These notes cover to p. 204 of Volume IV, Sodom and Gomorrah, in the Modern Library edition (Moncrieff / Kilmartin / Enright).
We had our meeting last night, yes.
And we had a dinner party!
Everybody brought something -- salad, potatoes, bread, cheeses, paté, quiche, soup, vegetables, chocolate pudding, madeleines, wine...
At about 9 pm we sat down at a long table in the living room, all 20 of us, to begin our dinner and our discussion.
1. Françoise's Presentation on Monsieur Proust's Library
Françoise shared with us some thoughts on a recently published book about the various literary influences on Marcel Proust (see her full notes below). She mentioned that, above all, Proust considered himself in great debt to Dostoevsky (he particularly admired how Dostoevsky's characters surprise the reader by revealing hidden traits or otherwise changing over time). Françoise also mentioned Proust's debt to Balzac (the Baron de Charlus, for example, is inspired by Balzac's Vautrin); to the poet Baudelaire (the mixing of the senses and the powers of association); and to Racine (they share, among other things, an obsession with l'amour-maladie). Florence asked about Oscar Wilde, wondering if the work of this aesthete and homosexual had crossed the English Channel to stir Proust. But Françoise said that Wilde had not been mentioned as a significant influence in Proust's Library.
2. The Discussion
Drinking, as I was, more red wine than usual, my memory is not very clear as to what we discussed.
Some of the themes that have lingered with me, a day later:
The Duck
A number of guests commented on the deliciousness of Renée's "wild duck with cranberries" main course, the recipé for which she had found in Dining with Proust (under the title "The Bachelor Dinner"). "This duck did not die in vain!" Yann pronounced.
Us vs. Them
We returned to a discussion of the status-games and social anxieties demonstrated by so many of the characters in Proust's novel.
At one point we asked Jennifer's question again (Jennifer, your presence was felt):
Is this succession of parties even relevant to us?
Can we recognize ourselves in these people?
Renée made the case that their basic humanity, so well observed by Proust, and the fragility of the friendships they form, are common threads with our experience.
So, if we are like them, someone asked, then are we just as status-conscious as they are, but less aware of it?
Yann insisted that, at least among the super-wealthy in our contemporary world, status still plays an important role. He told a funny story about sitting next to one of his business partners, who admitted that the size of the Saudi Arabian and other Middle-Eastern Emirs' private jets at Heathrow airport always made him feel "humble" (as they wheeled down the runway in this man's own private jet!). But Yann agreed that this kind of display of opulence is restricted to a very small percentage of people. Instead, he suggested that in the Bay Area we base our status claims on "intellectual capital."
Alex suggested that, unlike in France, it is a brute question of money here. Someone else wondered: Or is it the prestige of your career track and your professional achievements?
Some of us insisted that, to the contrary, people we know are simply not as status-conscious as turn-of-the-century Parisian aristocrats appear to have been -- on the basis of Proust's descriptions at least. Sure, status is still a factor, but it is much farther down on our list of concerns.
Florence remarked that she was deeply uninterested in these questions about Berkeley and our contemporary values. She wanted to return to a discussion of Proust.
Not quite yet, though--
It was a dinner party, after all, as well as a meeting!
I posed a connected question of the group before we returned to the novel:
If we agree that, here in the Bay Area, we are only minimally concerned with status... And if, as far as I can tell, we do not engage in affairs and philandering and frequent sexual conquests... In other words, if neither of these, the two engines powering the social world of the Guermantes, are available to us anymore -- then what does motivate us?
Marie-José rejected the premise that our friends and colleagues in the Bay Area are not engaging in affairs and philandering and sexual conquests -- "poly-amory," she called it. (You must have wilder friends than we do, Marie-José!)
Florence, grudgingly getting dragged back into the conversation about contemporary life, granted the premise that we are not as concerned with status and sex as the Narrator's acquaintances. She said that we are motivated by a different urge, an urge for "complexity."
Renée returned to her theme that we, like the characters of In Search of Lost Time, are motivated by concern, empathy, love. We are more similar than different, but in a good way.
I was almost swayed by Renée's beautiful vision... In fact, I think I was in the moment. But upon reflection a day later, sadly, I would say that I think the primary motivator for our time, based on what I see, is consumerism. People of all social and economic stations today are interested mostly in their purchases, whether it be a new antique bronze faucet in their kitchen, a power tool, an app, a dance class, a membership, a cellphone, the latest laptop, a blue Prius, a week at a wooded ski cabin in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, or season tickets to the SF Giants. This is what you hear about in small-talk... Subtext: I have this. I enjoy this. I provide this. How about you?
