Can Proust Compete with Larsson? Part One

The telephone was not so commonly used as it is today...I found it too slow for my liking, with its abrupt transformations, this admirable magic that needs only  a few seconds to bring before us, unseen but present, the person to whom we wish to speak...suddenly transported hundreds of miles (he and all the surroundings in which he remains immersed) to within reach of our hearing, at a particular moment dictated by our whim. And we are like the character in the fairy tale at whose wish an enchantress conjures up, in a supernatural light, his grandmother or his betrothed as they turn the pages of a book, shed tears, gather flowers, very close to the spectator and yet very far away, in the place where they really are. (The Guermantes Way)

I've seen it everywhere, its florescent cover bobbing all over the subway system like bait on a hook, rocketing to the top of the bestseller lists, even for sale at my neighborhood Duane Reade. I'm talking about Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. During the short time it took to read it, I was zoned out on an adrenaline rush that made me feel keenly alive--over caffeinated, really--and focused outwards as if on autopilot. It was closer to the experience of watching a movie than reading Proust. Its simple, uncluttered prose meant that nothing distracted me from the thrill of surging forward, pedal to the floor--so far from the experience of savoring Proust's dizzying verbosity.

And there's nothing wrong with enjoying a Larsson novel. I remember a former writing teacher quoting Kurt Vonnegut as saying, "All writers are in the entertainment business." But why can't I find Proust at my local Duane Reade, sandwiched between the deodorant and the plastic containers of caramel popcorn?

Proust wrote about a time in which the telephone seemed fantastical. Larsson's protagonist, Lisbeth Salander--an expert computer hacker and shit-kicking Goth gamine--experiences life with a technological immediacy that would be absolutely foreign to Proust. In fact, I think that if Proust had picked up a copy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, it would be a full-on assault on his senses.

Not that the accelerated pleasures of reading a thriller only date from the invention of the internet. Certainly there was tabloid journalism and many other "low brow" sensationalist entertainments a century ago.

But can Proust compete today with an opponent who speaks the language of the 21st century?

There are certain authors who know us better than we know ourselves. Technology may have changed, the average person has the attention span of a gnat on crack, but Proust relates to the stories we tell ourselves about life and love, our innermost secrets, in a way that Larsson, with his appealing tattooed heroine, doesn't come close to.

Today, a friend (an extremely well-read friend, by the way) compared reading Proust to drinking molasses. I think this verison of Proust as stuffed in mothballs is dangerous. My life is so much richer with Proust in it. (And I probably only retain 10 percent of it my first time through!) He may be a difficult pleasure, you wonder why he carries on about one topic or another, but then there is a dazzling moment when everything is laid bare--the stunning beauty of life when one accepts it as it is, and then transcends it, into a dreamlike state. It's a different kind of pleasure than reading Larsson, but no less contemporary and immediate.