Teaser Augustus: Deconstructing the "wit of the Guermantes"

Help me out if I'm wrong here but isn't part of the point of what Proust calls "the wit of the Guermantes" that they (in particular, Mme, or the Duchesse de, Guermantes are not especially witty at all? It may be that in their aristocratic, secular, insular, Parisian fashion the quips and bon mots of the Duchesse are so subtle to elude those reading Proust - maybe, but I doubt it. I think what Proust is doing is giveing us an example of social pressures, of the "emperor has no clothes" phenomenon - it's not that she's such a wit as that everyone feels or believes that have to accept her as a wit or else they will look stupid and boorish. If they don't "get it,"they'll laugh, anyway: No soap, radio. It's Proust's further skewering of the class and set that he, for some time, was completely taken with and taken by. To give an example: Proust spends many pages recounting one of her famous quips (in the weird fashion they have worked out, her husband begs her to tell her joke, she won't, he begins, she steps in and finishes - a well-timed act, like circus seals). In this case, someone had said that her uncle Palamede de Charlus - a curmugeon and completely wierd and self-centered man - is a "teaser" to which the Duchesse added: Yes, Teaser Augustus. Ha ha! Laughing out loud, right? I mean, obviously Proust knows this is not especially funny - just a simple, pointless pun. Yet he tells us that people talk about this quip for days. Proust himself writes many hilarious lines - I mark them throughout The Guermantes Way, and though I rarely laugh out loud while reading some of these make me come close to doing so. What's the difference between a stupid pun and a truly witticism? I'll make one up to give you an example: It would have been truly wit had people been discussing Charlus, and had someone said he's a very gruff man (true) and another said, no, I find him quite mild. And then if the Duchesse said: Yes, Oscar Mild. That's witty - because it would be subtly a dig and a revelation about Charlus: we know (and will know much more later) that he's a homosexual and a sadist - so an "Oscar Mild" quip would be a big wink to those "in the know" and would be a phrase much repeated. Proust obviously knows how to write witty dialog (not that The Guermantes Way is anything like Modern Family, say), but with the wit of Guremantes he chose, I believe, deliberately not to do so in order to make a bigger point about this culture.

Coming in tomorrow's post: the Elliot's Reading Top 100 Books