I wish Renée and Florence were right that the status-games and pretensions of high society in Paris in the early 20th century have been replaced by a culture of concern, empathy, nuance, respect for complexity in the early 21st century. But instead -- please convince me that I am wrong! -- I think the Baron de Charlus' twin gods of Status and Sex have been replaced by... their mild-mannered cousins, Taste and Comfort. Just consider the dull, shiny, technology surrounding us in our homes and cars, and the (mostly) sexless pleasures that define privileged lives in the year 2013. With few exceptions (Burning Man? hiking in Yosemite?), crass consumerism is the only game in town.
A Close Reading of the Dirty Bits
Heeding Florence's wish for us to return to the novel, I stood abruptly at one point to give a close reading of the passages covering the sexual acts that occur between Jupien and M. de Charlus.
Somebody had to do it.
Intrigued by the Narrator's Navy SEAL-like efforts to view the encounter, I explained, I had found myself, as I was reading, wanting to know exactly what was taking place between these two men.
Upon wrapping up my textual analysis, I was able to determine that there were at least two, and possibly three, sex acts that occur.
The first, quite unmistakably, is intercourse, with anal penetration. Or, as the Narrator describes it:
"For from what I heard at first in Jupien's quarters, which was only a series of inarticulate sounds, I imagine that few words had been exchanged. It is true that these sounds were so violent that, if they had not always been taken up an octave higher by a parallel plain, I might have thought that one person was slitting another's throat within a few feet of me... I concluded from this later on that there is another thing as noisy as pain, namely pleasure, especially when there is added to it -- in the absence of the fear of pregnancy which could not be the case here... an immediate concern about cleanliness" (SG, 12).
Minutes later, after having offended Jupien by inquiring whether there might be other available men in the neighborhood (..."the chemist opposite, he has a very nice cyclist who delivers his medicines..."), M. de Charlus has to make good again. With this aim in mind, he whispers something in Jupien's ear something which pleases him very much.
This exchange of words initiates the second sex act between these two men. But what is it, exactly?
Jupien studies "the Baron's face, plump and flushed beneath his gray hair," and remarks something to the effect of what a firecracker you've got! (The Moncrieff translation is "What a big bum you have!" but our French readers straightened us out on this.) So is this an offer for a blow job? If so, who is giving and who receiving? Or, if I may, whose firecracker?
After some digressions, the Narrator returns us some 25 pages later to the same scene. There we find our "retired tailor," Jupien, "quivering in ecstasy before a stoutish man of fifty" (SG, 38). Here, then, as I told our group, I was convinced that the Baron de Charlus had, as we say in English, gone down on Jupien -- an interesting reversal of their usual social positions. But then, turning the page, there is a most remarkable additional descriptive passage:
"As for M. de Charlus's part in the transaction, I noticed later on that there were for him various kinds of conjunction, some of which, by their multiplicity, their scarcely visible instantaneousness, and above all the absence of contact between the two actors, recalled still more forcibly those flowers that in a garden are fertilised by the pollen of a neighboring flower which they may never touch" (SG, 39).
Now we were getting into fetishistic territory... a complete "absence of contact"? What is going on? To make it even more vivid, the Narrator goes on with one of his extended metaphors:
"By a simple use of words the conjunction was effected, as simply as it can be among the infusoria. Sometimes... the relief was effected by a violent diatribe which the Baron flung in his visitor's face, just as certain flowers, by means of a hidden spring, spray from a distance the disconcerted but unconsciously collaborating insect" (SG, 39-40).
Don helpfully explained that the term of art for this act, in pornography, is a "facial." (Thank you, Don!)
My conclusion? Jupien and Charlus engage in: 1) anal intercourse (with presumably, Charlus on top) 2) a blow job performed by Charlus, leaving Jupien "quivering in ecstasy," and finally, 3) a "facial" (is that really a term, Don, or were you just having fun with us?) delivered by Charlus to Jupien, at some distance.
Having delivered my lecture I sat down, feeling very learned.
Mostly people laughed; Jeff seemed disturbed. Though, notably, he did not dispute my findings.
3. End of the Evening
At about 11 pm we had to end. What a fun night!
The last surprise of the evening took place at midnight, just as Renée and I were turning off lights and heading upstairs. From down in the basement we heard a shriek (which was quite inexplicable to us, considering that we knew of no one else in the house except our children sleeping in their beds). A hulking figure emerged. Yann. At some point in the evening he had collapsed on the sofa in the basement. He had opened his eyes to find himself in a strange place. Worse, a black cat face loomed over him, its body pressing down on his chest, its eyes round and glowing blue. He screamed in terror. It was only when he fled upstairs and found us in the hallway that he remembered who he was and how he got there. Proust. Dinner. Wine. Duck with cranberries. It all came back. We had a good laugh and sent him on his way home.
Yes, Tom, "facial"—not something I made up. And poor Yann, disoriented and disconcerted by a creature not from Proust but Poe.
Posted by: don menn | 04/26/2013 at 03:18 PM