Marcel Proust and the Trouble with Us

In Search of Lost Time
by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff & Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright
Modern Library, six volumes.
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Following the birth of our third child, my husband, perhaps motivated by our heightened interest in the subject, purchased for me the complete set of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. I tackled it gamely, and then, little by little, lost momentum. Of the thousands of pages that make up his six volumes in the Moncrieff and Kilmartin version (revised by D.J. Enright) I found myself faltering somewhere in Chapter One.

The problem was that first chapter, the recounting of the narrator’s tiredness, the gusts of memory that stirred his mind, his falling asleep and waking again, all intensely irritating and seemingly self-indulgent to a sleep-deprived parent of three young ones. Then there were desolate, heart-wrenching descriptions of a child yearning for his mother, waiting up for her to come and kiss him goodnight and his fear that he would be punished for doing so, all of which led me to the inescapable conclusion that Proust was workshopping his childhood demons in a massive literary therapy session.

In the past I have not been put off by challenging novels, not by Gide, Sartre, Kafka, Flaubert or Stendhal. But Proust has proved different. Perhaps it is the times we live in; drenched in constant showers of information we are like addicts always wanting the next quick hit. There is a price to pay for the constant consumption of little bits of information. For many it is the loss of the ability to concentrate, to apply ourselves for long periods of time. That skill is diminished, deactivated, left rusting somewhere in a corner of our brain.

I have picked up Proust four or five times since my initial attempt, only to place it firmly aside. I determined to give the set away, gathered it up in a bag, then found myself uncertain, returning it to my shelf where it has sat these past eight years, its leaves slowly yellowing.

Richard Howard, poet and translator, who provides the introduction to the translation by Moncrieff and Kilmartin, acknowledged Proust as having the reputation of being a difficult author and predicted the current dilemma. He fretted that the modern reader might suffer from a lack of time to devote to such a tome. Germaine Greer warned against making such a time commitment in the first place:

As Proust very well knew, reading his work for as long as it takes is temps perdu, time wasted, time that would be better spent visiting a demented relative, meditating, walking the dog or learning ancient Greek.

Clive James, however, is a surprising admirer of Proust. In 2016 he published a verse commentary on Proust’s work titled Gate of Lilacs. He has read Proust in the French, teaching himself the language in the process. He has also read Proust in the two English translations, studied him for half a century and still considers himself a novice on the subject. The humility of Clive James when it comes to Proust seems misplaced; he has persevered and succeeded where many have failed. His admiration for Proust is interesting; they seem ill-suited, these two: one the sickly, delicate Frenchman of the convoluted sentence (some make a sport out of identifying his longest sentences), the other, the hearty Australian with the accessible writing style.

Clive James, the man from Kogarah, has a gift for describing the everyday with clear-sighted eloquence. When he describes his messy study, we are there, exploring the striped mug holding pens to discover which ones are indeed defective, running our fingers through the fruit bowl full of obsolete foreign coins and shaking our head at the neglected squash racket in the corner behind the pile of VHS tapes that will never be used again. He constructs a compelling story out of any subject no matter how ordinary, breathes magic into it, leaving us impatient for more. The Australian literary critic and cultural studies writer Peter Craven has described him as an incomparable essayist and a fine poet, and the first volume of his autobiography (Unreliable Memoirs) as a masterpiece.

Clive James deserves that recognition but we probably won’t put him on a pedestal as some might Proust. He feels closer than that. His writing is warm and entertaining, like listening to the stories of a favourite uncle, told from the depths of a comfortable armchair on an Australian porch. He is good company. His insights are astute. He writes that in his failing health one of life’s remaining blessings is clear sight. He is conscious of the importance of time and like a concerned friend, he asks: “I mean, how long do you think you have?”

One can never know, but hopefully long enough to read anything more that Clive James cares to produce. Not long enough, I suspect, to master Proust.