Harry's got sort of a wonky cross, that's 'trials and suffering'. And that there could be the sun and thats 'happiness'. So you're gonna suffer but you'll be happy about it --Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Born on July 10, 1871, Valentin Louis Georges Eugene Marcel Proust wrote a book that contains a sentence that, if stretched out would run just shy of four meters. The man was always cold and would often be seen wearing layers even in the summer. He was a recluse that tended not to leave home or even get out of bed. He had bizarre eating habits, a myriad of health problems, and was practically too queer to hide it in a time when that really just wasn't cool. He was unlucky in love and overly devoted to his Mother. He self-published the first volume of his novel. His bedroom walls were lined with cork to keep outside noise to a minimum. According to the memoirs of his friends, he was generous, kind, accomodating, a good listener and brilliant conversationalist. His Novel, À la Recherche du Temps Perdu was orginally published in sixteen volumes. Because of this, Marcel Proust is cooler than you are.
I picked How Proust Can Change Your life up because I like Alain de Botton. Prior to perusing its pages I knew nothing about Proust beyond that he was a cancer and that he wrote one freaking enormous novel. This book has made me laugh. Not the out-and-out, toss-your-head-back kind of laughter brought on by Yossarian's misadventures, but a more subtle kind of laughter. One that has left me smiling and that has filled me with hope. There are apparently thirty pages in In Search of Lost Time in which the author describes not being able to fall asleep. Thirty Pages dedicated solely to describing the narrator's ineffective attempts at closing his eyes, breathing deeply and losing consciousness. I can relate and I love that. Proust informs us, "Happiness is good for the body, but it is grief which develops the strengths of the mind." This, coming from a man who had asthma so badly that he could just look at a photograph of a lilac and have an attack. The only incentive that comfort gives us is a drive to continue to remain comfortable. And, I'm with Proust on this one, comfort doesn't make us better people. What we learn, how we grow, these things come from repeatedly walking into the same brick wall until we decide its time to scale it.
Article comments
1 - Shark
Proust is a god, imho.
Reading him is often hard work, takes patience -- but the pay-off is fantastic.
Picking up Proust is like settling into a fluffy, soft, comfortable chair during a rain storm, that -- despite it's underlying violence -- throws shadows on the valleys, washed in sadness or the slight hint of the odor of a damp lilac, and illuminates the convoluted mountains, striking the fire of lightning against the foothills of invisible gods that hover just over the horizon while one longs for a respite -- although at the heart of those fleeting moments, hopes that the disturbance will continue, since the contrast between the words' linear ticking in the reader's mind and the clash of natural elements that revererate across the soft underbelly of the window near that same soft chair only cause one to reflect on the immediacy of the experience, and appreciate it deeper, more profound than had one never opened that rectangular correspondence with a brilliant observer from the past and settled into what has become, for the moment, that womb of wisdom and words that welcomes us as we turn the pages and enjoy.
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heh.
Shark sez check it out.