Note: This was originally posted on my LinkedIn on January 15, 2024
This weekend I finally finished Marcel Proust’s behemoth work of literature (more than 4000 pages) “In Search of Lost Time”. It has had a profound on the way I think about certain topics, especially the way in which I view change, but the way to those insights wasn't easy.
Four years ago, in January 2020, I decided to spend 120€ (a lot of money for me at that time) for a used version of the 2005 Folio Society edition of In Search of Lost Time. Why? Because I had repeatedly seen the book referred to as “the best work of literature” or “the best book of the 20th century” online, because - especially as I have always fancied myself as someone who might one day take up writing as more than an occasional hobby - I wanted to experience “the best”.
My first experience at reading Proust was rather rocky. I charged in expecting a plot, well-defined characters, and all those other things I had so far encountered in the book - both classic and modern - I had read and considered “good”; but what I found was fundamentally different. No discernible plot, characters that seem like distant lights obscured by a hazy mist, and on top of that sentences that wove themselves across half a page or more at a time, with words I had never heard before sprinkled in here and there. Reading Proust is not easy - even less so for someone with a non-native grasp of the English language.
As a result I made it to about page 55 of volume one (out of seven) on this first attempt.
A bit of time went by, I read some more articles about this supposed “masterpiece”, and at some point I decided it was time for a second charge in my attempt to conquer it.
While I was still unaware of what exactly to expect within its pages, I now at least knew what not to expect. I dived in with fewer expectations; I started a list of words which were new to me - every time I came across one during a sentence I would google its meaning, add it to my list, and then start reading the sentence again from the top (sometimes only to encounter a second unknown word later within the same sentence) - my list accumulated more than 400 words within the first two volumes in that way.
As I managed to dive deeper and deeper, I quickly started to become fascinated by Proust’s mastery over words and sentences. While most authors manage to string together words in a away that results in a long sentence (often with the effect of making it barely readable), with Proust I found his sentences to resemble the structure of my thoughts, which made them both easy to follow and delightful to read.
With his words he furthermore manages to paint beautiful pictures of the most trivial of things, but not in the pedantic, boring way in which many writers describe the most obscure details in their scene, but rather - through extensive use of metaphors and other things of the like which I’m sure were mentioned in school at some point - in a way that engaged both my inner eye with its visualisations as well as my mind with the unexpected connections and discoveries it put forward.
By the time I finished the first volume of In Search of Lost Time, I was a fan. I expounded the glory of Proust’s writing to every one of my friends who would care to listen (and also to some who would not); but every time, upon my excited gushing, they asked me “Well, what’s it about?” - and every time I was unable to answer. The lack of discernible plot and frequent changes in characters, perspective and location left my best answer at something like “it follow the life of the protagonist”, which, while not incorrect, was certainly not useful in my quest to convince my friends that this was a book they had to read.
Now that I’ve finished all seven volumes, I believe I’m able to answer that question, sort of, but it’s complicated: Since I started reading In Search of Lost Time fours years ago, a lot has changed for me. I spend my time in different surroundings, doing different things than I did four years ago, sometimes plainly with different people, and sometimes with people who seem to be the same ones as before on the surface, but who actually are different as well, if only within themselves. The world and the people in it are different from what they were four years ago.
And just as everything around me has changed, so I have changed as well - and in quite significant ways, when I compare myself to the “I” of four years ago.
And this is exactly what In Search of Lost Time is about, its essence: how times changes everyone and everything around us, and also ourselves. There are many other topics draped around this centrepiece: Art (Literature, Music and Painting), Society and the people in it, Love and Grief (who, after all, are closely related, or even the same thing but from a different direction), Memory, and the way people act and work - how we (as humans) are.
And while that might seem a rather lengthy answer to “What’s that book about?”, I don’t think it can be much shorter (in fact it probably needs to be longer, as I’m sure to have forgotten this or that topic that struck me as important while reading but the effect of which on the direction of my thoughts I have forgotten since, even though the effect has not stopped), because this book has had a profound effect on how I think about all of those topics I mentioned, which make them all worthwhile answers to the questions, for how many books do we read in our lifetime which significantly shift our perception of any one of those topics, if not several at once?
At the same time that I am both proud and glad that I have seen my way through what I now feel confident enough to truly call a masterpiece of literature, I am also somewhat saddened, as it feels like I’ve succeeded in scaling the mountain that, in both size and magnificence, seems to tower far above all the other mountains, and even though I shall happily continue climbing every mountain I come across, it is likely that during every climb there will be a little voice in the back of my mind, reminding me that “This is nice, certainly, but the view is not quite as good as that other, more magnificent mountain we climbed. But, you know, it’s okay.” And, after all, perhaps I will one day chance upon another mountain, even more magnificent, either one that I had overlooked until then out of ignorance, or one that has been newly raised. And if I ever am to raise a new mountain of my own out of the ground, for other people to scale, I believe that my climbing this utterly magnificent one has been more valuable than all the classes in Mountain Design that I could ever take.
What I will certainly continue to do though, is to tell everyone (whether they want to hear it or not) that this is a book they should read. It won’t be easy, it won’t be quick, but the reward that awaits at the end of the journey (and the smaller pieces that can already be picked up along the way) are well worth it in every regard.
