Proust's Bedroom and Mine

Just finished reading Alain de Botton's charmingly intelligent HOW PROUST CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE. It's a series of essays on what Proust's IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME would boil down to if, improbably, the seven hefty volumes were a self-help book. Chapter titles include such topics as "How to Suffer Successfully" and "How to Take Your Time."

At the end there's a good piece of advice about the wrong way to wring wisdom out of a piece of art. I can tell you it's a path I've tried to take. This hopeless approach is to go to the places where the artist worked, where the story ostensibly unfolded. Example: to try to better know Monet's paintings and experience by going to Giverny (a dream of mine.) Or to go to Combray where Proust's boyhood summers are set and expect to see deeper into the books. Instead, says this guide: "It should not be Illiers-Combray that we visit: a genuine homage to Proust would be to look at our world through his eyes, not to look at his world through our eyes."

Some years ago I made an attempt to visit in a Paris museum the reassembled furniture of Proust's cork-lined bedroom where he wrote. I was about 8 minutes too late. The museum had closed; the guard would not listen to my pleas, though it truly was our last day there. Maybe it was for the best, and now I will have a look at my own bedroom with the kind of rich attention that Proust gave everything. I've certainly had the time to do it, having been sacked out all day. Two days up and one day down seems to be the current state of my convalescence. I am indeed following the Proustian advice of taking my time.