Today, November 18th, is the anniversary of Marcel Proust’s death in 1922.  If you will look in the column to the right of this post, you will see a badge that says “Nanowrimo participant”.  Nanowrimo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and I have committed myself to the writing of a book.  Part of what I am writing includes a visit from Marcel Proust, who, as you can read below if you so choose, has just esconced himself in our guest bed and is preparing to tell me a story.  In honor of the anniversary of Marcel Proust’s death, I offer this excerpt from my 50,ooo word not-so-magnum opus:

“Francoise now had Marcel propped up in the bed, with pillows and sweaters piled up behind him, and on either side of him, so that he could prop his elbows on them as he ate his croissant and drank his coffee, with the tray on a pillow on his lap.  Francoise stood at the foot of the bed, watching as Marcel finished his croissant and then going to fetch another as he requested.  While she was gone, he lay back on the pillows and closed his eyes.  He looked so much, at the moment, like the photograph taken by Man Ray after Proust had died, of him lying on his death bed with his sunken eyes closed and his nose sharp with skin stretched tight over it, that I was frozen in time, staring at the face I’d never seen in reality and yet- here it was.  He opened his eyes and caught me staring at him.  He smiled.  “Do not worry, Madame,  I will be restored soon.  And then I will begin the story”. 

Man Ray's death photo of Marcel Proust

You may already know that Marcel Proust is my favorite author.  Hence, this blog and my website, Madeleine Moments.  But do you know who my second favorite is?  I’ll give you a hint: his pen name was Boz.  Need another hint? 

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

Yes, Charles Dickens.  The picture below is an 1873 set of Dickens’ works (all but 2 or 3 volumes which we have since acquired) which I read, in order of Boz having written them, one after the other.  It took me just over one year.

Works of Charles Dickens

 So yesterday was my lucky day, because I had a Proust sighting and a Dickens sighting in the same sentence!  How’s that for excitement??  You’re overwhelmed, I can tell, as I was.  And it was in my favorite magazine- can you guess?  I won’t make you guess- it’s the New Yorker, the September 21st issue, to be exact, in Caleb Crain’s article entitled “It Happened One Decade: What the Great Depression did to culture”.

Here’s the sentence:

“(Dickstein) praises Henry Roth’s ‘Call it Sleep’ (1934) for its Dickensian polyphony of voices and Proustian sensibility.”

Dickensian and Proustian.  Doesn’t get any better than that. 

Bonus Proust sighting:

Peter Schjeldahl in the Sept. 21st issue of The New Yorker:

 ”…the ailing writer Bergotte weighed the value of his life against that of a ‘little patch of yellow wall, with a sloping roof’ in Johannes Vermeer’s “View of Delft”…”

 Schjeldahl goes on to say: “It happens to be erroneous.  There is no yellow wall under a sloping roof in Vermeer’s cityscape. (There is a yellow sloping roof.)  Scholars have earnestly debated what Bergotte saw, failing to consider that, like the rest of us, Proust had a lousy memory.”

For shame, Peter Schjeldahl.  Where is your Proustian sensibility?

Every now and then I see Marcel Proust mentioned or referenced somewhere and I post them here as sightings.  Sometimes the connections are uncommon or a little hard to see, as in this naming of  an “antioxidant skin-care product” called Combray.  Maybe someone can get back to me on why a product made of grapeseed oil would be named Combray?

Anyhow, other sightings are much more common or, shall we say, the connections are easy to make.  These sightings usually involve madeleines, as in this post by my favorite ex-pat food blogger David Liebowitz.  Not only does he seem to be a great cook, he’s a great read as well.  And he lives in Paris…sigh.  Here’s the link: http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2009/08/mad_about_the_madeleines.html

And here’s a challenge: Go read David’s post and find his Proust reference.  Then come back here and tell us about it in a comment.  Your prize will be a (used) copy of Paris Requiem by Lisa Appignanesi.   What’s this book’s connection with Proust? It takes place where and when Marcel lived and worked.  No, not Combray.  That’s an antioxidant skin-care product.

“To create is to live twice.  The anxious groping search of a man like Proust, his meticulous collecting of flowers and tapestries and states of anguish has no other meaning.”  Albert Camus

Marcel Proust was born on July 10, 1871, and so would be 138 years old on this, the anniversary of his birth.  Was his search an anxious groping one, as Camus says?  Was this the only meaning of Proust’s search, to live twice?  Or to live once, forever?

