Break your bleedin’ heart: Proust’s Otherness
Michael Wood, 4 January 2024
Ala recherche du temps perdu is founded on a gesture so famous that it’s hard to retain the idea of its risk. The narrator (and to some extent Proust himself) decides to build a whole long novel on an involuntary memory. Involuntary here means not only unintended but barred from the realm of intention. Whatever it is, it won’t happen if you try to make it happen. There is an...