Joyeux anniversaire, M. Proust

Marcel Proust was born on July 10, 1871. From a 1920 letter:

It is possible that a book of mine (Le Côté de Guermantes), which should have appeared much sooner or much later, will come out very soon. In any case, I shall send it to you at once. This volume will still be “proper.” After that the book will be less so without its being my fault. My characters do not turn out well; I am obliged to follow them wherever their flaws or their aggravated vices lead me. . . .

Please accept, cher monsieur et ami, my grateful regards.

Marcel Proust, in a letter to Paul Souday, October 8, 1920. From Letters of Marcel Proust, translated by Mina Curtiss (New York: Helen Marx Books / Books & Co., 2006).

Paul Souday (1869–1929), journalist, literary critic for Le Temps, had written a largely negative review of Swann’s Way. “Souday had sarcastically reproached the author for the banality of his ‘childhood memoirs.’ Instead of compelling events, ‘the matter of the story’ comprised vacations and games in the park”: William C. Carter, Marcel Proust: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). Proust’s apology — don’t blame me, it’s the characters — is a wonderful demonstration of how a writer might reckon with a critic.

What followed The Guermantes Way ? Sodom and Gomorrah.

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Today’s Newsday Saturday

Today’s Newsday  Saturday crossword is by Greg Johnson. Pretty dang easy — it makes me miss the Stumper.

Clue-and-answer pairs I especially like:

1-A, ten letters, “Face covering.” A nice bit of misdirection to start things off.

7-D, three letters, “Name that looks like a number.” Fun to suss out.

9-D, nine letters, “Devoted a whole show to, say.” I like the dowdiness.

17-A, ten letters, “Show watched by Spanish learners.” My first idiosyncratic (and dated) thought: ¿Qué Pasa, USA?

33-D, five letters, “Goddess well-regarded by Athenians.” Nice to know what her name means.

39-D, eight letters, “Archie Comics hangout.” For the characters, I presume, not the artists and writers.

41-A, six letters, “Dolly’s ‘I cannot compete with you’ woman.” Sung by two generations in my fambly.

60-A, ten letters, “Moby-Dick, e.g.” That’s a name, not a title.

66-A, ten letters, “Shaving in the kitchen.” Sounds like a Depression life hack. “The dish of water you set out last night over the stove’s pilot light will now be warm,” &c.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Mr. Goodman

Our narrator, V., has a strong antipathy to a Mr. Goodman, his half-brother’s secretary, who has already written a biography, The Tragedy of Sebastian Knight, a “slapdash and very misleading book” that makes no mention of V. Watch what happens with Mr. Goodman’s name in these paragraphs.

Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941).

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Effing-

Effing-crazy in Effingham. And some more crazy.

Avant-garde

Gotta love it that someone with the name Avant-garde just won the Scripps National Spelling Bee: Zaila Avant-garde. Her winning word: murraya.

Los Beach Boys

Los Lobos cover “Sail On, Sailor” — and other songs from Los Angeles.

“Everything”

Sebastian Knight at Cambridge:

Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941).

This novel, Nabokov’s first in English, raises, again and again, the question that runs through Pnin: how does the narrator (here V., Sebastian’s half-brother) know these things? Whose nostalgia is at work here?

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Following a leader

Wow. But not surprising. And where do you think he, with his dim grasp of history, might have heard this kind of thing?

(The ghost of Fred Trump walks.)

Nor is it suprising when a hard-right congressional non-entity declares that “Hitler was right on one thing.”

Mr. H

V. has been going through the drawers of his late brother Sebastian’s desk. V. expects to find photographs of “lots of girls,” “smiling in the sun, summer snapshots.” But no:

Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941).

Sebastian Knight never wrote such a work. But his intention to use photographs in the service of fiction anticipates W. G. Sebald.

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The Los Feliz Murder Mansion

The Los Feliz Murder Mansion is a seven-episode podcast from Cloudy Day Pictures. It begins with a 1959 murder-suicide and goes on to explore one Los Feliz house’s history from its construction to the present day, chasing down rabbit hole after rabbit hole. Stick it out after the first-episode hype and you’ll likely be impressed.