João Pedro Vala. "Proust wouldn't say no to a party just to see how people were dressed."

A little over a century after his death, French writer Marcel Proust (1871-1922) continues to exert an irresistible fascination. And not even the colossal size of his novel In Search of Lost Time ( À la Recherche du Temps Perdu )—seven volumes, over three thousand pages, and approximately one million and three hundred thousand words—seems to deter his readers.

Critic and novelist João Pedro Vala is one of the many who have been captivated by the magnetism of Proust's writing. With a degree in Management, he realized he wanted to pursue a different path and went on to study literature. His doctorate took him from Lisbon to Chicago, where he spent "three months just reading" in the merciless winter.

Now, he has just transformed this thesis into a Dictionary of Proust (ed. Quetzal), where he intends to present to the general public the man he considers “the greatest writer of all time” .

This cover shows us a different Proust. We're used to imagining him sick, lying in bed, never leaving his room, and in this photograph he appears relaxed, playing with a tennis racket, as if it were a guitar or a mandolin.

That was the idea, to try to make the first contact with Proust not be as a serious author already posing, but rather as someone like us—playing, having fun. I also really like the photograph Man Ray took of Proust's deathbed. But it didn't make sense—that would have the exact opposite effect.

Do we know anything about the context of this photo?

In his youth, he was often involved in aristocratic circles; his friendships were primarily from there. The boys would go play tennis, and he would stand outside the court, with the ladies, watching. In fact, even from his clothes, you could tell he wasn't there to play. [laughs]

This seems to be very common with him. From what I can gather, he moved in these circles but never fully integrated, always a bit of an outsider .

I think that's what makes him capable of writing. He looked to the aristocracy because he wasn't born there and longed to rise. And even the homosexual community was a community he couldn't quite understand—being homosexual, he doesn't seem to have had a very active life. And I think this issue of distance is what allows the book to exist, that is, it's the position of someone who sees the world unfolding outside, and looks at that world with an enchanted gaze that is only possible when we're not immersed in it. Coincidentally, I was just reading Poetics , and Aristotle says that one of the possible etymologies for 'comedy' has to do with the fact that artists roamed outside the cities. I think that's a good definition of art. It's something that always arises outside, from an external and covetous gaze, but which cannot enter. That's why Proust says that all paradises are paradises lost.

You make a point of mentioning right in the introductory note that Proust is your favorite writer. Was it love at first sight—or rather, at first reading?

I think that when we spend enough time on a subject, we inevitably fall in love with it. When you spend so much time writing a doctoral thesis, it's impossible not to develop a strong empathy. But in this case, I felt the connection right away. What Proust said about art and the way he positioned himself in relation to the world made a lot of sense to me. During the course, I was thinking deeply about art and literature for the first time, and so these things intertwined, and my love for literature became entwined with my love for Proust. In fact, he talks a lot about this particularity: when two things happen simultaneously, we tend to confuse them. And so, sometimes it's very difficult to know whether I'm talking about Proust, literature, or the texts I write. This confusion also makes me more passionate. But I think it all stems from that initial moment when I read In Search of Lost Time and found it extraordinary.

Under what circumstances was this?

I started out with a degree in Management, but then decided that wasn't the path I wanted to take. I first did a year of undergraduate study, and then I went on to do a master's degree [in literature]. And at the end of the first semester of the master's, I had a meeting with Professor Miguel Támen, who is the son of the translator of Recherche , and I asked him for help in guiding my reading toward something more systematic, because I hadn't read enough to write a thesis.

Is there a 'right way' to read an author to make a thesis?

I think it's a bit of a sniffing game. I don't know if the method I used for my thesis would apply to a thesis on another author, but I started by reading Recherche , then I read Proust's more secondary texts to try to identify patterns. As I identified patterns, I became curious about the author's life, and I started reading the biography. First the text, then the biography, and only then the secondary bibliography.

In that order.

Everything we have to say about an author must start from his text, because Proust's life is only interesting because he wrote In Search of Lost Time . At the same time as I read the secondary bibliography, I read his letters, I read the authors he read, or who were his contemporaries… It's a process that never ends.

One of the questions that will always be asked about Recherche is to what extent it is autobiographical, to what extent there is an identification between the narrator and the author. Some argue that Marcel—the narrator—and Proust are distinct figures. But it seems to me that the mere fact that they share the same first name fosters this confusion.

