If Jesus had written a novel…

Posted on July 2nd, 2008 in In Search of Lost Time by benmc

If Proust and Jesus share anything in common, it’s that they both grew up in small towns.

In “Swann’s Way,” Proust has just turned his attention from his quirky family to the town of Combray itself. And that prompts me to ask, for no particular reason:

If Jesus wrote a novel, how would he describe his hometown?

Yesterday, in our weekly “Greek group” at work, we read the passage in Mark 6 about Jesus returning to his home town — and the incredulous townsfolk, being small-town people to the core, say to each other, “Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of . . .?” They can’t believe he’d amount to anything because they know where he’s come from, and who “his people” are.

Similarly, in “Swann’s Way,” the narrator’s aunt could have been the one speaking in the Mark passage. Madame Octave is a rare bird who is both hypochondriac and insomniac (read: the life of any party) — who never leaves the house in Combray, the small town where little Marcel and his parents visit on holidays. Even though she’s physically confined herself, that doesn’t keep her from participating in the town gossip. She watches out her window, asking her maid Francoise to find out the latest on this or that person who has just walked by, and she even passes judgment on the dogs in town…

“One knew everybody so well, in Combray, both animals and people, that if my aunt had chanced to see a dog pass by ‘whom she did not know at all,’ she would not stop thinking about it and devoting to this incomprehensible fact all her talents for induction and her hours of leisure” (59).

Ah, so that’s what people did before TV. It reminds me of the few power outages we’ve experienced in Chicago — how people actually come out of their apartments and houses and talk to each other, from porch to porch. Especially on hot nights, it creates a stir. And in those moments, I’ve thought that this kind of thing would make our neighborhood a more cohesive place — people would actually know each other better and keep track of one another.

But when I read this passage about Combray, I also realize that too much time and not enough people can create a community that’s more than tight-knit — it can be downright snug, in an uncomfortable sort of way. The kind of place where Jesus “can do no deeds of power” because expectations are preset based on his class and his family background.

It’s maybe not a coincidence that immediately after describing the exchange between Madame Octave and Francoise that the narrator switches gears to describe the town’s church in great detail, describing the mystery, the power and the wonder that the place holds for him as a small child. He seems predisposed toward some kind of mystical experience. He describes the church in terms that show that it’s already a thing of the past, a relic that has lost it’s power to impress the general public — but it still captivates the young boy.

His grandmother talks about the familiar old stones of the church building as though they were living, and comments on the steeple, “My children, make fun of me if you like, perhaps it isn’t beautiful according to the rules, but I like [the steeple’s] strange old face. I’m sure that if it could play the piano, it would not play dryly.”

This same steeple is the town’s timekeeper — literally, chiming with the hours — and it’s a piece of the time that he’s trying to reclaim in the book. And the steeple becomes his point of navigation, his guide, “the dear departed form.” He writes, “I am still seeking my path, I am turning a corner . . . but . . . I am doing so in my heart . . .”

My point, if there is one, is that at the same time that Combray seems socially constricting, the memory of Combray’s church remains a guidepost. It stands for the things that have passed on, and for the people who are no longer there.

How does the saying go? Something like, “You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy” (?)

Moving on to “Swann’s Way”

Posted on June 29th, 2008 in In Search of Lost Time by benmc

So my next literary summit is Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time — more specifically, Volume 1, “Swann’s Way” translated by Lydia Davis.

Proust is no Hemingway. He uses 10 words where one might suffice; but his asides are what make it entertaining. And part of what makes his experiment interesting is that it’s all about the shrinking and expanding nature of time — how memory, sleep, stories and life itself are not linear events but a circuitous journey, like Moses wandering in the wilderness.

The difficulty in reading Proust, I think, can be expecting too much, especially now that his massive novel is considered “indispensable” and “crucial” as Peter Brooks puts it in the book jacket blurb. In my previous attempts at reading “Swann’s Way” I ended up abandoning it after 50 pages because his sentences are so rambling that his thoughts seem sloppy, jumbled and self-centered.

The publishers who rejected the initial draft of Swann’s Way seemed to agree. One of them wrote back to Proust, “I don’t see why a man should take thirty pages to describe how he turns over in bed before he goes to sleep.” (quoted in the introduction by Lydia Davis). His penchant for taking the long way around is the typical complaint.

But Proust’s style is exacting, precise, if deliberate. He may talk around the subject — whether the subject is falling asleep, gossiping or gaining his mother’s attention — but I get the impression that he’s going somewhere with it. And he is undeniably a navel-gazer, (the patron saints of confessional bloggers?), but at least at this point he seems to come by it honestly.

Plus, I have a sympathy for the narrator because when I’m telling stories among friends or family, I’ll find myself backing up to introduce choice bits of peripheral information in hopes that the story will make more sense. Often, I take too long to get to the punchline and it flops.

