ATDDTA (6) 166-170 b

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

       Paul Mackin:
       Both Pynchon and Proust have marvelous surfaces. 
       Tore mentioned the importance of surface in Pynchon 
       a while back. (with which I strongly concur)   

       "Woke up, fell out of bed,
       dragged a comb across my head. . . ." 

Got my cup of coffee and a Madeline, one of Susie Rode Morris' Madeleines, a 
woman---mezzo-soprano---who I recorded many, many times, usually singing music 
of the middle ages, quite often music of Alphonso the Tenth, Alphonso the Wise, 
a King and composer of beautiful Marian songs, though Susie's true livelyhood was as 
a baker of Madeleines, something she decided to persue after reading "In Search 
of Lost Time". . . .
       
       bekah wrote:
       168: 5;    "He was remembering, declining 
       into a sickbed of remembrance."

       The last volume of "Remembrance of 
       Things Past" by  Proust was dictated 
       from his sickbed

       Monte:
       Absolutely. This is all but a shout-out, 
       "Yo! Marcel!" (Take it away, Robin.)

       "Therefore, if enough time was left to 
       me to complete my work, my first concern 
       would be to describe the people in it, even 
       at the risk of making them seem colossal 
       and unatural creatures, as occupying a 
       place far larger than the very limited one 
       reserved for them in space, a place almost 
       infinitely extended, since they are in 
       simultaneous contact, like giants immersed 
       in the years, with such distant periods of 
       their lives. between which so many days 
       have taken up their place---in Time." 
       Last page, In Search of Lost Time.

       "The Small Rain" was my first published story. 
       A friend who'd been away in the army the same 
       two years I'd been in the navy supplied the 
       details. The hurricane really happened, and my
       friend's Signal Corps detachment had the 
       mission described in the story. Most of what I 
       dislike about my writing is present here in embryo, 
       as well as in more advanced forms. I failed to 
       recognize, just for openers, that the main 
       character's problem was real and 
       interesting enough to generate a story on its own. . . .
       Pynchon, Slow Learner, 4.

Oh yeah, and Kit and Marcel share a hat fetish. . . .

       "Kit had wandered down to the stables, 
       where he was presently joined by Dittany 
       Vibe, her eyes sparkling from beneath the 
       brim of an all-but-irresistible hat." 
       162

I'm 3/4 of the way through "Lost Time", kinda stuck at the point where Marcel 
becomes hopelessly paranoid concerning Albertine in "The Prisoner", being 
distracted from this most mindful of pleasures by equally mindful pleasures. 
This is one of the most glorious times of my life, in my fifties returning to my 
late teens, omnivorously absorbing texts on just about everything, no worries 
about any kind of GPA, just like Richard Feynman, enjoying The Pleasures of 
Finding Things Out. 

More Proustian hats below:

Monte Davis:
Hmm... We've had a Hat Museum (43)

Maybe if Pynchon hats are good they 
get reincarnated in Proust? Yashmeen, in
Venice, is caught by the bora wind:

"...she was more immediately concerned with the loss of her hat, flying away
to join hundreds of others in migration to some more southerly climate, some
tropical resort of hats where they could find weeks of hat dolce far niente
to grow new feathers, allow their color to return or find new shades, lie
and dream about heads that Fate had meant them to adorn..." (816)

