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Proust positive

A sickly novelist makes the perfect self-help guru in this dry-witted guide to good living

by Scott Morris

HOW PROUST CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE, by Alain de Botton. Pantheon Books, 199 pages, $19.95.

It would seem that there could be nothing so offensive to the Proustian mind as a self-help book. Marcel Proust was, after all, an exacting advocate of the belief that life is unfathomably complex -- too complex, in fact, for even a six-volume masterpiece to do it justice. If he didn't think he'd gotten it right with In Search of Lost Time (commonly known as Remembrance of Things Past), it is difficult to imagine he would care much for a thin book that purports to teach people the secrets of love, suffering, happiness, and friendship. Ah, but what if it were a self-help book titled How Proust Can Change Your Life, and the answers in it were enigmatic, wry, and sometimes not answers at all, but only markers for further investigation?

Alain de Botton has written such a book, deploying an admirably dry-witted prose that is itself a rebuke of the self-help genre and its earnest dispensations. Take, for example, the first sentence of How Proust Can Change Your Life: "There are few things humans are more dedicated to than unhappiness." Or, for that matter, the last: "Even the finest books deserve to be thrown aside." In such style, de Botton assembles Proustian relief for a wide assortment of ailing seekers, from bored lovers and overzealous readers of books to people who do not know how to take their leisure. Along the way, he treats the reader to ample biographical detail.

Providing relief through literary efforts, for instance, turns out to be something of a family tradition: Proust came from a family of book-writing physicians. His father authored Saturnism as Observed in Workers Involved in the Making of Electric Batteries, and his brother penned the minor classic Surgery on the Female Genitalia. "Proust was born into a family where the art of making people feel better was taken very seriously indeed," de Botton assures us.

Which was certainly fortunate for Proust, because he seemed to have a hard time of it. In the chapter "How to Suffer Successfully," Proust is revealed to be a champion sufferer. His asthma attacks were so acute he "never [saw] the sun, breathe[d] any fresh air, or [took] any exercise." He once sneezed 83 times while composing a three-page letter, far from a record for him. Furthermore, he required that his underpants fit him snugly, held high above his waist by a special pin. If these conditions didn't obtain, Proust couldn't sleep. That mattered greatly, as poor Proust was always in bed.

Though self-help gurus are expected to be smiling and unbeatable, de Botton insists that Proust's sickliness is precisely what makes him an excellent guide: "Indeed, it is the very extent of his suffering that we should take to be evidence of the perfect condition for insights." Continuing in a storied French tradition, de Botton produces a Cartesian formulation: "We suffer, therefore we think. . . ." From his bed, de Botton argues, Proust reflected profoundly enough -- and felt deeply enough -- to do the rest of the world some good.

The Proust, as they say, is in the pudding. To take just one example, a principal Proustian point about art and life is that extraordinary experiences can be gained from what may at first seem drearily ordinary. Proust's recipe for good living was to reveal the beauty and intrigue available even in a bourgeois kitchen. To accomplish this, he described the compelling charm of the paintings of Jean-Baptiste Chardin, who painted ordinary things to marvelous effect. Proust explained that once one's sight has been properly sharpened by Chardin, "When you walk around a kitchen, you will say to yourself, this is interesting, this is grand, this is beautiful like Chardin."

If a person can master such a trick, life becomes a delight; and as de Botton demonstrates, Proust was full of such tricks. The ability to appreciate life and landscapes, friends and sweethearts, with an artist's careful and tender regard for detail, lies at the heart of the way Proust might change a life.

Of course, de Botton acknowledges that not all of us emerge from Proust feeling better about ourselves. Virginia Woolf became so painfully awed after reading Proust that she concluded, "Well -- what remains to be written after that?" Later, in a diary entry, she turned grim: "Take up Proust after dinner and put him down. . . . It makes me suicidal. Nothing seems left to do."

Yet another way Proust can change one's life. Bon appétit.

Scott Morris is a writer living in Jackson, Mississippi.