The culture in Proust

When people read Proust in English, or when English-speaking people read him in French, one of the reasons they do so is an admiration for some quality they see in French culture. It because of a sense, as the New Yorker's Adam Gopnik once put it, that France produced the greatest common place culture ever.

This is probably less true today but if you went to France sometime in the last five decades you could see something most countries don't have today: a culture that runs deep. Everything—from the food people ate and the clothes they wore to the politics and history they argued about—drew from a shared culture that everyone participated in in a deep way.

A friend of mine and I saw a fascinating example of this in the late 1980s when we too some visitors from France to a restaurant in Chinatown. He took them there to give them an experience they couldn't have at home. He told them, what is quite true, that you simply cannot find the kinds of restaurant you can find in a North American Chinatown anywhere in Paris. And they loved the idea. They were looking forward to a new experience.

But the second they picked up the menus, they unconsciously set about transforming the meal into a French meal. They ordered not spring rolls but hors d'œuvres and they insisted on discussing and picking a wine that went with the main course. They were not disappointed but pitying when they learned that the restaurant had no cheese course to offer and stunned when they learned that coffee was unavailable said, with a tone of charity, "Oh well, we can have coffee elsewhere".

My friend was offended but I loved it. They weren't imperialistic about it. They didn't see themselves as imposing any judgments on anyone. They simply had this whole rich culture to draw on so they drew on it.

And the thing is they weren't cultured types. They were computer geeks here to talk about microchips. Think of it this way, you wouldn't be surprised if you met a computer geek from Cupertino who could was deeply interested in New Orleans cuisine but you'd treat him as unusual just as you would treat a computer geek who was deeply interested in new Orleans jazz. If, however, you found yourself treating a group of computer geeks at a conference who were a only together because they all happened to come from the United States, you'd be more than a little shock if they all shared the same deep interest and knowledge of a particular cuisine.

That is what France has that most other countries don't. And even other countries that have it, say Ireland, for example, don't have the depth and richness that France has.

That is a big part of the reason people from outside France read Proust. You get a detailed look at French culture at two levels. You get to see the aristocracy who were living their last gasp and you get a detailed look of the rising middle class who were seeking something like what the aristocracy had but also managing to create something new in the process.

You see this last in two women—Mme Verdurin and Odette de Crecy. The first is a member of the upper middle class, possessed of as much wealth but not the status of the aristocracy, who maintains a salon. Odette, on the other hand, is a courtesan who aspires to join the same social class as her lovers. And both largely succeed in their ambitions. (One of the biggest mistakes you can make in reading Proust is to disdain or hate particular characters, you must love them all to get this work.)

In order to show us their lives and their rise correctly, Proust must, and does, give us a highly detailed picture of their culture. As I've said before, it's a huge mistake to read Proust for his psychology. It has its moments to be sure, but, to paraphrase what Rossini said about Wagner, Proust's explorations of psychology does have some wonderful moments but it also has some terrible half hours. No, it is the outside account, the la belle epoque as you will find it nowhere else, that is the primary reason for reading this.