The cruelty of the Guermantes and the purpose of In Search of Lost Time

Obviously, no, Proust's The Guermantes Way, volume 3 of In Search of Lost Time is not a book for all tastes but there's no doubt that for many (of us) it ranks among the greatest works of literature - it demands a close and careful reading, and rewards those who meet it on those terms. On the surface, it's about a young man enamored of an older woman, pursues her inhopes of being invited to her "salon," and on at last gaining access is disappointed and disillusioned - not much plot, in other words, probably about 80 percent of the 600-page work devoted to two "salon" scenes. But I found myself marking literally hundreds of passages as great examples of wit, insight, perception, or curious phrasing and style. Some are even read-aloud funny (as proven when I read them aloud). The wit is Proust's - not the characters'. The famous "wit of the Guermantes," which Proust alludes to many times, is really more of a biting sarcasm, quips at the expense of others. I suppose if Mme de Guermantes were a real person who truly spoke in her extended passages we'd find her witty, the "life of the party," - but I think part of Proust's point is that hers is a contextual wit. Removed from the salon, from her salon, it's mostly cutting and nasty. Lest there be any doubt, by the end of the long novel, I think Proust might have called it the "cruelty of the Guermantes" - the last scene is the one in which M. and Mme G are completely oblivious of their "good friend," Swann, who tells the that he is a dying man - they don't listen to him at all, push him away, tell him they're in a huge rush and can't speak to him, until M. realizes Mme has put on the wrong shoes and sends a servant off to get "the red shoes of the Duchess" - suddenly, for this trivia, they have plenty of time. These are horrible, nasty people - and there would be no point in reading about them except that Proust uses them to come to terms with not only his society - easy enough to skewer - but with his life. We understand, gradually, that the purpose of this novel is to remove himself from society in order to re-create and re-examine his entire life through words, through art - a massive project, but not different in kind from what each of us does every day: reliving, retelling evens in words, re-fashioning our lives into stories, anecdotes, tiny little narratives - it's how we know the world. Think of any day in your past life, think of anyone you know, even intimately, and I am sure that your "memory" of these people or events will occur to you as a series of images, which, if you recall them, you will shape into a little story. This in essence is what Proust is getting at - the very nature of consciousness.