On Writing and How I Came to Proust
August 3, 2009
Until quite recently, I would not have thought of myself as a writer, nor do I presently consider myself to be accomplished as such. Like any of my other creative endeavors, I have found myself applying energy towards this end merely by following instinct and impulse, with no particular goal in mind.
Prior to this year, I had been out of the practice of writing for some time. Early on this year however, I began writing movie reviews. I wrote some very cursory reviews at first. Subsequent reviews became more complex and nuanced. The more I wrote, the more I found that I was enjoying the process of writing, but I also began to feel frustrated with the limits of the language I was using. It occurred to me that, if I want to develop my voice as a writer, I have to read more!
It was around this time that that viewing the film Last Year At Marienbad set of a chain reaction of creative inspirations in my life. One aspect of that chain reaction has to do specifically with looking at where artists draw their inspirations. I learned that, at one point in pre-production for Marienbad, Alain Resnais had the entire cast and crew sit down for a screening of Pandora’s Box, a clear stylistic influence on Marienbad. I next looked at Pandora’s Box and subsequently learned more about the film’s enigmatic star, Louise Brooks. I was intrigued to learn that, later in life, Louise Brooks became a writer, and that at places in here personal journals she had written certain passages from In Search of Lost Time over and over again as an exercise to learn the rhythm of the language.
Upon traveling to my local used bookstore, I found only the last three of the seven books comprising In Search of Lost Time, so I purchased a volume containing The Captive and The Fugitive and there I began.
