The Useless Critic 2.0

In the second section of the first volume of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time , “Swann in Love,” when Charles Swann is insisting Odette tell him of her other suspected lovers, his line of reasoning of needing to know follows that he’ll stop bothering her about it so often because being able to picture a thing, to bring it out of the unknown, brings him a sense of relief. “The truly horrifying things,” he continues, “are the ones you can’t imagine.” Early 20th century American poet, Edna Millay, disagrees. As she wrote in “The Unexplorer”— There was a road ran past our house Too lovely to explore. I asked my mother once — she said That if you followed where it led It brought you to the milk-man’s door. (That’s why I have not traveled more.) — Subsequently, it was the mystery of a small dirt road which always had the three year-old version of myself always wanting to walk down it despite never having the confidence of asking my father to take me, and losing the opportunity altogeth...

Last time, although Swann conceded Odette’s time spent with people not happening to be himself did not necessarily mean he had to be stricken with the urge to suicide, his so-called love for her nonetheless remains at the potency that, “as they say in surgery, [it] was no longer operable.” Ever the pragmatist, the lump he finds on his abdomen one afternoon brings him such a relief, for, tying the two previous notions together, his suspected fatal tumor and he are going to be BFFs: Swann reasons he’ll be liberated from taking any further charge, as the disease will now handle all of the managing. He’ll be its sexxxy plaything. Even better, if he finds himself coming to desire death, he finds this won’t be an escape from the jealousy-caused suffering he’s been putting himself through, but, skipping the ephemeral altogether, it will end his struggle’s monotony. Psh, Sisyphus didn’t have a girlfriend, either. Happily, Odette doesn’t actually care one way or another— acting out Mme. de Laum...

Do you know what I really don’t care about right now? These people. I didn’t write this last week because these people are just— I really hate them. This is basically everything that happens between pages 250 and 300: even though Swann finds the Verdurins positively “magnanimous,” neither of them actually like him and encourage Odette to spend her time with Forcheville. Odette is very stupid. She thinks of a house with wood paneling as being medieval. She doesn’t really understand anything. Forcheville is characterized as having an intellect which is superior to other minds because of its skepticism— he’s in league with medicine-denying doctors and school teachers “who do not believe in Latin compositions.” The Verdurins stop inviting Swann, so he quickly casts them as “the lowest thing on the social ladder,” as “Dante’s last circle.” He concludes with affirming “no doubt [that] venerable text refers to the Verdurins!” and assumes Odette is giving handjobs (cattleyas) to everyone in Fr...

Cattleyas! Odette had a habit of wearing them when first becoming acquainted with Swann, although Proust never mentions anything further about them; this freedom of interpretation is having me feel lost, contextually. Not a single word regarding colour, petals, which particular sub-species that particular evening’s cattelya belongs to which would then inevitably segue into several pages of tangential reverie which could have contained a flourish regarding the orchidaceae family as a whole and how this is directly related to the frescoes painted within a certain chapel, of which he has a certain fondness. Anyway, cattleyas are regarded as the orchids most evocative of love because, as many flower websites are tactfully insinuating and, as I just updated the cattleya wikipedia entry to note, they look like vaginas even though I’m not really “seeing it” despite, to compare and contrast, looking-up those weird diagrams from fifth grade. Maybe this is like one of those photos of a lamp ev...

It’s taken 176 pages, though the first glimmerings of the plot have finally shown up! I’m not expecting them to be mentioned elsewhere in this volume, but it’s relieving— it’s so relieving — to know they’re there. I was thumbing through the final volume, Time Regained , in a bookstore last week and happened to find the part where everything comes together for Marcel, because he realizes what it is he’s supposed to write: In Search of Lost Time is about his path to becoming a writer; I’ve never made it past the first half-ish of Guermantes Way , which I abandoned last summer until it occurred to me how I would need to start all over again if I ever hoped to get anywhere with this novel, though it seems these several thousand pages can be summed with wondering: Will he write ? How meta! These words— “And these dreams of [Mme. Guermantes] warned me that since I wanted to be a writer someday, it was time to find out what I meant to write.” — are, as far, perhaps the first with any discern...

Throughout all of the slums I’ve lived in, for years and years now, I’ve had an aggravatingly delicate plant kept on windowsill after windowsill and never had any idea what it actually was. I’d always thought it was some kind of fern the kitten enjoys taking new growth from, but was just looking up asparagus because asparagus is, again, relatively prominent within pages 100-50; anyway, my window plant is an Asparagus setaceus , an “ asparagus fern ,” even though it’s not actually a fern! And its needle-like leaves are actually branches called cladodes and the leaves are these weird scale-looking things! But Asparagus officinalis — actual asparagus— what do you think about that? How many times have you thought about using it as a weapon? Continuously? Francoise, as Marcel finds out years later, has been using it to abuse the kitchen maid, “provoking in [her] attacks of asthma so violent that she was obliged to leave,” which is why she’s had it be a daily part of the family’s meals. The ...

Did I mention last time I’m reading the hardcover edition of the newer Lydia Davis translation? Scott Moncrieff was probably admirable for literally dying from serving as the original to-English translator, but I’m just not into him that much. So. We’re in Combray at his Great Aunt Leonie’s house, which is where the family is living. It’s not entirely clear if she’s a self-imposed invalid or a shut-in by choice, but she’s been withdrawing further and further since the death of her husband and now no longer so-little-as comes out of her room, instead always keeping to her “uncertain state of grief, physical disability, illness, obsession, and piety” while Francoise, the housekeeper, is becoming so, so sick of putting up with her continuous fuss. Thankfully for Leonie, she still has Eulalie, a retired maid who stops in and doesn’t do much other than enable Leonie’s self pity: she requires her visitors “commend her on her regimen, commiserate with her for her sufferings, and encourage he...

He never says it, which is odd because he says nearly everything else, but the young Proust certainly had a thing for the young Rimbaud. The Rimbaud moody teenagers scribble in the backs of year books. The “Ophelia” Rimbaud. Beginning Swann’s Way with falling asleep while recounting his habit of using a pillow as a precautionary device before returning to dreams, we assume the young Rimbaud would have become annoyed by now, page 12, sending the young Proust into a several day lament spent in his “inviolable solitude” reserved for such occasions as “reading, reverie, tears, and sensuous pleasure” and oh my god. The first 50 pages centre around such solitude; mainly the “tears” part. His mother is downstairs with the others— Swann has arrived— and he has been sent to his room for bed without receiving his goodnight kiss from her, but, once the gathering has concluded, he lunges himself at her stair-climbing silhouette. He’s hysterical and his father insists she spend the night consolin...