At least to problematize it, to say: 'There's a problem here, and the key might be to read this as an autobiography.' Of course, when we read his biographies, many things don't add up. But what he's saying is that the text only exists because his life was the way it was. There's an important connection. [Jean-Yves] Tadié [biographer] thinks that this connection isn't that strong or relevant, because there aren't, for example, physical descriptions of Proust. So, Tadié seems to be a kind of precursor to a theory that's long been around in comics. I think it was McCloud who first put forward this theory: Tintin is a character with more or less vague features, immersed in a world with very concrete contours. And the idea would be to create a vague character so that readers could…

Put yourself in his shoes?

Take out Tintin, and there I am. I don't think this works with Proust, because he has character traits we have difficulty identifying with. We don't initially imprison a woman in Paris and leave her locked up at home. This theory is promising, but it ultimately doesn't make sense here. If it's not an autobiography, it's at least an 'auto-novel.'

These parallels apply not only to the protagonist, but also to the characters who gravitate around him. To the point that several people in his circle recognized themselves in Proust's book, and some were furious.

There's a funny story that I'm not sure I included in the book. At a certain point, [Robert de] Montesquiou [a poet friend of Proust, a figure known for his eccentricity] is very offended because he reads the first volume and recognizes some similarities with Baron de Charlus. Then, when he gets to Sodom and Gomorrah [the fourth volume], he realizes that Baron de Charlus is homosexual and writes to Proust saying he's very uncomfortable with the situation. And Proust replies: 'No. Baron de Charlus is fat and you are thin.' And Montesquiou is completely satisfied with this answer, because what he wanted was an argument to tell people: 'It's not me, you see?' Proust always changes things to fit the story he wants to tell us. But of course, the novel is full of his life experience.

At one point, Proust alludes to his work as a "cathedral of literature." In the Middle Ages, the cathedral was a microcosm, a representation of the entire world. The Recherche is also a representation of the world—but of a very particular world, the life of the aristocracy and the upper bourgeoisie. In your view, what makes it, by portraying this very particular world, a universal work?

In fact, we even have a certain aversion to this main character because Proust himself erases any trace of goodness from her. The main character is narcissistic, spoiled, completely obsessed with love, completely disregarding the people around her, and this, obviously, alienates us as readers. But I think Proust is precisely forcing us to look at another form of empathy, which is the empathy of recognizing someone in their complete nakedness. I think it's with this universality that he's playing. It's not the universality of a vague enough character, it's not a universality of 'this is how we tend to look at ourselves,' where we are the heroes of our story, but the universality of a very visible fragility. He's willing to humble himself, to show himself as 'rotten,' although he's also not willing to go all the way to the end. For example, he's not homosexual, he's not Jewish, and so it's as if he's building a world that attacks him, but only attacks him in the ways he chooses. In this sense, sadomasochism is very important in the story.

Regarding sadomasochism, I believe it was biographer George Painter who recounted that Proust derived particular pleasure from sticking pins into rats... Which may be related to his father, who was a hygienist. If we view rats as transmitters of disease, perhaps that explains it...

There are some rather strange stories. One is that he hired a male prostitute for a hotel room where the male prostitute was doing bad things to rats and he masturbated while watching, and in the next room, a police officer was beating a chicken. I think that story is most likely apocryphal, but nobody makes that up either! [laughs]

Another aspect that may cause some perplexity is that, knowing that Proust was homosexual, the narrator is utterly repulsed the first time he witnesses a homosexual relationship between two women. Was this false modesty, an attempt to feign shock…? What was he trying to achieve with such vehement condemnation?

I talk a lot about this scene in the book, and I think it has several components. On the one hand, he's shocked, the aesthetic experience of seeing two lesbians, which is different from seeing two men. Because as a heterosexual man—as he presents himself—the lesbian world was completely closed to him. And because it's closed, it has a quality that's, on the one hand, shocking, but on the other, almost paradisiacal. In fact, he sees it as a theater scene, because the curtains open and he's sitting there watching. At the same time, I think he's showing us that there's nothing radically different there from a heterosexual man's experience of love. But we have to approach this with caution, because it's dangerous. And then there's a passage in Sodom and Gomorrah that I find very curious, which is when Baron de Charlus spends about 40 pages talking about homosexuality and then says: "This only interests me from an academic point of view." And when he says this we laugh because we know that Baron de Charlus is homosexual, but we also think: 'Proust has been talking about homosexuality for a long time' ...

In other words, could it be that you want to convey a message?

Exactly.

One of the important themes of Recherche is love, but an obsessive, unhealthy love. At the same time, he's very rational when trying to explain it, almost putting himself in the role of a doctor performing an autopsy.

