Proust and Mr. A

A marvelous distraction arrived yesterday late yesterday afternoon, just in time to save me from fashioning a noose out of paperclips after yet another ‘program synergies’ meeting. The lovely Sarah from my local indie pusher sent me into a giddy tail spin of excitement with the news that my super-duper deluxe edition of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, special ordered, all the way from the U.S. of A, was in the building and awaiting collection! She then proceeds to beg permission to open their special little airmail box to just ‘stare at them for awhile’. Obviously I couldn’t deny the girl such a pleasure and told her to get down with her bad self. Personally I don’t think the pictures do justice to their loveliness!

For some time now, I have had this teensy obsession with the acquisition of what, to my mind at least, constitutes THE PERFECT edition of Proust’s semi-autobiographical masterpiece In Search of Lost Time. This obsession really is a sentimental one, dating back to my final two years of high school and a wonderfully eccentric English teacher I had, known fondly as Mr. A.

Mr. A was one of those people who seemingly embodied all that is meant by the phrase ‘a literary life’. Reading seemed so crucial to his existence that I often wondered if the removal of the book from his hand would cause him to lapse into anaphylactic shock. There was never a time in two years of his classes that saw him without a book in either one of his hands or tucked protectively under one of his arms. Mr. A taught with a book in hand, did playground duty with a book in hand, attended the sports carnival with a book in hand and I even once saw him refereeing a soccer match complete with book seemingly super glued to his hand. His reluctance to every be parted from his book of the moment, seemed both a defiant mark of who he was and what he stood for, as well as a sort of contingency aid, in case he got stuck in conversation with a bore. Mr. A was partial to French literature, with a particular fondness for Sartre, Camus, Balzac, Zola, Colette, and Genet. However his one true love was Proust, of whom he could (and did) talk about for hours.

He spoke of Proust in a way that was both inspiring and terrifying. As a book that could either be the most profound reading experience of your life, or expose you as the reading dumb-dumb your inner reading insecurities like to taunt you with. Frankly I thought he was the coolest thing since sliced bread and unashamedly wanted to be him, complete with beret (man).

However I always considered the presence of a teacher like Mr. A in my high school both baffling and incongruous. I could never understand how he had ended up marooned so far from other people of his kind. How could a place, a tiny speck on the map country town in which conversation centred upon crops, cattle and footy, really nourish such a capital L literature devotee? I couldn’t help but wonder; didn’t he long for company with whom he could share his passion?

Because it’s safe to say that back then, we certainly weren’t up to it. As we sat in our barren demountable classrooms, surrounded by nothing but dirt baked rock hard by the sun, stuck to our plastic chairs, sweating furiously in our khaki tunics, the extravagance decadence and elegance of fin de siècle Europe were utterly unfathomable to us. I can remember trying to read Proust at his insistence in my final year. I became so frustrated with my inability to comprehend such a world that I chucked the book against the wall and proclaimed it pretentious tosh!

Though the power with which he spoke of Proust is one of those memories that has rattled around inside me for the last ten years. A decade and a degree in European cultural history under my belt later, I now feel confident enough to have another go at trying to understand that Proustian magic that so captivated Mr. A. In doing so I feel an obligation to Mr. A to ensure that I give my full respect to his literary idol, by ensuring that the format of the book befits the beauty and power of the story. Not to sound like too much of a wanker about it, but it just seems like that’s how it should be done. Though I think that I will skip the beret!

Whilst I’ve come across many editions of Proust in the last couple of years, none had really grabbed me as the ‘right’ one until I spotted these ones, which of course weren’t published in Australia. Logistics aside, I now have them in my hot little hands and am wallowing in their loveliness, annoying anyone who will listen with gushing about their restrained yet chic cover design, the uncut pages, and numerous other aspects of their physicality.

I wonder if I can get away with taking a month of leave to do nothing but read Proust.