Lyn Elliott's Reviews > How Proust Can Change Your Life

I relished every page of de Botton’s short, witty book about Proust’s life and work, written with affection and a keen eye for the ridiculous, as when we first see Proust: ‘a reclusive, moustachioed novelist, not known for his interest in golf, tennis or bridge [though he had once tried draughts, and twice aided in the launching of a kite], a man who had spent the last fourteen years lying in a narrow bed under a pile of thinly woven woollen blankets writing an unusually long novel without an adequate bedside lamp’. (p4)

Like In Search of Lost Time itself, this book meanders around what de Botton sees as Proust’s main concerns. The first he notes is that In Search’… is not ‘ a memoir tracing the passage of a more lyrical lost age..[but] a practical, universally applicable story about how to stop wasting, and begin appreciating one’s life’.

My five star rating reflects my sheer enjoyment in reading this. It’s certainly not a self-help manual of the usual sort, but a brilliant, often very funny, musing on Proust’s life and writing
From here on I have just included my notes on chapters 2 onwards. Chapter 4, ‘How to Suffer Successfully’, is, I think, my favourite.

Ch. Two. How to Read for Yourself
Proust was a meticulous observer of people, of the faintest tremor of sensitivity. ‘It is difficult when reading the description of certain fictional characters not at the same time to imagine the real-life acquaintances who they most closely, if often unexpectedly, to resemble. …The value of a novel is not limited to its depictions of emotions and people akin to those in our own life, it stretches to an ability to describe these far better than we would have been able, to put a finger on perceptions that we recognize as our own yet could not have formulated on our own.’ Proust’s highly developed sensitivities sensitise us to tune our own antennae to, he suggests, the colours of the sky, changing facial expressions, the hypocrisy of a friend or a submerged sadness we might not otherwise have noticed. De Botton calls this The finger placing ability.

Ch. Three. How to Take Your time
You must have time to read Proust. His longest sentence, in the fifth volume, ‘would, if arranged in a single line in standard-sized text, run on for a little short of four metres and stretch around the base of a bottle of wine seventeen times’. (Who counted that?)
The question – how much should one write about falling asleep and dinner parties? Refers to the Monty Python competition – précis the contents of the seven volumes into 15 seconds or less and deliver the results in a swimsuit and evening dress (he doesn't report the winner).
Proust himself believed that ‘the greatness of works of art has nothing to do with the apparent quality of their subject matter and everything to do with the subsequent treatment of that matter’. A soap advertisement could be the starting point for a profound train of thought.

Ch. Four. How to suffer successfully
Proust’s life was full of physiological and psychological suffering, his life a trial. Then a brilliant tour of the psychological problems under these headings:
• the Problem of a Jewish Mother
• Awkward Desires
• Dating Difficulties
• Romantic Pessimism
• A Lack of a Career in the Theatre (as a playwright. Hilariously awful script outline).
• The Incomprehension of Friends
• At thirty, His own Assessment
“Without pleasures, objectives, activities or ambitions, with the life ahead of me finished and with an awareness of the grief I cause my parents, I have little happiness”. (p 62).
His physical afflictions:
• Asthma
• Diet
• Digestion
• Underpants. ‘Needs to have these circling tight around the stomach before he has any chance of getting to sleep. They have to be fastened by a special pin whose absence, when Proust accidentally loses it early one morning in the bathroom, keeps him awake all day’. (p 63)
• Sensitive skin
• Cold
• Sensitivity to Altitude (Claims altitude sickness after visit to Versailles which is 83 metres above Paris)
• Coughing
• Travel (homesickness)
• Beds. “Loves his, spends most of his time in it and turns it into his desk and office. Does the bed provide a defence against the cruel world outside?’
• Noise From Neighbours
• Other ailments
• Disbelief of Others.
• Death – always claims he is about to. Finally succeeds in dying.
Then follows a discussion of whether Proust truly did suffer all the things he claimed, comparing Marcel with his healthy, vigorous brother, Robert.
Then a return to Proust’s thinking. In P’s view, ‘we don’t really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, that we become properly inquisitive only when distressed. Jealousy, resentment.
P values thought prompted by pain, emotional or otherwise. Examples from his novels. Excruciating situations.

Ch. Five. How to Express Your Emotions
With precision, as they really are. The truth is often not what we think it is, - comparison with the colours and perspectives of impressionist painting. In every successful work of art there is ‘an ability to restore to our sight a distorted or neglected aspect of reality’. 112.

Ch. Six. How to be a Good Friend
Another list: this time of Proust’s virtues as a friend as given by his friends:
He was generous, munificent, liked to add a 200% service charge, he didn’t talk only about himself, he was curious, modest, a great talker, one was never bored at his house and he always put much of himself into his life.
Proust himself had some very caustic views about friendship; did not believe the exalted claims for the benefits of conversation with friends - that it gives us the chance to express our deepest selves. Conversation is full of gaps, side-tracks, inanities, missed opportunities. Books, on the other hand, provide for ‘a distillation of our sporadic minds, a concentration of inspired moments that might originally have risen across a multitude of years, and been separated by extended stretches of bovine gazing’. (p123) And writing can be revised, over and over, as Proust did.

Ch. Seven. How to Open Your eyes
Another meditation on seeing what is there, on creating and recreating beautiful memories in great detail – eg the scene of the madeleine.
Disillusionment too – eg fascination with aristocracy and then finding they are ordinary, dull people (Guermantes) brings this observation from De Botton on how we can better discriminate between people: ‘ The image of a refined aristocracy is not false, it is merely dangerously uncomplicated. There are of course superior people in the world, but it is optimistic to assume that they could be so conveniently located on the basis of their surname’. (p167)

Ch. Eight. How to Be Happy in Love
He wasn't good at this. I'll just leave it at that.

Ch. Nine. How to Put Books Down
Reflections on reading. It should awaken us to the personal life of the mind, not take its place. Truth is an ideal we can realise only through our own experience and thought. Because books are so good at helping to make us aware of some of the things we feel, it can be tempting to leave the work of interpreting our lives to books.
‘It obligates us to read with care, to welcome the insights books give us, but not to subjugate our independence, or smother the nuances of our own love life in the process. … Even the finest books deserve to be thrown aside ’, (199, 215)

And the illustrations are a delight.