Hello viewers (in James May’s voice). I did a quick scroll on the blog page and so far almost every post about Proust has been negative. I share similar feelings, so I will try to explain it. The story starts by reminiscing the childhood of the protagonist on a sleepless night. The child is a member of an upper class French family, evident by the fact that they have servants, and multiple residences. An emphasis is placed on the child’s bedtime “ritual”, a goodnight kiss from his mother. His father finds it absurd, and usually becomes irritated. The child longs for his mother’s attention and affection.
Now, why do I not enjoy reading Combray? First, I know this story is told from a child’s perspective, but with all the mental analysis and descriptions added by the author, this obsession with “mother’s kiss” weirds me out. After 50 something pages, I still think to myself, “what was the point of all that?” Second, a child that cannot sleep without his mother probably doesn’t think that much (am I missing something?). Wait — hold on. In order to write this blog post, I have re-read part one of Combray a few times, and I am starting to get the gist of it. When you think about the past, everything tends to be slightly exaggerated. For example, a Filet-o-Fish used to be $2.50 ten years ago, which simply isn’t true. The emotions of every character is heavily exaggerated by the author because he is trying to tell the story through the child(again). This kid, who wants the affection of his mother, naturally portrays his father as the bad person.
“My father was constantly refusing me permission for things that had been authorized in the more generous covenants granted by my mother and grandmother because he did not bother about ‘principles’ and for him there was no ‘rule of law’.
While in reality, his father is most likely just a normal, sane person. That’s why the child is so surprised his father allows him to sleep with his mother. However, know that does not make reading this book more enjoyable, at least for me. But, it certainly piqued my interest as I find the way Proust describe these mental battles pretty unique.
Question: Have you ever caught yourself altering memories of the past?
Love the James May reference at the beginning. To answer your question, I definitely caught myself altering memories of the past, often to make them seem better than they were and I think we’re all guilty of that. Just think of when you were a kid, it seems as if the world was brighter and colors were more vibrant when in reality nothing changed.
Ryan, remember it is perfectly okay to not like a reading or an author’s style. I am glad you are able to articulate some of those feelings in the post! You did a good job of putting together a concise picture of the narrator in terms of class, origin and feelings of the boy in this story. I’m glad you were able to reconsider some of the description about the past being romanticized, I think that plays an important role in this text as well. I would be interested to know what you think of the second part!
Thanks for your comment and I hope after this week’s class you can come back and meditate on this blog and your initial feeligns a little more!
Just as a reminder! At least one of the questions in your blog post should be addressed to the professor or be a general question towards the text, the author and the themes in it!