What's the perfect book to read during the Christmas holidays?
I've just returned from a week spent with my family, during which I enjoyed what might be the most rewarding seasonal reading experience I've ever had. Even when you are the one dishing up Christmas dinner (as I was this year) there is a lot of free time over the holiday period, and reading is a tempting way to fill it. Unfortunately, not all books are suited to the fragmented reading experience you inevitably have when the house is full of people; and although there's always the option of locking yourself away in your bedroom, that seems more than a touch curmudgeonly at Christmas.
A book with a gripping plot can prove too distracting - my weakness for crime novels has in previous years resulted in a sort of temporary deafness, where I am impervious to all attempts to engage me in conversation. I find that I have the opposite problem with non-fiction. One year I spent a good few days reading and re-reading the same chapter of a history of the Middle East, completely incapable of absorbing it until I was back in my own home. The option of filling the time with one of those books that only seems to appear in Christmas stockings - like Schott's Miscellany - is too sad to contemplate.
The perfect solution was presented in the shape of Eric Karpeles's , a guide to the painters and paintings referred to in (I prefer the earlier translation of the title to In Search of Lost Time, which sounds like something to do with Valley of the Dinosaurs). Marcel Proust's novel is a brilliant portrait of a young man developing into a writer, a sort of symphony of experiences and impressions that avoids earnestness by mixing the vulgar and prosaic with the sublime. Painting fascinated Proust, and there are (according to Eric Karpeles) over 300 references to pictures in the novel. Not all of these can be illustrated, because they are fictitious. The character and work of the painter Elstir is drawn from a number of artists including Moreau, Degas, Turner, Monet and Whistler, and the narrator's evolving relationship with this imagined artist is typical of Proust's use of art in the book. Sometimes the image is referenced straightforwardly; sometimes the allusion is playful or ironic. Each of the 200 or so illustrations in Paintings in Proust is accompanied by the relevant extract from the novel with a few lines by Karpeles to place it in the context of the narrative as a whole. In David Carrier questions the lack of analysis of how each painting relates to the text, suggesting that Karpeles's is "an oddly mechanical" response. This seems unfair, not only does the introductory essay makes it clear that Karpeles is alive to Proust's nuanced use of imagery, I actually welcome the chance to see the pictures without their being overlaid with interpretation. The New York Times website has a of three of the paintings from the book if you'd like a taster.
It was a very happy Christmas then that saw me dipping into passages from Remembrance of Things Past - both able to enjoy my book and the company of those around me. Did anyone else have a particularly enjoyable read over the holidays?
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