Acclaim for
Alain de Botton
’s
How Proust Can Change Your Life
“Erudite.… After reading de Botton’s book, one will savor Proust with fresh wonder and gratitude.”
—Washington Post
“A lively, original guide to living, and … an engaging introduction to the life and letters of one of the century’s most interesting fictional thinkers … literary criticism wearing its slyest disguise since Julian Barnes’ Flaubert’s Parrot.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Ingenious … charming, erudite … an amusing homage to a literary genius whose utter lack of talent for living becomes a tender inspiration.”
—Elle
“Writing with great clarity, concision, and wit, de Botton translates the Proustian message into humbler but energetic prose.”
—Village Voice Literary Supplement
“Proust, through de Botton, offers wiser and wittier advice, and on more subjects, than any syndicated columnist.”
—Hartford Courant
“One of my favorite books of the year.… Seriously cheeky, cheekily serious.”
—Julian Barnes
“A witty, elegant book that helps us learn what reading is for.”
—Doris Lessing
“A wonderful meditation on aspects of Proust in the form of a self-help book.… Very enjoyable.”
—Sebastian Faulks
Also by
Alain de Botton
On Love
The Romantic Movement
Kiss and Tell
The Consolations of Philosophy
The Art of Travel
Alain de Botton
How Proust Can Change Your Life
Alain de Botton is the author of On Love, The Romantic Movement, Kiss and Tell, The Consolations of Philosophy, and The Art of Travel. His work has been translated into twenty languages. He lives in Washington, D.C., and London. He can be reached at www.alaindebotton.com.
FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, MAY 1998
Copyright © 1997 by Alain de Botton
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1997.
Photograph Acknowledgments
Barnaby’s Picture Library, Bridgeman Art Library, (Louvre, Paris), (Peter Willi, Musée Marmottan, Paris), (Louvre, Paris/Giraudon), (Louvre, Paris/Giraudon); Mary Evans Picture Library, Hulton Getty Collection, Simon Marsden
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Pantheon edition as follows:
De Botton, Alain.
How Proust can change your life / Alain de Botton.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-83349-5
1. Proust, Marcel, 1871–1922—Humor. I. Title.
PQ2631.R63Z54917 1997
843′.912—dc21 96-47106
Author photograph © Miriam Berkley
Random House Web address: www.randomhouse.com
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright
1. HOW TO LOVE LIFE TODAY
2. HOW TO READ FOR YOURSELF
3. HOW TO TAKE YOUR TIME
4. HOW TO SUFFER SUCCESSFULLY
5. HOW TO EXPRESS YOUR EMOTIONS
6. HOW TO BE A GOOD FRIEND
7. HOW TO OPEN YOUR EYES
8. HOW TO BE HAPPY IN LOVE
9. HOW TO PUT BOOKS DOWN
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are few things humans are more dedicated to than unhappiness. Had we been placed on earth by a malign creator for the exclusive purpose of suffering, we would have good reason to congratulate ourselves on our enthusiastic response to the task. Reasons to be inconsolable abound: the frailty of our bodies, the fickleness of love, the insincerities of social life, the compromises of friendship, the deadening effects of habit. In the face of such persistent ills, we might naturally expect that no event would be awaited with greater anticipation than the moment of our own extinction.
Someone looking for a paper to read in Paris in the 1920s might have picked up a title called L’Intransigeant. It had a reputation for investigative news, metropolitan gossip, comprehensive classifieds, and incisive editorials. It also had a habit of dreaming up big questions and asking French celebrities to send in their replies. “What do you think would be the ideal education to give your daughter?” was one. “Do you have any recommendations for improving traffic congestion in Paris?” was another. In the summer of 1922, the paper formulated a particularly elaborate question for its contributors:
An American scientist announces that the world will end, or at least that such a huge part of the continent will be destroyed, and in such a sudden way, that death will be the certain fate of hundreds of millions of people. If this prediction were confirmed, what do you think would be its effects on people between the time when they acquired the aforementioned certainty and the moment of cataclysm? Finally, as far as you’re concerned, what would you do in this last hour?
The first celebrity to respond to the grim scenario of personal and global annihilation was a then distinguished, now forgotten man of letters named Henri Bordeaux, who suggested that it would drive the mass of the population directly into either the nearest church or the nearest bedroom, though he himself avoided the awkward choice, explaining that he would take this last opportunity to climb a mountain, so as to admire the beauty of alpine scenery and flora. Another Parisian celebrity, an accomplished actress called Berthe Bovy, proposed no recreations of her own, but shared with her readers a coy concern that men would shed all inhibitions once their actions had ceased to carry long-term consequences. This dark prognosis matched that of a famous Parisian palm reader, Madame Fraya, who judged that people would omit to spend their last hours contemplating the extraterrestrial future and would be too taken up with worldly pleasures to give much thought to readying their souls for the afterlife—a suspicion confirmed when another writer, Henri Robert, blithely declared his intention to devote himself to a final game of bridge, tennis, and golf.