Proust—what an author, eh? He can be difficult to dig into, and not only because his work can give rise to an infamous snobbery, an ironic response to an author that made much of his undying contempt for snobbery. He can also inspire so much thinking and self-reflection that his winding tome, as many of his critics and readers have already pointed out, can serve as the ultimate self-help book. And it’s great that the book furnishes the reader with this endless supply of advice and wisdom that seems to spring right from the source—but enough about life in general. After reading it myself, I’m also glad to know that…
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A part of the creative artist that tends to be as inseparable from his work as from his personality and character, a certain egotism often comes with the territory. Immersed in the creative process and the material of her work, drawing from the murkiest depths of her mind as a creator, she finds herself face to face with a creative legacy teetering on the ledge of absolute oblivion but with the possibility of some kind of lasting, precarious immortality. It doesn’t matter that this immortality is an illusion; as much a part of life as its counterpart, death concerns the artist, who cannot escape from touching on it. In The…
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One of the common but unspoken phenomena to which humans everywhere are susceptible—especially those that have bottomed out after finding that life has very few stable guideposts for the individual—is that of existential despair, which takes as many forms as there are individuals. But while the forms are many, the phenomenon itself is constant; it underlies its various manifestations. It is not strictly universal, since not everyone experiences it—rather than a common malady such as the measles or the flu, it is a kind of despair available to those that have provoked the hidden foundations of their lives, that have been too curious about what lies beneath routine and the…
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After falling for the stratagem of his compatriots, the French, who have ousted him as traitorous and cowardly, Parolles in the fourth of act of All’s Well That Ends Well makes a provocative self-assessment: “Who knows himself a braggart, / Let him fear this; for it will come to pass / That every braggart shall be found an ass,” after which he says, betraying a resilience to ignominy, “being fooled, by foolery thrive. / There’s place and means for every man alive” (Shakespeare 4.3.323-326, 4.3.328-329). A sycophant epitomizing the crude and the disloyal, Parolles possesses a quality endearing him to the audience and rendering him rascally and likable: honesty. He…
