From the Bookshelf of The Year of Reading Proust…

Proust

Samuel Beckett

Discussion: Auxiliary Reading (w/Spoilers)

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Auxiliary Reading (w/Spoilers)

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Feb 15, 2010 Bram rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010, proustophilia

Later in life, Beckett spoke disparagingly of this essay, dismissing its “cheap flashy philosophical jargon.” He was right to give this depiction of the prose, and perhaps even too gentle with his wording. But the ideas are still good. Very, very good, in fact.

This little book is simultaneously one of the most difficult I've ever read and one of the most rewarding*. But its mixed blessings go beyond this experience. The very existence of this book in my library will almost certainly delay my ne Later in life, Beckett spoke disparagingly of this essay, dismissing its “cheap flashy philosophical jargon.” He was right to give this depiction of the prose, and perhaps even too gentle with his wording. But the ideas are still good. Very, very good, in fact.

This little book is simultaneously one of the most difficult I've ever read and one of the most rewarding*. But its mixed blessings go beyond this experience. The very existence of this book in my library will almost certainly delay my next reading of In Search of Lost Time for the simple reason that it can reconjure some of the most evocative, miraculous parts of the book while fully and ingeniously discussing the novel's primary themes of Time, Habit, and Memory. I feel as though I’ve relived a majority of Proust’s novel in this book’s scant 72 pages. And although this was my first exposure to Beckett's short critical work, I've read it about three times now due to the number of sentences I had to reread (over and over) even while absorbing maybe half of the book's mysterious insights. Ultimately I can't give Beckett too much credit for the perspicacity contained within, as he's mainly recapitulating Proust's own well-elucidated themes while also making them more difficult to excavate and therefore to scrutinize.

Much of the writing here is what David Foster Wallace would pejoratively call ‘academic writing’. Wallace sums up his feelings on the subject nicely with a criticism that likely mirrors Beckett’s own retrospective feelings: As someone who has a lot of felt trouble being clear, concise, and/or cogent, I tend to be allergic to academic writing, most of which seems to me willfully opaque and pretentious. I could probably include five or six examples more staggering than the quotation below, which is from the first couple pages of the book, but it will give you an idea of what you’re up against here:

But the poisonous ingenuity of Time in the science of affliction is not limited to its action on the subject, that action, as has been shown, resulting in an unceasing modification of his personality, whose permanent reality, if any, can only be apprehended as a retrospective hypothesis.

But then again, there are also gems like this:

Surely in the whole of literature, there is no study of that desert of loneliness and recrimination that men call love posed and developed with such diabolical unscrupulousness.

In the end, much of this book’s obliquity and lack of comprehensiveness is mitigated by an imaginative and potent reading of Proust’s major themes, which are served up as worthy of study not only for intellectual or literary purposes, but for a fuller understanding of life itself. And that’s what Proust is all about.

*I should make the point that this is due mostly to the fact that Proust’s revelations on Time, Habit, and Memory are probably the most important and meaningful that I’ve ever encountered in literature. Some of the most meaningful that I’ve ever encountered, period. Point being, this book’s probably only worth your time if you’re very invested in the themes of In Search of Lost Time, even though Beckett apparently meant this book as a critical introduction to Proust’s work.
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Mar 27, 2015 Fionnuala added it · review of another edition

Shelves: review-just-for-my-own-records, proust-and-related, beckett-and-related, non-fiction

I ought to have read this in English. Apparently, Beckett translated all the Proust passages he tries to ~~analyse~~ understand himself (I don't think he likes the word 'analyse' or anything related to academic criticism, and for that I love him). i'd really like to have read his versions of Proust's words - he could have just taken passages from Scott Moncreiff's English translation of the first volume but he chose to render everything in English himself. And because he didn't use footnotes or page ...more

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Mar 17, 2013 John Beck rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed, non-fiction

http://andalittlewine.blogspot.com/20...

Before I dig into In Search of Lost Time as the central pillar of my 30 Before 30, I checked a few books out of the local library to help me get started.

The most disappointing was Samuel Beckett's Proust.

I think my disappointment stems from my sincere enjoyment of Beckett's fiction, plays and poetry. I expected insight and connections from a writer of such cerebral work. Instead, most of Proust was just the kind of psuedo-psychological garble that reads li ...more

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