I love Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu1). It's a monumental work, which I'm not going to attempt to summarise here, set in late 19th & early 20th century France, largely within the milieu of the Parisian upper classes, dealing primarily with time and memory but also adolescence, … Continue reading A month of not reading Proust
A hobby of mine when I was a teenager was birdwatching. I'd go for walks up the hill behind my parents' house with binoculars and field guide; if I was lucky Mum and Dad would take me to RSPB Vane Farm (now Loch Leven), a half-hour drive away; or I'd go with my cousin Colin, … Continue reading Not birdwatching
"Yes, he was looking back, because nowadays he had forgotten who he had been when he was young." Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting This post follows loosely from one I wrote two years ago, about nostalgia. I found the quote above while re-reading Kundera for the first time since I was about … Continue reading Shedding skins / counting rings
"Proust had a bad memory...The man with a good memory does not remember anything because he does not forget anything." Samuel Beckett, 'Proust' To begin with, the first part of the quote above must look like exceptional contrariness on Beckett's part. Proust's most famous work is, after all, À la recherche du temps perdu (In … Continue reading The lure, the lie and the lessons of nostalgia
The artist John Wells was a member of the so-called “St. Ives” group, a loose collective of artists active from the late 1930s to the 1970s. None of the artists in question necessarily thought of themselves as part of a group, and their often fractious relationships makes for great reading. The most illustrious members were … Continue reading Under the influence
Into the Gyre 