Alain de Botton

The father of the Proust family was an esteemed professor of hygiene
who wrote countless scholarly papers and traveled widely. The son
also became a doctor, financially successful and fond of sports, so
robust that he had once been run over by a cart and horses and lived.
Then there was the other son, a sickly aesthete who lived off his parents'
money and could not even keep a simple library job. In his healthier
times, he was to be seen at the Paris opera or giving dinner parties.
Only after both his parents had died was he ready to make something
of his life, and he was in his mid-30s by the time he settled down to
write; it would then be years before he would receive any recognition.
As Alain de Botton relates it, Proust expressed to his maid what must
have seemed a forlorn hope: "Ah, Celeste, if I could be sure of doing as
much with my books my father did for the sick."
Given the fame that we know would later greet Proust, it seems a
little ridiculous to have held such low hopes. Yet in de Botton's eyes,
the remark encapsulates the meaning of Proust's work: The writer did
honestly seek to emulate his father's success, and also as a healer. De
Botton's book goes beyond the literary merits of a masterpiece (In
Search of Lost Time) to unveil its therapeutic power, making us see that
it was by this that Proust would ultimately have wanted to be judged.
The purposes of pain
Proust was interested in putting suffering to good use; for him this was
"the whole art of living." Noting that philosophers have traditionally
been in pursuit of theories of happiness, in Proust de Botton finds a
substantially more useful form of life advice: Instead of seeking to
make our lives a sort of Disneyland of fulfilled aspirations, it is better
to find ways in which we can be "productively unhappy."
Suffering always seems to surprise us, when maybe it shouldn't.
Many of the characters in Proust's writing are bad sufferers, employingdefense mechanisms against facing up to their "issues," making them
insufferable people. The good sufferer sees the bitter logic in what he
or she is feeling, knowing that matters inevitably lose their emotional
intensity, leaving residues of wisdom.
The art of living, as Proust understood it, is not about a great
lifestyle, but about locating worth and meaning despite your circumstances,
rather than through them. Seen this way, productive unhappiness
turns out to be quite a good way to approach life.
How to win friends… and still keep your place in history
Proust had lots of friends who loved him dearly and several wrote
glowing memoirs of their time with him. De Botton shows us just how
the writer came to enjoy such veneration.
First of all, he did not believe that friendship was an opportunity to
bare one's soul to another, even if the other person was interested in
hearing what you had to say. Indeed, to keep a friend and to get the
most out of their personality, you had to let them do the talking. Proust
was loved perhaps because he was such a great listener. Secondly, he
believed that friendships should be light-hearted and non-intellectual—
conversation was an opportunity to amuse the other person and to
make them feel special.
All of this might be taken direct from the Dale Carnegie book of
interpersonal relations, and in fact Proust's friends invented the verb
Proustify, to give abundant attention and praise. However, there is
more to it than this: De Botton insightfully shows how Proust deliberately
excised "truth" and the intellect from the friendship equation,
allowing him to express his laser-like powers of analysis in his writing—
thereby keeping his friends.
The message we can glean from this master of friendship is to have
lower expectations of your friends, and generally not to depend on
other people for your happiness. Get a grip on your deeper passion or
love (which is usually not a person but a thing that cries out for fulfillment
or pursuit—in Proust's case, writing) and live according to it. The
satisfaction this gives will put friendship and other relationships into
their proper perspective.How to get a life (that is not like anyone else's)
If the doctor told you that you had a week to live, the world would
seem wonderful, a miracle. How is it that in the normal state of affairs
we can so easily get depressed, bored, or completely fed up? Proust
believed that these latter feelings, while quite normal, were a mistake in
perception. The narrator in his book goes to the seaside hoping to see a
stormy, dark coastline with wailing seabirds, but instead finds a regular
resort town. Nevertheless his painter friend Elstir, by pointing out simple
things like the whiteness of a woman's cotton dress in the sun, is
able to retrieve the narrator's appreciation of beauty.
For many, the word "Proust" conjures up images of untouchable
intellectuality and refinement, writing that can take us back to a
Parisian golden age when life was somehow grander and richer. De Botton
tells us how wrong this view is. The irony of his homage to Proust
is that it contains a warning not to love the French writer too much.
We should not bother to visit the town of Combray where he spent
some of his childhood summers, trying to see what he saw; rather, the
object of reading him is to come away with a heightened sense of perception
that can be employed wherever you are and in whatever time
you live. To wish we had lived in Proust's time, with its madeleine
cakes, horse carriages, and banquets, is a crime committed against the
possibilities of the present.
Time
At one level, Proust's work is about appreciating the moment, the tiny
details of life. He wanted us to feel the luxury of time, to revel in it,
and his writing style famously reflects his obsession. If a sentence could
be understood to be a moment in words, he sought to prolong those
moments; if something was worth writing about, it was worth doing so
at length. De Botton refers us to one sentence that in standard font
would run to four meters, or stretch around a bottle of wine 17 times!
At another level, Proust lived in quiet disregard of time. A la
recherche du temps perdu has often been translated as Remembrance of
Things Past, and indeed a popular picture of Proust's work is that it is
a resurrection of the forgotten for sentiment's sake. The impression that
De Botton gives us, however, is that this masterpiece is not "about" the
past at all; rather, like all great novelists Proust used the past to
describe a vision of how things are separate to time. Events are in thepast, but the deep understanding of people, of love, and of life that
Proust provides is not tied to time. De Botton was inspired to write his
book because of this very timelessness in Proust.
Final comments
Does the seven-volume, million-and-a-quarter-word In Search of Lost
Time, considered by many the greatest book of the twentieth century,
really have anything to do with self-help? The suggestion that it does
has enraged some Proust devotees, because Art is not to be cheapened
by suggestions of practical therapeutic value. Though the book has an
élitist and cultured image, Proust once said that the readers he sought
were "the sort of people who buy a badly printed volume before catching
a train." As De Botton has it, Proust did not write so that he could
receive recognition as a literary maestro, but for his own redemption. If
it had helped him, maybe it would help others.
How Proust Can Change Your Life is not merely a homage to a person
but a tribute—even if intended ironically—to the ethic of self-help.
Its great service is to have given those people who may never actually
read the French genius his essential philosophy. A Proustian understanding
of life, in all its complexity and subtlety, is now an option for
readers who may never have bothered to look beyond the clear-cut,
rosy answers of a Stephen Covey or an Anthony Robbins.
De Botton, and through him Proust, will have succeeded if the people
who might normally read books about "time management" can be
moved to consider the nature of time itself.