I’m keeping an open mind this time around. If it takes the guy 18 pages to get to a point, maybe it’s worth waiting for. So far, having read through the opening section “Combray,” I’m enjoying his grandparents and great aunts the most. Their bickering and struggling with each other and with Swann are comical — like when he describes how his grandfather has to struggle to get his sisters-in-law to listen to him:

“he had to resort to those bodily signals used by alienists with certain lunatics suffering from distraction: striking a glass repeatedly with the blade of a knife while speaking to them sharply and looking them suddenly in the ey, violent methods which these psychiatrists often bring with them into ordinary relations with healthy people, either from professional habit or because they believe everyone is a little crazy.” (22)

By the way, I do like the translation by Davis. She keeps some of the real zingers that Proust has in the French, but she also keeps the flow of the sentence going. And the notes have been helpful (and not overkill) so far.

Grab a copy and weigh in!

In Search of Lost Time

The agony of defeat

Posted on June 23rd, 2008 in In Search of Lost Time, Tale of Genji, Literary Summits project by benmc

So it’s time to come clean and admit that I’ve abandoned “Tales of Genji.” Time to go back down this mountain — after 85 pages and a mere 5 chapters, I admit defeat.

It’s not as spectacular a failure as the ski-jumper who wipes out in the opening of “ABC’s Wide World of Sports” — but without a doubt, I’ve lost my way at the base of only the second of seven summits.

Sure, there has been lots going on in my life: 

  • moving to a new condo in Chicago
  • traveling to Germany for a study tour, and 
  • staying busy at work

 . . . but those are lame excuses. Since the move, I’ve actually had MORE reading time now that my commute is longer, so I can’t really make the “no time to read” excuse.

Still, “Genji” is a book that requires an attention span of more than my present 28-minute limit, so I decided yesterday to take another book with me on the train: “Swann’s Way: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1“

And guess what? It’s working. Maybe it’s because I’m more familiar with Marcel Proust’s general storyline (or lack thereof),  and I’ve studied it a bit in college. And his sleepy cadence fits well with my summer rhythm. We’ll see if it lasts.

So for right now I’ve put “Genji” back on the shelf and look forward to another attempt, another time.

Marking off the playing field

Posted on March 16th, 2008 in Tale of Genji by benmc

Croquet in the backyard — a favorite memory from my family’s annual trips to Iowa in the heat of summer.

Within an hour or two after piling out of the van, and after we’d had iced tea and cookies in Grandma’s kitchen, we’d tromp out back to set up the croquet with all the hoops and stakes, wooden balls and mallets.

My grandpa would mark off the playing field, his long strides measuring the distance from one hoop to the next.

Then, TOCCKK!, the first ball is struck and the game begins.

Something like this is going on in the second chapter of Tale of Genji. After a fast-paced opener, this chapter settles down and we begin to see how the game is to be played. Genji is now 17 years old and a young captain in the palace guards. He and the other palace residents are confined indoors during early summer rains.

So young Genji ends up holding court with his close friend and two older men. The four of them start talking about women — the ideal woman, women of rank they’ve observed, and women they’ve known.

I get the impression that the narrator is pacing off the course that will be run through the next 52 chapters — rehearsing what traits are attractive in a woman, which ones are dangerous, and what’s expected of a wife. And although Genji should be paying attention, the narrator points out that he’s found dozing off at intervals while the older men are spouting off conventional wisdom and sharing personal missteps.

As they talk about the ideal woman, we get an idea of how hard it is (impossible, even?) for a real woman to meet the criteria of the day.

For example, it’s the woman’s responsibility to keep her husband faithful — and if he isn’t, she’s the one who needs to fix it. As one of the older gentlemen says, “Most of the time it is the wife’s attitude that helps her husband’s fancies to pass.”

Like croquet, there are definite rules and an order to things that must be followed. Break the rules, and you’re out of luck — back to the starter’s stake. Go through the hoops, and you get to advance.

But I have a feeling that Genji will be one of those players who doesn’t like to play by the rules.

Genji starts with a bang

Posted on March 9th, 2008 in Tale of Genji by benmc

The Tale of Genji wastes no time getting underway — in the opening pages, I’ve already heard the story of a controversial love that rocks the emperor’s court and that ends in the untimely death of a beloved mother and wife.

It seems that Alan Ball and his Six Feet Under writers were borrowing from a formula developed at least 1,000 years earlier.

And although Murasaki Shikibu, author of The Tale of Genji, wasn’t the first to use this narrative technique, she’s a master at it.

It reminds me of Six Feet Under, the HBO series about a family of undertakers that started each episode with a death — usually an accidental and quite creative death. The rest of that episode would weave in the story of that person’s funeral, and often the events leading up to their death.

So as Genji’s mother is laying on her deathbed, she composes a poem in response to the emperor’s desperate command for her to stay with him. She “was so touched that she managed to breathe:

Now the end has come, and I am filled with sorrow that our ways must part:
the path I would rather take is the one that leads to life.”

This is the first of some 795 poems in the volume (according to translator Royall Tyler’s introduction). It’s a good one to start with — talk about cutting to the quick. This little poem, which sounds to me a bit like Robert Frost’s “road less traveled,” carries a truckload of sadness.

Her death plunges the court into intrigue, and we start to find out more about her 3-year-old son, Genji. He’s much beloved by the emperor, he’s incredibly good looking, and he’s limited by his mother’s lower status that prevents him from becoming an acceptable heir to the throne.

Death in the opening act. Sounds like as good a place as any to begin. I’m ready for more…

Next Page »