Would Proust Approve?

I am the only one in ecstasy inhaling, through the noise of the falling rain, the smell of invisible, enduring lilacs.--Marcel Proust

Let's face it. We're not in college anymore. (I should have faced that fact two decades ago. But better late than never, as they say.) Since adult life doesn't generally provide a grassy quad to stretch out on all afternoon as you make margin notes in the classic literature you're required to read for some survey course you're required to take, reading time is at a premium. Even the most earnest adult readers among us have to fight for the time to read the newspaper on a daily basis. That given, who has the time to read a novel, let alone a novel of epic proportions like Proust's In Search of Lost Time? The numerous volumes span more than 13,000 pages! If you line all the pages up top to bottom they would stretch around the world three times! Well, probably not. But still. You get the picture.

One would have to be overcome with a fit of optimism to consider purchasing even Swann's Way the first volume of Proust's mammoth collection.  For all it's beautiful epiphanies, the book is slow moving--not much happens in terms of plot.  From everything I've heard, the highlight of these four hundred some pages is an incident involving a tea-soaked madeleine. Who has time for this?

At this point in my life, my eleven-month-old daughter barely naps long enough for me to take a shower. If I want to bathe properly, I have to plop the baby in a high chair, sprinkle Cheerios on her tray, and drag her and the chair into the bathroom with me--all the while playing peekaboo behind the shower curtain as I shave my legs. Who has time for Proust?

People (and by people I mean nerdy people) have to start support groups to finish In Search of Lost Time, as if the task is tantamount to overcoming an addiction to narcotics. And even then, most group members relapse and pick up a copy of Us Weekly at the grocery check out counter. The modern American lifestyle just doesn't seem to lend itself to reading great works of literature outside of college. These books were written for people who had servants, and drank tea with their neighbors at four o'clock, and spent their mornings strolling through hedged gardens behind their estates. 

So what I'm trying to say is: nobody would give me a hard time for never having read Proust. And yet, there I was last Friday night in the West Village handing the woman at the bookstore a twenty for Lydia Davis' most recent translation of Swann's Way.  Perhaps I should have just taken that twenty and lit it on fire. But then again, nobody has ever accused me of being a realist. 

Realist or not, here's what I'm learning as I grow older: time not only speeds up, but also gets scarcer. It may just be that this aptly-titled book, In Search of Lost Time, is just what I need. After all, this is the book that stopped Virginia Woolf in her tracks by its breathtaking imagery. After reading Proust, Woolf, a genius in her own right, wondered what was left to write?  

Clearly, there was plenty.

With a new daughter in tow, I'm learning too that if I'm going to embark on anything worthwhile at all (in addition to the uber-meaningful job of parenting,) I have to just simply do it--whether I have the time or not.

So I'm reading Proust. I don't expect to be blown away by the story line or riveted by every sentence. I don't even expect to finish it. I've decided to proceed in a willy nilly fashion. Every evening I open up Swann's Way to a random page and dig around in hopes of finding the beautiful gems of insight. So far I haven't been disappointed, and I don't think Proust would be either. 

 

You Can't Go Home Again, Unless of Course, You Live in Brooklyn

The interview with Irish writer Colm Toibin in a recent New York Times Magazine intrigued me enough to want to pick up a copy of his new novel Brooklyn. At this very moment you are most likely thinking, how many more books could possibly exploit the Brooklyn motif? Just do a search on Amazon and you will see we already have A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Motherless Brooklyn,  Brooklyn: A State of Mind, Brooklyn Was Mine, Nothing Was Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn, I Live in Brooklyn (one of my daughter's favorite children's books) and now the rather minimalist if not blandly titled novel, Brookyn.

I admit I've taken a shine to the author not only because we've sprung from the same freckled gene pool, but also because his book is set in Cobble Hill the neighborhood where my family and Alex from the Real Housewives of Manhattan now reside. Coincidence? Maybe. If you actually had time to read the interview, you would find that Toibin takes the journalist on a little walking tour of Cobble Hill. He skips right by CVS to point out emeralds such as Staubitz butcher shop and Sam's Chop House--small businesses that were established in the 1950s, the time period in which his novel is set.

Like the author, Brooklyn's protagonist, Ellis Lacey (pronounce Eye-lish), is as Irish as they come. And she faces challenges consistent with Toibin's central theme: a wistfulness about home that is tinged with the knowledge that the ideal no longer exists. Or worse yet, never really existed at all. For Toibin, that home is, of course, Ireland. But he is also homesick for something far more intimate: a sense of family. Toibin never enjoyed a particularly close relationship with his parents and the emotionally distant mother is a pervasive theme throughout his novels. But healing past hurts in a therapeutic fashion just isn't Toibin's style. His rather comical explanation gave me pause. I think arriving home and accusing your mother of things when you’re in your 30s and she’s in her 60s or 70s is not something you should do. People are getting older, they have enough on their minds without their children arriving in states of hysteria or accusation.

Are you suddenly feeling terribly guilty?

I was also charmed by Toibin's romantic description of an Irish face in the interview: Someone whose eyes are soft but his jaw is hard, who can look very stubborn, who can remain silent for a very long time, who's capable also of resentments, who's never owned anything and is happier looking at the horizons than other possessions.

Okay, so Toibin can lay it on pretty thick. But would you expect anything less from a writer that has the Times journalist meet him at Sunday mass before he gives an interview?

Tenement Museum

Last night I began reading the first chapter of Away. As I mentioned before, the story begins on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 20s; a time when we all know the area was teeming with European immigrants willing to withstand harsh living conditions in the hope of manifesting a better future for their offspring. The main character finds herself sharing cramped quarters in a tenement. The images in the chapter reminded me that I've always wanted to visit the Tenement Museum and learn about the actual life histories of immigrants from this era. The museum occupies an old tenement building on the Lower East Side and is filled with artifacts that reconstruct the lives of the building's occupants. As visitors walk through the building they can read about the people who once called the tenement home. I'm thinking of getting a group together to visit the museum one Saturday afternoon in June.  Let me know if you want to join!

Away by Amy Bloom

The Booklyners will be reading Amy Bloom's Away this month. This New York Times Bestseller has been named Best Book of the year by numerous publications and is rumored to be an enthralling read. The novel opens on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1924. It tells the story of Lilllian Leyb, a Russian immigrant, who eventually sets out across America, up the Alaskan frontier, and I'm guessing across the Bering Strait in a quest to find her lost daughter. It seemed like an enjoyable and inspiring summer read; a road trip story of sorts with a lush and breezy sensibility. 

Want to Start Your Own Book Club?

I found Lit Lovers to be helpful. They have monthly suggestions for good book club reads. The recommendations are divided into three categories: Classics, Wonderfully Written, and A Lighter Touch. Each recommendation comes with a synopsis and brief review. The site also publishes helpful tips on starting your own group.

Welcome to Booklyn

This blog was created as a place to record thoughts and observations of the books we read in our monthly club. Book club members are invited to create posts about the books we're reading, meeting times and locations, favorite books they've read, even recipes for book club treats. Guests are invited to make comments on all things literary as well! I hope this space will serve to add another layer of expression to the reading experience since we can only meet in person once monthly.