8 PARTISAN REVIEW
musician, and the lives of a few of his
col1freres.
But mostly, a memoir
is bound to be fragmentary and partial; it is based on specific circum–
stances, on the strength of the perceptions imprinted in the author's
mind, and what he or she wants to convey, usually at that moment.
I chose a picture of Marcel Proust for the poster, because I consider
A
fa recherche du temps perdu,
which has been translated as
Lost Time,
as
In Search of Lost Time,
as
Remembrance of Things Past,
parts of it
as
The Past Recaptured,
and in the case of the recent film as
Time
Regained,
the most difficult and rewarding fiction of Proust's time–
probably of all time.
It
is based, recognizably, on Proust's own life and
experiences. These three thousand pages, contained in seven volumes,
took Proust fifteen years to write and were unfinished when he died;
they are not only about the characters of Marcel, Swann, the families
Verdurin, Guermantes, etc., but offer the most complex observations on
Proust's era, thus throwing much light on the changes and social
upheavals in
fin-de-siecle
France. Proust's comments on that society,
from the lowliest levels in the streets and brothels, to the highest aristo–
cratic ones, and their evolving interactions and pretensions, are clear
and incisive-despite his allusive, indirect, and seemingly hesitant style.
To Gilles Deleuze, Proust's story "is not an expectation of involun–
tary memory, but the narrative of an apprenticeship" of a man of let–
ters.
In
Marcel Proust:
A
Life,
William Carter focuses on Proust's
intimate experiences, his aesthetic sense and passionate devotion to his
craft. Roger Shattuck, in his "Field Guide" to the novel, states that
"reading Proust bears many resemblances to visiting a zoo" whose spec–
imens "amaze and amuse us in their variety."
Proust's Paris, at least in part, is the one Hilary Spurling had to
peruse for her biography of Matisse, as did francine du Plessix Gray for
her work on the Marquis de Sade and Frederick Brown in his opus on
Zola. Because Paris around the turn of that century was alive with
inventions in all the arts, and ever since then has inspired writers and
painters, sculptors and composers, it keeps attracting all those who seek
inspiration. I doubt that there is anyone in this room who doesn't have
fond memories of Paris.
I think of letters and diaries by gifted writers as sort of "instant"
memoirs. Edmund Wilson's diaries, for instance, reconfirm that he was
a keen observer of his surroundings as well as an indefatigable and bril–
liant critic and novelist. Although he edited these diaries to some extent,
he ordered his executors to publish them without changing a word.
According to his biographer, Jeffrey Meyers, Wilson believed that
"records of genius are one of the only ways we have of finding out how
