The Proust Haunting, Part 1

from the red notebook, November 2020

This is part one of three. Go here to read part 2.

We move back home to Northern California from Paris the day the second lockdown begins. A couple of weeks later, I have a milestone birthday. It is a chilly Thursday, the fog hanging over the canyon, when I open How Proust Can Change Your Life, by Alain de Bottom—which just came in the mail yesterday. I bought a copy in Paris too, at Librarie Galignani on Rue de Rivoli, but our shipment of household goods won’t arrive for six weeks at least, followed three months later by our furniture, and for some reason I felt I needed to read it sooner, so I bought another copy.