I know this blog is supposed to be about Marcel Proust, but March 30th is Vincent van Gogh’s birthday (he was born in 1853) so this post is in honor of that event.

The Yellow House:

van Gogh, Gauguin,

and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles

By Martin Gayford

Knowing of my love for and reverence of Vincent van Gogh, my sister gave me this book: The Yellow House: van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles.  She said she “just happened to see it” at a bookstore, knew I’d like it, and got it.  It was a Christmas present, and was certainly an excellent present to receive.

It’s a really well-researched and well-written book. The author seems to have read every letter, every newspaper and book, every piece of paper related to these two artists and the place, seen every painting and drawing and every actual place in and around Arles- and brings it all together in a coherent, compelling and moving account.  If it is possible to divine what someone was thinking at a certain time based on all the above, this author has done it. 

 Vincent van Gogh went to Arles, France because he felt it would give him the kind of light he needed for his paintings, the kind he thought he saw in Japanese prints, which were all the rage at this time.  He also wanted to establish an artist’s colony there, and the first (and only) person he could persuade to move there with him (financed by Vincent’s brother Theo, of course) was Paul Gauguin.  If there was a worse choice to be made, I can’t think of one.  Their lifestyles were different, their painting styles were different, their values were different- what they had in common was that they painted.  And paint they did; van Gogh’s output was astonishing, Gauguin’s less so.  They also drank, visited whorehouses, took day trips, and, increasingly, got on each other’s nerves.  At the end of the nine weeks, Vincent cut off all or part (reports differ) of his ear and presented it to his favorite prostitute. I blame Gauguin, who left town before Vincent even awoke from the dead faint he was in after the fit of madness.  But then, I’m biased.

 Great book.  Read it if at all possible, on this, the anniversary of Vincent’s birth, or at any time.

I have another post for this event, here.

Today, February 18th, is the 2nd year anniversary of this blog.  In honor, I have a sighting to report (brief flashback: a Proust sighting is what I call it when I see someone mention Proust in a book, a magazine, or etc…)  I recently checked a book out of the library called Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris by A.J. Liebling.  Here’s a quick glimpse of Liebling from the back cover of the book:

“No writer has written more extensively about food than A.J. Liebling.  Between Meals (1962), the great New Yorker writer’s last book, is a wholly appealing account of his “education sentimentale” in French cooking during 1926 and 1927, when American expatriates like Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein made cafe life the stuff of legend.  A native New Yorker who had gone abroad to study, Liebling shunned his coursework and applied himself to the fine art of eating- or “feeding”, as he called it.”

Liebling was apparently a man who decided, early on, that he wanted to do two things: write, and eat.  More specifically, to write about eating.  And in order to do that well, one must necessarily eat as much and as well as one possibly can.  What better place to do this than Paris?

So when, as a young man, he was temporarily adrift in life, as young men are wont to do, his father suggested a trip to France, Liebling seized the opportunity, sealing the deal with his father with a little fictional narrative that was a little taste of his later literary abilities.  (To read about this and more about Liebling, click here.)

Like Proust, Liebling spent most of his time in Paris, but also like Marcel, he occasionally made forays into the countryside.  Between Meals is the result.  And the first sentence of this book contains our Proust sighting.  I love it when I pick up a book, whose contents are unknown to me, and discover Marcel in the pages.  It’s like seeing a friend in a place where you hadn’t exected to see them, and only adds to your enjoyment of that place.

So, the sighting:

“The Proust madeleine phenomenon is now as firmly established in folklore as Newton’s apple or Watt’s steam kettle.  The man ate a tea biscuit, the taste evoked memories, he wrote a book.  This is capable of expression by the formula TMB, for Taste~Memory~Book.  Some time ago, when I began to read a book called The Food of France, by Waverley Root, I had an inverse experience: BMT, for Book~Memory~Taste.  Happily, the tastes that The Food of France re-created for me- small birds, stewed rabbit, stuffed tripe, Cote Rotie, and Tavel- were more robust than that of the madeleine, which Larousse defines as “a light cake made with sugar, flour, lemon juice, brandy and eggs”.  (The quantity of brandy in a madeleine would not furnish a gnat with an alcohol rub.)  In the light of what Proust wrote with so mild a stimulus, it is the world’s loss that he did not have a heartier appetite.  On a dozen Gardiners Island oysters, a bowl of clam chowder, a peck of steamers, some bay scallops, three sauteed soft-shelled crabs, a few ears of fresh-picked corn, a thin swordfish steak of generous area, a pair of lobsters, and a Long Island duck, he might have written a masterpiece.”

