In between bouts of snow-scraping, marzipan making, present ordering (as much as possible I have bought mail order or internet this year) and general faffing about Christmas, I've been reading 'How Proust Can Change Your Life.' by Alain de Botton. This was given to my ex who read Proust in the original years ago. I tried to read Proust in translation years ago - but hadn't the patience, and now I see that my lack of patience is a character flaw I would feel better without. What Proust teaches me (or would if I could sit still long enough to be taught) is how to savour each moment so my greyest, dullest and most depressing day can be transcended and enlightened by a small thing like the dipping of a madeleine into Lime Flower tea. I shall put some quotations here eventually, but not today because I'm feeling too - impatient. Just this photo of one of Proust's sentences, the longest logged, in the fifth volume of 'In Search of Lost Times' which would 'if arranged along a single line in standard-sized text, run on for a little short of four metres and stretch round the base of a wine bottle seventeen times.' I suppose Button to have verified this by experiment. Certainly if I were to try to read a sentence this long I would need to have a wine bottle handy to wrap myself around.
It's a brilliant book - Botton's. I don't know about Proust's, but if I'm very bored, or possibly shipwrecked, I suppose I might give it a go.
2 comments:
Hope the weather is kinder to you next week. We raced off to the beach but the waves had not been affected by the winds. We were obviously too far south.
They are threatening more and further south for next week.
I shall have to wiki Proust so that I understand better what you are referring to. It'll do me good I'm sure.
Cheers Gillian
The meandering sentence is very enjoyable, a visual reminder to all who that maybe a full stop can save the reader expiring.
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