For, Albertine having once said to me petulantly: "It's a bore
that Nature has arranged things so badly and put Saint-Jean de la
Haise in one direction, la Raspelière in another, so that you're
imprisoned for the whole day in the part of the country you've
chosen;" as soon as the toque and veil had come I ordered, to my
eventual undoing, a motor-car from Saint-Fargeau ("Sanctus Ferreolus",
according to the curé's book). Albertine, whom I had kept in ignorance
and who had come to call for me, was surprised when she heard in front
of the hotel the purr of the engine, delighted when she learned that
this motor was for ourselves. I made her come upstairs for a moment to
my room. She jumped for joy. "We are going to pay a call on the
Verdurins." "Yes, but you'd better not go dressed like that since you
are going to have your motor. There, you will look better in these."
And I brought out the toque and veil which I had hidden.  "They're for
me? Oh! You are an angel," she cried, throwing her arms round my neck.
Aimé who met us on the stairs, proud of Albertine's smart attire and
of our means of transport, for these vehicles were still comparatively
rare at Balbec, gave himself the pleasure of coming downstairs behind
us. Albertine, anxious to display herself in her new garments, asked
me to have the car opened, as we could shut it later on when we wished
to be more private. "Now then," said Aimé to the driver, with whom he
was not acquainted and who had not stirred, "don't you ("tu") hear,
you're to open your roof?" For Aimé, sophisticated by hotel life, in
which moreover he had won his way to exalted rank, was not as shy as
the cab driver to whom Françoise was a 'lady'; notwithstanding the
want of any formal introduction, plebeians whom he had never seen
before he addressed as tu, though it was hard to say whether this was
aristocratic disdain on his part or democratic fraternity. "I am
engaged," replied the chauffeur, who did not know me by sight. "I am
ordered for Mlle. Simonet. I can't take this gentleman." Aimé burst
out laughing: "Why, you great pumpkin," he said to the driver, whom he
at once convinced, "this is Mademoiselle Simonet, and Monsieur, who
tells you to open the roof of your car, is the person who has engaged
you." And as Aimé, although personally he had no feeling for
Albertine, was for my sake proud of the garments she was wearing, he
whispered to the chauffeur: "Don't get the chance of driving a
Princess like that every day, do you?" On this first occasion it was
not I alone that was able to go to la Raspelière as I did on other
days, while Albertine painted; she decided to go there with me. She
did indeed think that we might stop here and there on our way, but
supposed it to be impossible to start by going to Saint-Jean de la
Haise. That is to say in another direction, and to make an excursion
which seemed to be reserved for a different day. She learned on the
contrary from the driver that nothing could be easier than to go to
Saint-Jean, which he could do in twenty minutes, and that we might
stay there if we chose for hours, or go on much farther, for from
Quetteholme to la Raspelière would not take more than thirty-five
minutes. We realised this as soon as the vehicle, starting off,
covered in one bound twenty paces of an excellent horse. Distances are
only the relation of space to time and vary with that relation. We
express the difficulty that we have in getting to a place in a system
of miles or kilometres which becomes false as soon as that difficulty
decreases. Art is modified by it also, when a village which seemed to
be in a different world from some other village becomes its neighbour
in a landscape whose dimensions are altered. In any case the
information that there may perhaps exist a universe in which two and
two make five and the straight line is not the shortest way between
two points would have astonished Albertine far less than to hear the
driver say that it was easy to go in a single afternoon to Saint-Jean
and la Raspelière, Douville and Quetteholme, Saint-Mars le Vieux and
Saint-Mars le Vêtu, Gourville and Old Balbec, Tourville and Féterne,
prisoners hitherto as hermetically confined in the cells of distinct
days as long ago were Méséglise and Guermantes, upon which the same
eyes could not gaze in the course of one afternoon, delivered now by
the giant with the seven-league boots, came and clustered about our
tea-time their towers and steeples, their old gardens which the
encroaching wood sprang back to reveal.

. . . .No less than of her limbs, Albertine was
directly conscious of her toque of Leghorn straw and of the silken
veil (which were for her the source of no less satisfaction), and
derived from them, as we strolled round the church, a different sort
of impetus, revealed by a contentment which was inert but in which I
found a certain charm; veil and toque which were but a recent,
adventitious part of my friend, but a part that was already dear to
me, as I followed its trail with my eyes, past the cypress in the
evening air. She herself could not see it, but guessed that the effect
was pleasing, for she smiled at me, harmonising the poise of her head
with the headgear that completed it. "I don't like it, it's restored,"
she said to me, pointing to the church and remembering what Elstir had
said to her about the priceless, inimitable beauty of old stone.
Albertine could tell a restoration at a glance. One could not help
feeling surprised at the sureness of the taste she had already
acquired in architecture, as contrasted with the deplorable taste she
still retained in music.  I cared no more than Elstir for this church,
it was with no pleasure to myself that its sunlit front had come and
posed before my eyes, and I had got out of the car to examine it only
out of politeness to Albertine. I found, however, that the great
impressionist had contradicted himself; why exalt this fetish of its
objective architectural value, and not take into account the
transfiguration of the church by the sunset? "No, certainly not," said
Albertine, "I don't like it; I like its name 'orgueilleuse'. But what
I must remember to ask Brichot is why Saint-Mars is called 'le Vêtu'.
We shall be going there next, shan't we?" she said, gazing at me out
of her black eyes over which her toque was pulled down, like her
little polo cap long ago. Her veil floated behind her. I got back into
the car with her, happy in the thought that we should be going next
day to Saint-Mars, where, in this blazing weather when one could think
only of the delights of a bath, the two ancient steeples, salmon-pink,
with their lozenge-shaped tiles, gaping slightly as though for air,
looked like a pair of old, sharp-snouted fish, coated in scales,
moss-grown and red, which without seeming to move were rising in a
blue, transparent water. . . .


. . . .Night began to fall. What a pleasure to feel
her leaning against me, with her toque and her veil, reminding me that
it is always thus, seated side by side, that we meet couples who are
in love. I was perhaps in love with Albertine, but as I did not
venture to let her see my love, although it existed in me, it could
only be like an abstract truth, of no value until one has succeeded in
checking it by experiment; as it was, it seemed to me unrealisable and
outside the plane of life. 


http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300491.txt
and good luck finding these passages within that single 
unpaiginated scroll. It's the C. K. Scott Moncrieff translation. 

http://tinyurl.com/2lq4kb