Proust has a fondness for listing items in series. These collocations are always surprising and exciting in their inventiveness, their heterogeneity, and their precision.
A gesture of Françoise's: "modest, furtive, and delighted."
A group of noblemen: "obscure, clerical, and narrow-minded."
A marquis in a metaphorical aquarium: "venerable, wheezy, and moss-covered."
The elements holding together the "ephemeral panorama" of aristocrats at the theater: "attentiveness, heat, dizziness, dust, elegance, and boredom."
Quotations from Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, translated by Mark Treharne (New York: Penguin, 2002), 13, 26, 37, 48
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Yes, and I always wonder what an average editor - or creative writing tutor? - would make of just these lists. Proust is an author who not only teaches and inspires, but gives permission to a writer. You wrote once, I recall, that reading Proust changes you - how true.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good question. Whatever goes against conventional wisdom — "adjectives bleed nouns" (Strunk and White?) — is not likely to get much encouragment. I love the way Proust's work refutes that conventional wisdom. With his lists, each word invites us to see the thing in another light, from another angle.
ReplyDeleteI think Proust's example inspired a phrase in an essay I wrote last year: "a quirky, lightly comic, extra piece of detail."
I can't keep myself from making lists in my writing. It gives things such a nice rhythm.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is you don't ever want to stop the story--I had a great writing teacher who would always tell us to "kill all our darlings."
Neat post.