Proust

[Anonymous No.22077720]

Why read Proust in 2023, /lit/? Is there any point to it?
https://blog.oup.com/2023/03/why-read-proust-in-2023/

[Anonymous No.22077729]

>>22077720
There was more authoritarianism, racism, and xenophobia, and female and non-hetero discrimination a century ago when it was written than there is now so in not sure how you could even bring those things up.

[Anonymous No.22077733]

>>22077720
Only read first sentence but the world was always on fire. Proust literally wrote while world war one was raging. In contrast you could make the argument that numerically today much less people die of violence or starvation or at child birth. But the notion itslef is quite silly.

[Anonymous No.22077739]

>>22077720
Proust uses the N-word more times in Swanns Way alone than Celine does in both Journey and Death on Credit.

[Anonymous No.22077742]

>>22077739
Purchased, thanks.

[Anonymous No.22077814]

>>22077739
do you mean nigger? what's with newfags saying 'n-word' recently

[Anonymous No.22077829]

>>22077729
That was my first thought as well; especially the outlandish claim that "women's rights are under threat" when of course women in western nations are on equal footing and the small percentage of questionable treatment they suffer goes hand in hand with the superior, often unfair, rights the state grants them in all matters of child raising.

[Anonymous No.22077839]

>>22077720

[Anonymous No.22077857]

>>22077739
Does he? I don't recall it at all.

[Anonymous No.22077860]

>>22077839
From OP's article

> (Is it possible the heterosexual narrator fully understands the world of same-sex desire? I guess. Is it likely? Not so much.)

[Anonymous No.22077867]

>>22077720
That's not a bad article. It's in defense of reading Proust btw despite the dumb OP comment.

[Anonymous No.22077871]

>>22077720
>literature professor trying to sell art to a philistine generation of unhinged and deranged swine
Yes, it is undignifed, it is revolting, but I do have a small amount of empathy with this poor fool. If he tried what he surely believes, to say that one should read Proust solely beause it is a work of beauty, his students, consisting a large part of chimps put there by affirmative action, would surely tear him to pieces and he would be immediately fired - it is already bad enough that he is a white male, for him to also have white male sensibility, namely caring about beauty and the wonders of the world, instead of caring about the ressentiment of the world-historical eternal losers, that would be much too much for him to hold a position in the current climate.

[Anonymous No.22077880]

>>22077871
Do you really have nothing better to do but spew nonsense? LGBTQ is fully relevant to Proust.

[Anonymous No.22077886]

>>22077880
All viewing of art through a political lense is midwit hackery.

[Anonymous No.22077891]

>>22077886
But as the article states, there are political statements within the text itself.

[Anonymous No.22077896]

>>22077857
Yeah my bad, its actually in Within a Budding Grove

[Anonymous No.22077898]

>>22077891
So? What is your point?
Engaging with art solely for the purpose of weaponizing it for contemporary politics is deranged. Not only does it devalue and limit the artwork, it likewise is a terrible way to engage in contemporary politics.
It's just cowardice. It is either not really believing or not daring to say out loud that art is worthwhile for its own sake, but has to be sold on some criterion of relevance for the contemporary state of affairs. It is another symptom of a poisoned utilitarian spirit that is very common today.
As for your interjection, you are very right - I do have better things to do. The sun is shining, the trees in the botanical garden are blooming, and I am going to go read - for its own sake. I've said my piece and have nothing more to add.

[Anonymous No.22077908]

>>22077898
Proust's characters relate issues which the writer wishes you to think about or which to apply to your life no matter the timeframe you live in. He wouldn't have included mentions of those issues to leave them in the past or to handwave it as characters in the story. Proust wouldn't include the anti-semitic grandpa or the Baron de Charlus if he were not intending to comment on the ideas of antisemitism or LGBT themselves. You have a reductive view of literature.

[Anonymous No.22077920]

>The world is literally on fire

Stopped right there and I will not go beyond that.

