The Year of Reading Proust: A Memoir in Real Time

An essayist's way of writing a book is to pile up one chapter after another. The opening section of SWANN'S WAY seems, slow, static to Rose. The author read Proust for more than a year. At the time of the writing of this book she had not yet read the sixth volume, IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME. Every reader of Proust has to find his own reason for moving ahead. Reading Proust is what Rose did when she first got up in the morning. For a year she made Proust the business of her life. At the end of BUDDING GROVE Marcel refers to himself as a human naturalist. Reading Proust gave Rose mastery of the social life she lived in Key West. Reading Proust made Rose a connoisseur of similes. Proust provides the literary equivalent of the freeze frame. By volume five, reading Proust had become essential escapism. The author lives with a fear of disaster. She like an even-textured daily life. Joyce, Woolf, and Proust compressed time, one day, etc., and wove strands, themes around chronological points, developing deep time and other devices. Proust and the author both had happy childhoods. When her father was dying Phyllis Rose could only tolerate reading THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYICH. Time moves in only one direction, toward weakness and death. Aging artists come to value their secondary talents. The volume takes off from the themes of Proust to recount other facts and matters of concern to the writer. It seems that Annie Dillard and the writer are soul mates. Cancer scares and parental deaths in their age group seem frequent. Hemingway started writing FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS in Key West. His large house with Pauline attracted too many guests. He left Florida for Cuba, seeking peace and quiet. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was so popular in Florida that even her maid wrote a book. A literary work is an experience in time. Novels are the most uncondensable literary works. Every reader in reading reads himself. The writer of a memoir, the volume under review is a memoir, is a traveler in time.

If you have read Proust, or attempted to, or mean to someday... Ms. Rose will not let you down. I love how she sees Proust...and how others feel he "doesn't apply" and miss the point. How many times have we been told that some great writer is "passe" or "impossible" or just not trendy enough? (those who sneer may just feel unequal to the task of reading a particular author) Rose takes it slowly, she weaves Proust into her daily life. It is a brisk read, but I found myself stopping & sharing bits with others. I hope to re-tackle Proust soon! I have been inspired.

I didn't know this book existed. I was heading across thefloor of a real (not virtual) bookstore, on my way to the Proustsection. I had finally decided I should try and read Proust. Probably because I finally went to Paris for the first time a few months ago and because a friend lent me a book called "Le Divorce," which also reminded me I should read some Proust. On my way to Proust, I passed "The Oprah Table" (which I always check, because this bookstore puts both the book club selections and other things that might be of interest). Lo and behold, there on that table is a book called "The Year of Reading Proust...." I picked it up -- it felt wonderful (important, if you're going to spend intimate times holding a dead tree of knowledge). I looked at page one of her introduction, wherein Ms. Rose expresses her fondness for Cornelia Otis Skinner and "Our Hearts Were Young and Gay." Since that had been one of my favorite books as a pre-teen, she hooked me in right then and there. I have since completed the reading. I can understand how some of the consumer reviewers were not pleased, based on what they were expecting. I didn't know what to expect, and feel like I made a new friend. I also feel like I now know just enough of what Proust is and isn't and what to expect, that I can start volume one (which I picked up next on that same day). I learned so much about the writing process, the creative process in general, and when to "let it go," that I hope some day I can thank Ms. Rose in person for her contribution to the furthering of my life. I don't know what you've learned from this "review," as it's not very customary, but if you buy this book, you could get a great time with a new friend -- not to mention an 11-page list of her important books to read (some from authors mentioned in the book, some not), which is a great thing to have next time you don't know what you should read next.

To me, above and beyond all else, Phyllis Rose's sparkling memoir shows us how certain books come into our lives at certain times--almost as if the books find us, we don't find them. In her narrative, Proust is used as a conceit, allowing her to delve into memory while also telling us about her days, as ordinary, or at times, as extraordinary as they may be. It is not a full-scale memoir ("my birth to present, etc"), but an accounting of a year from her life (we learn that it is actually two years condensed). Memories, we must remember, are always fragmented, uncertain, contradictory; Rose's narrative structure makes this point well. The book reads more like a narrativized version of diary entries, and indeed, at the end of the memoir, Rose comes to the realization that she is, when all is said and done, a diarist and woman of letters, as opposed to, say, a novelist. It is this very strength that makes her book so enjoyable. She is a five-star scholar who is not afraid to be candid in her remarks, or in the use of an almost street-wise colloquial tongue. Her tone and style are completely unpretentious, unapologetic (a revelation in our culture of complaint), and at times, laught-out-loud funny. She does not discuss or reminisce on her years as a teacher, and this one finds refreshing: an academic who readily admits that the life of the body is equally as important (perhaps more so) as the life of the mind; an intellectual who is equally as passionate about material culture, whether antiquities, sports cars, houses, travel, gossip and dinner parties, as the writing life; a feminist who can balance her own forms of activism with trips to her Madison Avenue hairdresser and Saks Fifth Avenue. Readers from the NYC metro area will particularily enjoy her memoir, as it is the landscape of her memory, and the cultural base for her sense of humor. A bibliophile at heart, Rose shows us how good readers make the fictions they read their own, and bring to bear on their own subjectivity lessons learned from the marvelous, difficult, and rewarding world of reading.