2005-01-04 - 10:58

Cooler than you are: Marcel Proust.

Harry's got sort of a wonky cross, that's 'trials and suffering'. And that there could be the sun and thats 'happiness'. So you're gonna suffer but you'll gonna be happy about it --Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Born on July 10, 1871, Valentin Louis Georges Eugene Marcel Proust wrote a book that contains a sentence that, if stretched out would run just shy of four meters. The man was always cold and would often be seen wearing layers even in the summer. He was a recluse that tended not to leave home or even get out of bed. He had bizarre eating habits, a myriad of health problems, and was practically too queer to hide it in a time when that really just wasn't cool. He self-published the first volume of his novel. His bedroom walls were lined with cork to keep outside noise to a minimum. According to the memoirs of his friends, he was generous, kind, accomodating, a good listener and brilliant conversationalist. Because of this, Marcel Proust is cooler than you are.

I am reading How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton. (I picked it up because I like Alain de Botton. Prior to perusing its pages I knew nothing about Proust beyond that he was a cancer and that he wrote one fucking enormous novel.) This book has made me laugh. Not the out-and-out, toss-your-head-back kind of laughter brought on by Yossarian's misadventures, but a more subtle kind of laughter. One that has left me smiling and that has filled me with hope. There are apparently thirty pages in In Search of Lost Time in which he describes not being able to fall asleep. Thirty Pages dedicated solely to describing the narrators ineffective attempts at closing his eyes, breathing deeply and losing consciousness. I love that. Proust informs us, "Happiness is good for the body, but it is grief which develops the strengths of the mind." This, coming from a man who had asthma so badly that he could just look at a photograph of a lilac and have an attack. The only incentive that comfort gives us is a drive to continue to remain comfortable. And, I'm with Proust on this one, comfort doesn't make us better people. What we learn, how we grow, these things come from repeatedly walking into the same brick wall until we decide its time to scale it.

Proust, or at least Proustian thought, isn't about seeking suffering, Suffering will find us on its own, but rather using it to better understand ourselves and the world. Its about using the suffering as a tool to better apreciate those moments when we aren't suffering. "Perhaps the greatest claim one can therefore make for suffering is that it opens up possibilities for intelligent, imaginative inquiry--possibilities that may quite easily be, and most often are, overlooked or refused," Botton summarizes. So, the next time someone hurts your feelings or you embarrass yourself in public, ask yourself, "Well, What Would Proust Do?" You might just find in that moment of pain something worth smiling about.

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Artificial Sound for the Artificial World:

Still more noir than you are.