"One wonders if the headaches of apartment living might even have inspired him, as a worthy enemy might goad one to action."
Marcel Proust is a literary giant whose shadow is as long as his record-setting output. (Guinness claims À la recherche du temps perdu is the heftiest novel ever, which it may or may not be, but after 3,000 pages who's up for arguing?). With its influence as extensive as its word count — Conrad, Woolf, Benjamin, and writers of equal stature proclaimed it the most important novel of the twentieth century — no doubt its own verbiage is now exceeded by that of its exegeses. No need to add more to that category, thank you. So a newly discovered cache of letters, as slender as Proust's great creation is fat, gives occasion not to resubmit Proust's talent to the artistic calipers for yet another measurement, but to discuss the writer's need for quiet.Swann's Way, and author of Break It Down and Can't and Won't ) is herself originator and master practitioner. Richer still, they make a catalog of the peculiar physical conditions a writer requires in order to write in the first place. Neuropsychologia in 2015. Haunt online forums devoted to the disorder, and the same complaints turn up again and again: sporadic concussive sounds incite annoyance even unto rage. It might be the person you love most in the world, but when he sucks his teeth, crinkles the chips bag, or noodles on his harmonica, you want to murder him . You don't. Instead, you can't write.7 o'clock in the morning above my head, in the room immediately above my bedroom . . . that I have no strength to write and have had to give up going away," Proust complains — here forced to a directness he otherwise avoids — to a woman he has never met though they live at the same address. Usually he is oblique, backhanded, or delivers his pleas for quiet with flowers both actual and literary. He expresses sorrow for some recent trouble of Madame's by writing, "I would like even more not to ask you for this silence." He tries yet another tack by enquiring if he causes any similar discomfort to her; of course he knows he doesn't. "I also wonder if the voice of my housekeeper, very sharp, does not rise to you. She stays with me very late and does not make any noise when she moves about. But if her voice could be heard, I implore you to tell me."Daily Rituals: How Artists Work — only mind noise that's sporadic or concussive. "What bothers me is never continuous noise, even loud noise, if it is not struck, " Proust explains for the second time. Any writer who can't put down two words in succession while someone is practicing drums or preparing a meal in the kitchen but easily enters a state of flow against the steady background hum of a café or bar understands.avant la lettre: imbued with intensity and imperative disclosure, despite their never meeting (or because of it). Their letters arrived from two flights of stairs away by way of a distant server — I mean post office.Melissa Holbrook Pierson is the author of three works of nonfiction: The erfect Vehicle, Dark Horses and Black Beauties, and The Place You Love Is Gone, all from Norton. She is writing a book on B. F. Skinner and the ethics of dog training.
Reviewer: Melissa Holbrook Pierson
The Barnes & Noble Review
02/27/2017
"Like the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the caves of Qumran... twenty-six of Proust's letters to his upstairs neighbor, written over a decade during the composition of In Search of Lost Time , will delight any Proustian and will tide the faithful over until new relics come to light."
"Proust whining rhapsodically about the sounds of frolicking children on the other side of his bedroom wall, as translated by Lydia Davis — what’s not to love here?"
HTMLGiant - Evan Lavender-Smith
"Entertaining."
Nonfiction: 'Letters to His Neighbor,' by Marcel Proust - Star Tribune - Kevin Canfield
"Letters to His Neighbor , brilliantly translated by Lydia Davis, is inadvertently hilarious in hyper-genteel poise; we see Proust at his most desperate, charming to the extreme, an effect no doubt amplified by Davis’s elegant prose."
"Literary people know that at the sentence level and the word level Lydia Davis is the best there is."
Bookworm - Michael Silverblatt
"In true Proustian fashion, the prose is winding, musing on everything from the properties of imagination."
The Paris Review - Caitlin Youngquist
"One wonders if the headaches of apartment living might even have inspired him, as a worthy enemy might goad one to action."
"If you have suffered from noisy neighbours, you will sympathize with Marcel Proust."
The Times Literary Supplement
"Thoughtfully curated in English by New Directions with a scholarly and rigorous afterword by translator Lydia Davis, the letters are inflected by fine observations and moments of deep empathy. They are suffused with the intimate textures of daily life—flowers and fragrance—and allow us an insight into the larger social context of the time, with reports of the wounded returning from war. Thematically, they are often concerned with art, poetry, and ruins. As a collection, they obliquely chart the passing of seasons as well as the publication history of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time ."
Saba Ahmed reviews Letters to His Neighbor by Marcel Proust - Asymptote - Saba Ahmed
"A collection of letters to the neighbours about noise would seem unpromising material for a book, unless they were written by Marcel Proust, who was so sweet, kind, funny and charming that his letters of complaint, written between 1909 and 1919 to Marie Williams and her husband, are a delightful surprise."
"Proust elevated grumbling to an art."
The Art of Complaining About Noise - City Lab - Jessica Leigh Hester
"Amusing."
"I imagine someone discovering these letters and wondering where to put them—too quirky, too crazy, too minor, too marginal. But, as we all know, it’s the minor and marginal that are often the most interesting. And here the marginalia—the addenda and notes—are as essential as the letters. The foreword by Proust scholar Jean-Yves Tadié and the afterword by celebrated French translator Lydia Davis serve as codes to these letters, through which we catch a glimpse of the writer’s idiosyncratic domestic life..."
Letters To His Neighbor - 4Columns - Jeanine Herman
"A sensitive and direct translation. Lydia Davis does us a great service in bringing back Proust."
2017-04-18
