No. 11, "How Proust Can Change Your Life"

Last year for my birthday, my best friend Juliette presented me with a book titled The Architecture of Happiness, the second non-fiction work written by Swiss writer, Alain de Botton.  Whether or not Juliette was aware of its literary success, The Architecture of Happiness was the perfect gift for me as an architecture admirer and literary devotee.  The book discusses the way in which architecture and its beauty affect us and our well-being-- both as individuals and as a society.  In my architecture courses, I have always been concerned with this concept: the role of architecture and the built environment in shaping an identity.  While conducting research on the architectural designs of Paris and Algiers under the reign of Napoléon III, I aimed to prove that the reformations of these cities solidified the desired identity of the French empire as well as the intentions of Napoléon III as an emperor.  In The Architecture of Happiness, Alain de Botton validates the power of architecture, yet he presents his argument with such poise and graciousness, which, in my opinion, writers often lack.  After reading this book, I felt the sense of general contentment for which Botton had clearly aimed, almost as if he had authenticated my own views of architecture and its potency that is somewhat unacknowledged by the common man.  I imagine that I would have eventually purchased this book somewhere down the line, but I am truly grateful that Juliette expedited this acquisition.

Alain de Botton's first non-fiction work is titled How Proust Can Change Your Life. This book has been on my reading list even since I completed The Architecture of Happiness, yet it had remained overlooked until this past Thursday evening when I found myself at Barnes & Noble while browsing the "Essays" section.  Just two shelves above literary luminary, David Sedaris, I saw the all-too familiar cover of The Architecture of Happiness beside How Proust Can Change Your Life, a funny-looking paperback with green- and orange-tiled images of Marcel Proust, a renowned French novelist and essayist.  This welcomed confrontation forced me into purchased the book, which I eagerly began upon returning home.

In How Proust Can Change Your Life, Alain de Botton addresses Marcel Proust--both his works and his life-- in a way that provides both reflections on the writer as well as offers advice and "self-help" based on de Botton's thoughts on Proust and his value to everyday life.  I guess the title should have given away its "self-help" agenda, yet, halfway through the book, I have found myself as enveloped in de Botton's words as the plot of any fiction piece, hanging on his every word and devouring the quotations provided from Proust's works and critiques.

Marcel Proust (or, Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust) is best known for his seven-part semi-biographical oeuvre À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time), which totals in 3,200 pages-- of which I have only read several excerpts.  This project began in 1909 and ended with Proust's death at the age of fifty-one in 1922.  Proust is described as a man who lived for detail, valuing the minutia to be equal, if not more precious, than the "plot-summary" points.  In the chapter of How Proust Can Change Your Life that is appropriately titled "How to Take Your Time," de Botton discusses Proust's conflict with reading the newspaper-- more specifically, the "news-in-brief" section-- for he felt that condensing a story to such a great degree undermined and damaged its events and their importance, compelling Proust to imagine the "bigger picture" for himself--however accurate or faulty it would be.  De Botton writes, "it shows how vulnerable much of human experience is to abbreviation, how easily it can be stripped of the more obvious signposts by which we guide ourselves when ascribing importance."  I find this so profound-- probably because it is true.

Clearly the length of Proust's works boldly represent the extreme opposite on this spectrum of detail, a quality that both deterred (and still deters) readers as well as induced praise from critics who cited Proust as a "literary genius."  While I myself have not braved the immensity of À la recherche du temps perdu, I hope to do so one day.  Nevertheless, I do value Proust's strive to spotlight and emphasize the significance of small details and trivialities, from the annoyance of restlessness to the particularities of one's morning routine.  After all, these aspects shape us-- our identities.  Although whether we comb our hair before brushing our teeth (or vice versa) may not share any insight on our value as human beings, it certainly reveals how one person is different from the next in an infinite number of ways.  These minor distinctions and variations remind us of how beautiful we are in our own respective ways and should, hopefully, make us step back and recognize the grace and wonder we can find in one another.

De Botton, Alain. How Proust Can Change Your Life. New York: Vintage International, 1997.