At one point, he even says that Swann's love was "inoperable." The starting point is his autobiographical experience, which in this case is homosexuality in a deeply homophobic context, which leads him to view love as something unapproachable. On the other hand, it's also the idea that in love, I lose control, and the story of " Recherche" is very much a story of control. There's a curious part where Albertine is asleep, and he speaks of her as a domestic animal, a cat. But when she wakes up, he's already using the vocabulary of a wild animal. In other words, we have to tame this animal if we want to be in control of our lives.

It seems significant to me that he begins the book with the episode of his mother's goodnight kiss, and the anxiety he feels about it. It's something he can't control, and perhaps that's why later, when he has a romantic relationship with Albertine, he wants at all costs to control her and have her always at his disposal.

It's exactly the experience of writing a book. In the book, people attack me, but I choose how they attack me. And they say what I tell them to say. Proust has this obsession with control. André Gide tells that when Proust's servants were going to give him a message, they would stop in front of his house and start reciting the message. And at one point, Gide interrupts Céleste Albaret's husband [Proust's housekeeper], and he stops and has to go back to the beginning of the message.

We get the impression that in his youth Proust was a dandy, a dilettante—if not a frivolous one, at least a rather frivolous one. Is there a moment when he transforms into something else, a turning point where he stops being the dilettante and becomes the great novelist?

I think the most confusing part of Proust's biography is that he never stops being both. Intuitively, we think there's a moment when he stops being frivolous. But no. And the novel is also full of frivolities. And this is what also seems to confuse André Gide, who refuses to publish the first volume with Gallimard. And later writes him a letter saying: "This was the biggest mistake of my life, but I thought you were 'du côté de chez Verdurin'" [a reference to the character of Madame Verdurin, a nouveau riche who runs a society salon thanks to her fortune, but who is unaware of the rules of true good taste and elegance]. It also seems important to demystify the idea that a writer can't be a frivolous person. At least in the case of the writers I know. We all have perfectly mundane ambitions. And Proust never loses those ambitions, he only transforms them. But that continues to pulsate inside. The desire for recognition lasts until the end of his life. He pays for articles to be published praising him, written by him, and does everything he can to receive a Legion of Honor…

Never renounce that superficial side.

But it's really strange when we think that the greatest writer of all time – in my opinion, of course – is simultaneously a guy who wouldn't say no to a party just to see what people were wearing.

The publication of Recherche has a troubled history. First, as I mentioned, the manuscript is rejected.

He tries another publisher and is also rejected. Then he goes to Grasset and pays the printing costs for the book. The negotiation process is very strange because the publisher keeps offering him more money, but he rejects it. His only demands are that he not be obligated to publish the other volumes there, that the text not be altered, and, above all, that the book be cheaper than normal so that ordinary Parisians will buy it. And he gives him a very large percentage of the international sales royalties, to stimulate Grasset's greed and try to sell the book abroad. So it's always with posterity in mind.

But the other six volumes end up being published by Gallimard. Apparently, he doesn't resent the rejection.

He must have been, but I think he realized that was far more important than anything else. And I believe he was genuinely moved by André Gide's letter. If we look at the process step by step, it was painful, because he dedicates the book to the editor of Figaro , who was going to help him, but stops responding because he gets rejected and doesn't want to tell Proust. Then he delivers it to him on Christmas Day… that was painful. But for Proust, there was something more important: being published there. And he swallows it.

Did this strategy of wanting books to be cheap work? It's not exactly an easy book.

It ends up working. He has a great knack for marketing . For example, at one point he sees a book with a banner saying 'this book should not be read by young girls,' and he asks for a similar banner to be put on his book. Then he pays people to write good things about him in the newspapers. At one point, there was a brand that sold lingerie for 'young girls in bloom'... He has commercial success throughout his life. Not overwhelming, but he manages to reach a lot of people.

I don't know if this is a forbidden topic, a taboo for Proust scholars and fans. When the first volume came out, a critic asked how it was possible to spend 30 pages describing someone tossing and turning in bed and unable to fall asleep. Is Proust a boring writer sometimes, or isn't he?

[laughs] I honestly don't think so. I think it's a cadence you get into and when you get into it it's like...

Are we packed?

Exactly, we're in tune. Obviously, this cadence demands a lot from us as readers; it's not a cadence that takes us by the hand like children. It requires effort. But I feel that once you get into that musicality and rhythm, it's very difficult to put the book down. Usually, these criticisms come from people who either didn't read the book, or who didn't have the patience, or who gave up at first resistance. But I think it's very difficult for someone to say that when they reach the second volume, because they've already gotten into that groove. My experience, in fact, is one of wonder.