Mashing high lit into higher comix. (Photo: NBMPub.com)

[by Ross Levine]

Just as the bite of a madeleine cake put Marcel Proust into a reverie that launched his epic "search for lost time," so does Stéphane Heuet's "comic book" version of Proust's masterwork reawaken one's own memories of one of the 20 th century's greatest feats of literature.  That is, assuming one has read the seven-volume, 3,000+-page original which, according to my own not very scientific research, isn't likely.  In fact, whenever I dare mention Proust, people look at me as if I've finally impaled myself on the ivory tower of intellectual irrelevance.  There's no use explaining to them that the Proust-meister's contribution to the world canon is worth the year and change it's going to take them to read it, and that all the best sellers they might consume in that same interval may not equal in value a single page-long paragraph of Swann's Way or Time Regained.  The idea that a single book might require such a hefty commitment of hours and degree of mental fortitude, and involve words and language that, rather than leap from the page, draw one into a world so complete that the work becomes less a book than a separate universe -- well, let's face it, it's near impossible in this era of the Wii for anyone in their right mind to say "oui" to Proust.

But at least there's now this other option.  Instead of trying to convey, with a mere panegyric, the marvels of Proust to the uninitiated, I can just hand them a volume of Heuet's series and let the beautiful images and smart captions whet their appetite for the McCoy verité .  And, of course, in no way does this series -- which at present is only partially complete with four volumes ( Part One:  Combray; Part Two: Within a Budding Grove, Volumes 1 and 2; and the latest release, Part Three: Love of Swann, Volume 1 ) -- substitute for the real thing, just as the comic book version of Midsummer Night's Dream I read in grade school did not mean I was spared having to, at some future date, delve into the Bard's actual text.  No, what Heuet has done is distill À la recherche du temps perdu into an easily digestible form by capturing some of Proust's pithiest lines and recreating, with imaginative and evocative illustrations, the 19 th -century world immortalized by the author.  And by “easily digestible” I don't mean pablum – there is a sophistication to this comic art series that reflects the great care and research that obviously went into it.

Here you will find all the places Proust reinvented in his memory -- the village of Combray (Proust's name for Illiers, France) with its splendid cathedral; the bedroom of his invalid and neurotic aunt Léonie; the kitchen where plain-speaking housekeeper Françoise held sway; the lovely countryside along the Guermantes' way; and the sumptuous Grande Hotel in seaside Balbec (Proust-speak for Cabourg, France) where young Proust passed summers under his grandmother's watchful eye.  The back cover of the second book features one of my favorite images, Balbec's Grande Hotel at night, its interior lights ablaze, with an inset of the village poor peering into the hotel windows, and the mordant, Marcelian caption:  "An important social question is to know whether the pane of glass will always protect the feast of the marvelous beasts and if the obscure people peering at them through the night will not come and pick them out of their aquarium and eat them."  In this way, the comic version serves to illuminate some of the novel's best lines and may actually make them stick out more in our own, less inspired memories, since they are no longer engulfed by the tsunami of prose in which the master embedded them.

By the same token, the comic art helps bring to vivid life the army of characters that populate the novel:  Proust's indiscreet uncle Adolphe; the handsome Saint Loup; eccentric, mercurial and predatory Monsieur de Charlus; the distinguished and visionary painter Elstir; and the she-bitch Albertine, with whom Proust was desperately in love (and who, in real life,  is known to be at least partially based on Alfred Agostinelli, the Proust family chauffeur and the gender-incorrect object of the real-life novelist's affections).

Some of my favorite images from this series include the young Proust's fateful visit to his uncle Adolphe with the latter's paramour in attendance; Grandma opening the windows at the Grande Hotel and the resultant windstorm; the montage introducing the wanton Monsieur de Charlus and young Marcel's subsequent visit to Charlus's hotel room where the older man becomes rather abusive; and the game of “ferret” that Proust plays with his girlfriends from the Balbec beach, the group of jeunes filles who inspire him to fall in love with love.

Of course, any writer worth his/her salt would be loath to admit that illustrations might somehow devalue words, but there's something about Proust that is decidedly cinematic and thus lends itself to Heuet's grand project -- not cinematic in the Hollywood, shoot-em-up way, but in the fact that memory is perhaps best reflected in images that drift in and out of a narrative flow.  Reading these comic books is definitely like watching a film in which the director (the author) has decided which shots to include -- which close-ups, which establishing shots -- and Heuet has “directed his film” rather well, though in a few places, as with all films from books, characters and plot twists may appear to be missing and scenes may seem to suddenly end as if something has been lost in translation.

All in all, though, the books are a delight, and I look forward to the volumes to come.  It is my rather eccentric hope that parents might bestow these and other literary comics upon their offspring, and thus instill a familiarity with classic literature that may inspire the youngsters, who will surely be assaulted by an unrelenting flood of mind-scrambling technology as they mature, to make time for what they may have brushed against as children. For the point is this – great literature is not a failed thrill ride hobbled by big words and too many ideas – it's a place where truths lay illuminated, not buried, just waiting to be discovered.  A society that focuses exclusively on distraction risks losing all sense of what really motivates the soul.

Again, literary comic books such as these can only -- should only -- make us want more -- there's no way these thin volumes can encompass the entire scope of the Proustian dimension.  But what the heck, realistically, if you don't believe you're ever going to get around to reading Proust (given that most of us, it seems, will be working well into retirement), you may want to at least add Heuet's series to your bookshelf.  Not only will you acquire more than a little understanding of Proust's genius, but, if you're disingenuous enough, you'll be able to convince your friends and associates that you spent more than a year of your life searching for lost time and lived to tell about it.

January 7, 2008