Of course, there are many who believe, on just such a mild stimulus, Proust did write a masterpiece.  A meal like the one described by Liebling, and after reading the entire book, that is just one meal A.J. is describing, would probably have hastened Proust’s already early demise.  Or at least caused him intense distress.  One imagines him thoroughly berating Celeste for bringing him such a gastronomic nightmare (or gourmet’s dream, from Liebling’s point of view).

As an extra added bonus, this sighting is also a madeleine reference.  Besides my own madeleine moments, shared here, I have experimented with making them myself, which you can read about and see recipes for here.  What caught my attention in Liebling’s description of  madeleines, which he attributes to Larousse, is the addition of brandy.  No recipe I had ever seen for madeleines included spirits of any kind.  I have apparently missed out.  So a little googling finally turns up this recipe (from this article):

PLAIN 18TH-CENTURY MADELEINES
Adapted from ‘”The New Making of a Cook” by Madeleine Kamman (William Morrow, 1997)
Time: 1 hour, plus at least two hours’ chilling

1 cup unsalted butter, more at room temperature for buttering pan
2 medium eggs
3 large eggs
Grated zest of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons dark rum
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 1/2 cups sifted unbleached all-purpose flour, more for flouring pan
2/3 cup sifted cake flour.

1. In a mixer fitted with a whisk, cream butter until white. Add 1 whole medium egg and 1 medium egg yolk. Place egg white in a bowl, and set aside. Continue mixing until blended. Turn to low speed, and add 3 large egg yolks (adding whites to the one in the bowl), beating after each addition. Add lemon zest and rum, and continue mixing for another minute.
2. Increase speed to medium. Add 2/3 cup sugar and the salt, and beat until all traces of sugar crystals disappear. Add remaining sugar, and whip another minute. Transfer batter to a large bowl. Wash and dry mixer bowl and whisk, then add egg whites. Beat until foamy, then add lemon juice and continue beating until very smooth and white.
3. Mix flours, and sift two-thirds of the flour over batter. Fold together until just blended. Fold in one-quarter of the egg whites. Slide remaining egg whites on top of batter, and sift remaining flour over. Fold all layers together until batter is perfectly homogenized. It should be soft and fluffy. Spoon batter into a pastry bag fitted with a small (about 1/4-inch) round tip. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, or overnight.
4. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Generously butter a madeleine pan (small or large molds). Pipe batter into molds, so they are three-quarters full. Bake until they form humps and are nut brown around edges, 6 to 8 minutes, longer if using large molds. Remove from oven, and bang pan on a countertop to release madeleines from molds. Carefully lift off any that stick. Place in a folded napkin to keep warm. Repeat with remaining batter.

Yield: about 60 small madeleines.

As you can see, this recipe calls for rum, not brandy, but I can use the amount given as a basis for how much brandy to add.  Have I made these madeleines yet? Non. Will I make them? I bought the brandy yesterday.

Bon appetit.

Vivian: “So you do get up.  I was beginning to think you worked in bed, like Marcel Proust.”

Phillip Marlowe: “Who’s he?”

Vivian: “You wouldn’t know him, a French writer.”

Marlowe: “Come into my boudoir…”

From The Big Sleep, a 1946 film noir starring Humphrey Bogart as Phillip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as Vivian, for Marcel Proust on the anniversary of his death, November 18, 1922

Bonne nuit, Marcel

July 10th is the anniversary of Marcel’s birth in 1871, and 137 years later, he is still going strong.  My latest Proust sighting occured in this book,  “The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life” by Twyla Tharp:

“When Marcel Proust dipped his petites madeleines into his tea, the taste and aroma set off a flood of memories and emotions from which modern literature still has not recovered.”

The above quote and the ones that follow are from a chapter called Muscle Memory in which Tharp discusses the form of memory retained by our bodies by a repeated physical act, in an unconscious form similar to the Proustian madeleine moment.  You know the saying that one never forgets how to ride a bike?  That’s what she means.

“Muscle memory has its uses in the creative process, perhaps more for acquiring skill than for developing inspiration.  But it’s useful nevertheless.”