[Anonymous No.22077923]

>>22077920
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g

[Anonymous No.22078212]

>>22077923
that song is real bad

[Anonymous No.22078216]

>>22077720
Stopped reading after the first five words. I have read Proust thrice and will read him more in the future, but not for the reasons this faggot “argues” and certainly has not read more than Volume 1

[Anonymous No.22078246]

>>22078212
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqMOCOe4zuw

[Anonymous No.22078257]

oh no...whatever will happen if people don't read this gay libtarded bourgeois jew? Will the sky fall on our heads?

[Anonymous No.22078258]

>>22077739
Yes, but calling someone a "nègre" in French is closer to the English "Negro" than "nigger".

[Anonymous No.22078330]

>>22077720
Lol this guy teaches literature at Stanford.

Lmao. Are literature departments just a complete joke across the US?

[Anonymous No.22078361]

This is probably one of the worst articles on Proust I have ever read.
I wondering if he has actually read Proust. He allegedly wrote a book on Proust and based off the title alone — it basically regurgitates everything that already has been written and he probably just uses the same quotes those secondary and tertiary texts academics are wont to do

[Anonymous No.22078572]

>>22078361
It tries to tie the political and social issues of Proust's time which he discusses in the book with modern social ills. I don't see why everyone is up in arms about a few paragraph article.

[Anonymous No.22078599]

>>22078572
Because 90% of the article is boring platitudes that could be found on Wikipedia. He has a superficial view of the “political and social issues” of Proust’s time, and only superficially talks about “modern social ills.” There’s not a single coherent thought flowing through the article. It jumps around trying to capture all the boring, empty, talking points that hook and impress retards like you

[Anonymous No.22078612]

>>22078330
Australia too. Most of Anglosphere. I know Oxbridge pump out these retards like a factory.

[Anonymous No.22078616]

>Well there’s at least *some* politics in Proust’s novel
How are they real people?

[Anonymous No.22078648]

>>22078616
There aren't some. There is a lot.

[Anonymous No.22078652]

>>22078599
Hey, it doesn't "impress" me. It is a boring few paragraph article that is intended to get non-readers into Proust based on how they could relate it to their lives nowadays. I just do not see the reason to get furious over it that you clearly do.

[Anonymous No.22078658]

>>22078652
>furious
Why are normies so fucking retarded at determining whether someone is angry, or is that their default emotion they impose on others as a defense mechanism for their inability to hold a conversation and have, for once, a critical thought?

[Anonymous No.22078661]

>>22078658
"Worst articles on Proust I ever read"

Is that really true or is it just boring?

[Anonymous No.22078664]

>>22078652
Im amazed a brainlet like you can breathe or solve a captcha

[Anonymous No.22078672]

>>22078664
It's a handful of paragraphs in a blog post. What are you expecting? It's the most basic overview of Proust and his themes imaginable.

[Anonymous No.22078681]

>>22078672
It’s hardly even a “basic overview,” retard. Have you actually read it? Probably not since you’re defending this schlock. How about you fuck off, Joshua Landy, and actually read the writer you feel the need to write about.

[Anonymous No.22078691]

>>22078672
It definitely reminded me of same-sex queer sociality discourse
>Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu figures same-sex desire as a minimal form of social connectedness, in which contingency affords a sufficient basis for sociality. In the social worlds that Proust called "Sodome" and "Gomorrhe," relationships and encounters tend to be imagined as products of pure contingency, unaccompanied by the kinds of shared norms or tokens of mutual understanding that might conventionally underwrite a stable community. In accordance with a view of contingency articulated by Niklas Luhmann, however, the very absence of these sustaining structures allows contingency itself to operate in the novel as a precarious form of cohesion. In La Recherche, social contingency is often figured using the trope of contiguity (contingency's etymological cousin), so that mere accidental next-to-ness is enough to create a connection between otherwise unrelated characters. In a novelfascinated by transversal links between seemingly distant social milieux, Proust's representation of same-sex desire functions as a network of shortcuts, conjuring contiguity out of apparent distance. These unapologetically improbable networks register the historical unavailability of more stable social structures, but also illustrate what Leo Bersani calls an "anticommunitarian" model of collective life, which is not organized around the community as a social ideal.
>Keywords: contingency / same-sex desire / Marcel Proust / sociality / social interaction / verisimilitude

[Anonymous No.22078716]

>>22077880
No it’s not. Normal sexually abnormal people do not associate with the pride rainbow cult, which is a satanic inversion of the Lord’s covenant.

