On this, my 55th birthday, a milestone in which I become eligible for the senior discount at the neighborhood grocery, I am launching The Proust Project, an ambitious personal program to go from beginning French to reading fluency in one year. In middle age, no less.
One year from today, I will begin reading – en français – Swann’s Way, or Du côté de chez Swann, by Marcel Proust.
I have vowed to read Proust every year since 1985, when I was a junior at Duke University and my roommate won a place in a very famous year-long course on Proust and subsequently skipped nearly every class. It so incensed me that I pledged to read those novels in her stead! Yet 34 years have passed and Proust remains unknown to me, except for his fondness for madeleines.
I’m in good company. One of my favorite weekly reads is the New York Times’ By the Book interview with writers. For many years, among the standard questions was “What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet?” It seemed to me the most common response was Proust (including from such luminaries as Hillary Clinton and retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens).
Anyway, having already kicked the can down the road for more than three decades, I’ve decided one more year can’t hurt, and it gives me time to combine it with my goal of learning French.
Publishing this plan on my website forces accountability. I’m depending on friends asking me frequently, “So how is the Proust Project going?” And friends who speak French will ask, and expect to be answered, in that lovely tongue.
To keep myself motivated, I’ve planned a year-long cultural and culinary tour de France from chez moi, my home in Michigan. For each region of France, I’ll cook at least one regional specialty, pair it with a typical beverage and finish the meal with a cheese from the locale (assuming I can get one). My daughter, the linguist, promises to contribute a language component. And we’ll include regional history, famous landmarks, and literature/film/art of each region.
We will begin where many English speakers traditionally have first touched French soil, in Nord-Pas de Calais.
If you’d like to follow along, with recipes and recommendations, check back here and on our YouTube channel on Mondays. À bientôt!