So what’s the connection between muscle memory and Proust?  Well obviously, he had to learn the skill of bending his elbow to bring the madeleine to his mouth without spilling the tea in the spoon- not really. 

“…the exercise is less about muscles and more about perceiving structures and harmonies anew- from the vantage point of the author rather than the reader.”

 The exercise Tharp is speaking of is, in whatever field of endeavor you aspire to, you should choose an example or a mentor that inspires you or challenges you and emulate them, to the best of your ability.  This is where Proust comes in:

“Raymond Chandler and Proust went through a similar process when honing their very different crafts.  Chandler believed Hemingway to be the greatest American novelist of his time, and he wrote imitations of Hemingway’s style to absorb what he loved about it.  Proust went further, spending twelve years translating and annotating the writing of the English art historian John Ruskin.  He also wrote a series of articles for Le Figaro imitating the styles of such 19th century literary figures as Balzac and Flaubert.”

I think there is much value in this advice, and I think Marcel would agree with me and with Twyla. 

I have not tried to write in the style of Proust, but I have tried to paint in the style of my favorite painter, Vincent van Gogh.  Here’s an attempt, in acrylic:

And here’s an attempt in oil, in the style of Marc Chagall, on a subject and a place nearer to Proust’s world:

The Eiffel Tower was completed in 1889, 18 years after Marcel’s birth, which brings us back to the day, 137 years ago, that we look back to today; Joyeux Anniversaire, Marcel.

…and the only contestant to correctly respond to Question #3 was Steve, so congratulations to him and many thanks to all who participated.  Here are the questions with the answers:

1.  To what culture does the Narrator of In Search of Lost Time, during his description of his madeleine moment, ascribe this belief: “…that the souls of those we have lost are held captive…in some inanimate object…”  Celtic

2.  The Narrator never gives us a name for himself.  By what name does Albertine, just one time, refer to him?  Marcel

3.  In The Guermantes Way, the Narrator says, “Everything great in our world comes from ___________________?  Neurotics

4.  The madeleine in the cup of tea is the most famous instance of involuntary memory in the novel, but there are at least two more related by the Narrator.  Describe two more that the Narrator experiences.  Un-even paving stones, the clink of silverware, the texture of a napkin…

5.  What is the name of the character who, “…gradually declined to leave, first Combray, then her house in Combray, then her bedroom, and finally her bed…”  Tante Leonie

I am reading William C. Carter’s book Proust in Love, and while the book is well-written and informative, the dustcover picture is, shall we say, unfortunate:

Oh La La

Today, February 18th, is the one-year anniverary of this, my blog about Marcel Proust, his novel In Search of Lost Time, Paris, and anything else related (remotely or otherwise); in honor of same, here is a contest, with a prize, that I hope will appeal to readers of this blog, readers of the novel, lovers of all things Proust, and those in search of the longest sentence ever written on a blog concerning Marcel Proust, the City of Light, and literature in general but particularly,  In Search of Lost Time, which in my humble opinion is the greatest novel of the Twentieth, or perhaps any, century, though others may beg to differ; however, they may host their own contest.

The Contest!  I will present five questions, the answers to all of which may be found on these blog pages, as well as in the novel.  If you know the answers to these questions, DON’T put them in the comments, please send them to me at marimann (at) cox (dot) net.  Putting your answers in the comments discourages others, so please, email them to me.  And to be fair, don’t google and/or otherwise search the internets for answers.

The Prize!  A $25 Amazon gift certificate, for which the winner will have to send me their email to receive. 

The Questions!

1.  To what culture does the Narrator of In Search of Lost Time, during his description of his madeleine moment, ascribe this belief: “…that the souls of those we have lost are held captive…in some inanimate object…”

2.  The Narrator never gives us a name for himself.  By what name does Albertine, just one time, refer to him?

3.  In The Guermantes Way, the Narrator says, “Everything great in our world comes from ___________________?

4.  The madeleine in the cup of tea is the most famous instance of involuntary memory in the novel, but there are at least two more related by the Narrator.  Describe two more that the Narrator experiences.

5.  What is the name of the character who, “…gradually declined to leave, first Combray, then her house in Combray, then her bedroom, and finally her bed…”

The contest will end one week from today, on the 25th of February.  Remember, email your answers to me: marimann (at) cox (dot) net.  Answers left in the comments will be deleted and not entered into the contest.  Bonne chance!