[Anonymous No.22078722]

>>22078716
>Lord's covenant

Proust was about the pit fallings in both religion and in social etiquette. Your entire post tells me you don't care about Proust anyways and that you just want outrage.

[Anonymous No.22078730]

>>22078722
Learn to follow a conversation and poster count. You’re communicating with multiple people, retard.

[Anonymous No.22078783]

>>22078681
> Plus, in a way, it reminds us of what we’re fighting for: a world in which we get to think, again, about connection, enchantment, identity, and art.

This sentence is a fine summary of the book even if the next one has a political slant. The article would have been fine if it ended here. The only real issue I have is connecting Proust to people like Tonni Morrison?

[Anonymous No.22078836]

>>22077720
>equating idiots politards getting us into WWI with climate change
>ignoring the parallel with current politards trying to get us into WWIII
fuck this stupid whore in the cunt until she's dead

[Anonymous No.22078851]

>>22078599
>He has a superficial view of the “political and social issues” of Proust’s time,
>He
had to double check the name, because from the tone it sounded like a stupid, histrionic woman. god I hate what 'men' have become

[Anonymous No.22078980]

I forget the exact thread, but some anon wrote a hilarious, blistering attack on Proust while admitting first two volumes are great. I was laughing so hard my sides hurt. Wish I'd saved it.

[Anonymous No.22079029]

>>22078691
>all this huffing and puffing and squeezing out 5-dollar-words like an octogenarian braving through a cheat day on his enema schedule
>just to say that wriggly tendrils of pathological faggotry transcend social strata and covertly pervade every inch of society at large
Holy shit, does this count as actual publication material in humanties in current year?

[Anonymous No.22079036]

Are these people trolling? there are more LGBT rights than any time in human history.

[Anonymous No.22079042]

>>22079029
https://www.unsw.edu.au/staff/john-attridge
>I am a Senior Lecturer in English in the School of the Arts and Media. Most of my research deals with modernist fiction; particular focuses include modernist conceptions of authorship, the relationship between literature and specialization, technological media and the cultural history of trust. My articles have appeared in journals such as ELH, Modernism/modernity, NOVEL and Modern Fiction Studies, as well as in several edited collections. I am co-editor of two collections of essays: Modernist Work: Labor, Aesthetics, and the Work of Art (2019) and Incredible Modernism: Literature, Trust, and Deception (Ashgate, 2013).
Funny thing is, I found he appeared in a book with my old supervisor. I'm glad I left because I get to write what I want now and been published more since living academia.

[Anonymous No.22079049]

>>22079042
Leaving* typo, sorry

[Anonymous No.22079540]

>>22078258
Yeah, there's no negative connotation to it, Montesquieu defended them in The Spirit of Laws while referring to them as nègres

[Anonymous No.22079555]

>>22077739
By "the N-word", do you mean Nigger?

[Anonymous No.22079570]

>>22078722
Are you human? I can enjoy Proust and his work and not fellate every aspect of his beliefs, or mould myself into a clone of him like a conciousless doppelganger.

[Anonymous No.22079684]

>>22079570
Proust’s writing is rapped up in his homosexual identity and his negative opinion of the decaying social values of France at the time.

[Anonymous No.22079707]

>>22077867
>>22077871

What's disgusting and depressing at a glance is how he immediately goes to idpol and moralizing in general, because they can't think any other way about the world. What an awful and limited way to see the world. I understand that he may be trying to sell the young dumb and full of cum undergrads on reading Proust but he's still rutting around in that low, dull discourse which obtains these days.

[Anonymous No.22079790]

>>22079684
>Proust’s writing is rapped up in his homosexual identity
So is yours, but that's hardly a discussion worthy topic in either case.

[Anonymous No.22079828]

>>22077814
they are semenslurping faglords from Twitter and Reddit

you get instabanned on those sites if you write THE FORBIDDEN WORD regardless of context