For years now, my ‘holiday' reading has comprised one book - Marcel Proust's masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time - and I see it staring at me as I write this in a London hotel room. It is the most widely travelled unread book, having accompanied me on holidays for nearly a quarter century now. As Groucho Marx said in another context, it is a wonderful book, and some day I intend to read it. Clearly it is putdownable. Perhaps even unpickupable.
I have read commentaries on the book, other people's battles with it, the philosophical implications of sitting in a cork-lined room and writing, and recently even a book that shows how Proust beat the scientists to the discovery about how the memory fails. Yet the book itself sits on my shelf, mocking, challenging, provoking, tempting, like an ageing spinster who is on the verge of giving up hope but is putting in one final effort.
Next year we celebrate the silver jubilee of our relationship and it would be a shame to break the habit of a lifetime by actually reading the book now. Perhaps I might write a book on not reading Proust. There are enough of the other kind anyway.
Occasionally, I have a bet with myself to see how long I can keep from not reading it. I imagine conversations in the local thirst-quencher thus: "Do you know I have had the book for a decade and I am yet to read it?" says the local bore. At which point I tell him casually and devastatingly, "That's nothing, I haven't read it for 25 years." Mine is longer than yours.
To be fair, some people have their Proust, others have their James Joyce and a third lot their Dan Brown or Archie comics - literature they tell themselves they must catch up on, but never do.
Proust, surprisingly enough, does not figure on any list of ‘holiday' reading so common in our newspapers and magazines. I always wonder what these lists are about. Does holiday reading imply there is workday reading? Or books to be read while cycling or while wearing a kilt? There are lists of books to be read on the beach (what are they - waterproof and sand-proof?), so I presume somebody somewhere is preparing an annual list of books to be read on the 89th floor of a building.
Proust is above all this. You carry it around for 25 years, and celebrate the intimacy by continuing to ignore it on your bookshelf. That is how the best relationships last - you don't go in search of lost time.
