things:
1. there is a reason nobody reads your petty little novel: you never finished it!
2. i am french, and therefore superior.
3. when given a choice, nobody will pick a hairless herr over a mustachioed monsieur.
ahahhahaha! WHO ELSE DARES TO QUESTION MOI? nobody? i thought not. should you need me, i shall be in the salon, eating watercress sandwiches and watching "sex and the city."
1. there is a reason nobody reads your petty little novel: you never finished it!
2. i am french, and therefore superior.
3. when given a choice, nobody will pick a hairless herr over a mustachioed monsieur.
ahahhahaha! WHO ELSE DARES TO QUESTION MOI? nobody? i thought not. should you need me, i shall be in the salon, eating watercress sandwiches and watching "sex and the city."
A Man With, Really, Very Many Qualities
Presented with a novel of 2,500 pages, I am resolute. Having written a novel of over 1,700 pages myself, I do not quail.
Furthermore, I protest! Against the assertion that you, Marcel, are handsomer than I, Robert Musil. You see how much more dignified is the face of a man with no mustaches at all. Yes, that's right, you heard me. Not a single facial follicle, and yet lovely as the day is long! I revoke my vote of "superlatif" on your piquant poll at left.
Now, if you will excuse me, I will calm my spirits with a second viewing of Robocop before tackling Swann's Way.
In search of lost book
I am just desperate to get started, particularly after the celebratory madeleines Jessie, Robert Musil and I shared yesterday. However, my book is still mysteriously and unfortunately missing in action; both Amazon and the postal service claim that it's been "in transit" somewhere in the five mile stretch of 580 between Richmond and Berkeley for the past week or so. Actually, perhaps this absence is a good thing. To be honest, I'm a little afraid of what will happen when this book arrives - it's a monster. ONE volume, 2408 pages, no notes, no glosses, no introduction: just a whole lot of Proust in his unadulterated French glory. I am (for now, at least) determined to triumph: Marcel, you and your superlative moustachio will not defeat me! Hopefully the hulking physical threat of the single-volume Recherche will not shake my resolve...
coffee and time
salut, les filles!
i thought that marcel might be getting lonely out here on the interweb all alone (except, of course, for his brilliance and his moustache), thus i am sending out a lonely post which is but a promise of posts to come. i am off to sip a latte and read. i shall smell the roses along the way.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
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