Marcel Proust as Life Coach

Gifts of Chance

Quite haphazardly I came upon a unique little non-fiction book, How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton (London: Picador,1997).  It came with a cottage we could afford to rent some time ago in Provence, France. It was in a little bookcase filled with travel and history guides, art books, some good novels and assorted biographies, history, and self-exploration books.  What a delight to find all this, as if it were waiting for us.

I so enjoyed this little book on Proust that I wanted to share it with you. Like the novel, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by French author,Muriel Barbery (another surprising find  from years ago), this book based on Proust reminds me of how witty and socially relevant erudition can be. How important it is to step away from our usually crowded state of mind, to let things enter in small bits but with full attention. Add a dose of humour, a pinch of rational optimism mixed with practical pessimism, and you're set for life.

The Proust collage by Janet Strayer

Marcel Proust as Life Coach

This charming, amusing, and sensible little book was described as "dazzling" when reviewed by John Updike. It concerns the eccentric and very generous Marcel Proust, who wrote what has been hailed as one of the, greatest books of the 20th century: In Search of Lost Time (Recherches Des Temps Perdu). OK, I've never really read it. I've read parts it and some of his other works, but never the long stretch of this masterpiece from cover to cover. The point is, even without reading Proust, you can enjoy de Botton's book, which extracts material from Proust's writings that clearly show him to be a great life coach. Proust thought and wrote enough to enrich, not just literature, but also everyday life.

Probably few of us would choose to exchange our life for Marcel Proust's. Considered a dilettante, hypochondriac, and neurotic who spent most of his later adult days in bed as an apparent invalid, Proust was still one of the most alive people of his time. Generous to a fault, socializing with almost everyone, possessing extraordinary concentration and attentiveness  -- an elusive quality then, and especially now, in our time. An exceptionally keen observer of art and culture, Proust did not find multiple distractions distracting, had great patience, a large intellect guided by curiosity, thoughfulness, and interest in daily life. Even while bed-ridden, Proust continued to be extraordinarily engaged with life and people.

How Proust Can Change Your Life

Take Your Time

One chapter that shows Marcel Proust as Life Coach is entitled, "How to Take Your Time."  Why read through even a great book if you can quickly scan a headline or social media short on it? Because the actual time spent inside that book is the vital gift it offers: getting to know and change our reactions to their characters, settings, happenings as they evolve, living in the worlds created and in which we partake. If we don't take the time, we miss the trip. This applies not just to books. I've been truly amazed by how little time people who visit art museums, for example, spend actually looking at the art versus taking selfies with it (see here).

Don't go too fast (N'allez pas trop vite) is a request often attributed to Proust in conversation with his contemporaries. A slower pace increases the chances of coming to know and enjoy those otherwise unnoticed things that become interesting in the process of taking our time with them. In contrast to anger, annoyance, impatience, and easy judgments, all of which are quick and easily come by, it takes time to get with something or someone, to come to know them and how we feel about them, to explore what's real and important about it or them in our lives. A bit of time and openness is what's needed, and it's a choice.

Suffer Successfully

So many common tribulations, aside from awful events like war, are entailed in being human. Human suffering seems inevitable. What de Botton extracts from Proust in his chapter, "How to Suffer Successfully" is a knock-out. Proust, in characters he present to us, differentiates good sufferers (who gain more understanding and appreciation of reality from it) from bad sufferers. The latter blame others for their suffering, distract themselves with quick-fix addictions, delusions about self and others, or defences that entail arrogance, callousness, anger, and spite. Armed heavily in this way, bad sufferers have little incentive to face difficult truths, change as needed, and more fully appreciate their life. Take off all this armour, and humanity enters.

Finding One's Own Way

Finding one's own way, one's own voice, vision, and what one truly loves and values is, for me, the vast theme Proust investigates. He hated clichés and orthodoxies: "Every writer is obliged to create his own language, as every violinist is obliged to create his own tone" (p.103 in de Botton) and "only that which bears the imprint of our choice, our taste, our uncertainty, our desire and our weakness can be beautiful" (p.104). Except for deliberate caricature and ironic or melodramatic intent, why borrow tired forms of expression we haven't explored for ourselves?  

