The Proust of Norway

I read unselectively. Even the most extraneous book may one day be thrown into the sausage of a sermon. I’ve never known an interesting preacher or a persevering pastor who was not also a ravenous reader.

For some reason a book I read repeatedly is Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. I am still uncertain why self-absorbed Marcel appeals to me. Proust is against everything I believe in, goes places I would never dare, and is far too microscopic in his observations of fin de siècle Parisians. Still, no one portrays the mysteries of time and memory or mocks the deceit of pretense, affluence, and snobbery better than Proust. He is also wickedly funny and, as everyone agrees, the greatest writer of autobiographical fiction.

“It is difficult to believe,” I said to myself at page 2,000 and something of Remembrance, “that there was a time when people were so convinced that writers had something wonderful to reveal that they were willing to expend time reading about a man who takes forever to get out of bed.”