In Proust's time, as well as our own, a reasonable rebuttal would be: because otherwise we risk not fitting in and may be judged harshly by not doing so. Though there have always been those who flout convention, it's tricky to define by what authority convention rules. It can be "the ruling class" or it can be "my tribe". Proust's point isn't to make a name for ourselves by pissing on monuments. The point is to take the time, explore and consider, learn for ourself (not by any group's conventional dictates) what we need, and need to do,  for our own particular right path. For me, it's about courage over time.

Visual Art

Visual art is significant in Proust's novels. One of his characters, Elstir, is an impressionist painter. His paintings, like those of actual Impressionists at the time, challenged the orthodox understanding of what things looked like and what was considered beautiful. It might be quite a stretch to apply Proust's magnanimous view about artists, especially to some you know some first-hand. But what he says about the creative process is authentic. For Proust, painting, like other art forms, serves to undo "our vanity, our passions, our spirit of imitation, our abstract intelligence, our habits" and makes us "travel back...to the depths to see what has been neglected or distorted (p. 112 in de Botton).

Beauty

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder: where is that eye looking? Not just in the obvious places and at pre-determined images received from the trending culture or celebrity branding. 

Proust guides us to look actively, with our own eyes and attentiveness to our impressions. Such active engagement, attentive looking, listening, and sensing --in reality and imagination -- takes time and some degree of repeat inclination or effort. That's why being an appreciator of art of any kind is such a gift in itself. We needn't be the painter or composer. If we can appreciate the painting or the music, we can travel even further on our own.  

Beauty can be modest and subtle in its effects. Given our drama and sensation-charged media, we might often miss out on it. A big fuss occurred decades ago when the New York Met Museum purchased a Rembrandt at an outlandishly expensive price. When I first saw it as a child, expecting a great blaze of beauty to strike me, I was so disappointed. It looked to me like a lot of dark brown with just a bit of light reflecting on an old person. Bummer. I much preferred the "wow" I got from bright and colorful paintings and subjects I expected to be beautiful. It took more time and looking for me to learn that beautiful qualities in art (and people) needn't fit conspicuous categories. I find that first-impression "wow" reaction still works for me in art, but so does the subtle invitation to more.    

I think you have to experience both bad and good art to learn the difference. They might both depict the content you prefer, so it's not just that. They might both use techniques you like, like strong colors, thickly applied paint, and so forth. Both might declare themselves so loudly, they're bound to get noticed. How, if we want more beauty in our lives, do we choose? Proust again offers some guidance. Art that lacks beauty lacks an elusive specialness. Looked at repeatedly, it becomes rather boring, with nothing further revealed in the play of small details, qualities of contrast, or a particular touch that continues to engage us repeatedly. Habit, too, tends to erode beauty. We stop looking attentively at what's routine -- even that beautiful painting (whatever) you were fortunate enough to get. As Virginia Woolf said, beauty must be broken daily to remain beautiful. We can't ever presume to know it too well.

How to Open Your Eyes: All the light we cannot see

"How to open your eyes" is another chapter in this commentary upon Proust's lessons for us. It's not obvious, but we're often walking in our worlds, seeing the predictable only.  Not just beauty (though we need more of that), but other qualities we value need to be seen with open eyes.

detail of Abundance, painting by Janet Strayer

Proust encourages us to use paintings as examples for how to open our eyes. He wrote "I have tried to show how the great painters initiate us into a knowledge and love of the external world, how they are the ones by whom our eyes are opened'" (p.150, quoted by de Botton). He urges us especially to look at paintings of scenes of ordinary things: fruit and kitchen ware, of ordinary people doing ordinary things in contrast with the heroic (on the one hand) or the picturesque (on the other). For our times, I'd add the sensationally vulgar or the kitschy to Proust's heroic versus picturesque contrast. The message holds: simple and ordinary things can be wonderfully, aesthetically, beautiful.

Proust understood that we need the arts. They help us bridge the gaps, even fill the holes, between our immediate circumstances and something we need that is deeper, wider, richer, stronger and, yes, beautiful. In so doing, our life also changes ... in moments and bits of attention as we look for and are enriched by what is, for us, special.

All the light we cannot see is a lovely metaphor and the title of a novel by Anthony Doerr. Well worth reading for its own sake, and also meaningful in this context. The arts can enhance our perception and meaningfully link to our lives -- even if we are blind (as is the girl in Doerr's book) and however bleak our situation. Some courage and humility help: a willingness to attend, remain open, look, listen, seek, acknowledge and appreciate, again... and again. Promoting and supporting such efforts helps all of us.  

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