Marcel Proust would have been amused by W in the 1970s. In those days it was not yet a magazine; it was a monthly, glossy, color newspaper, huge in size, which I subscribed to from the too-young age of thirteen. It was filled, of course, with fashion reportage, but almost more important were the gossip pages, which reported on the comings and goings of the gratin of the day: Lee Radziwill, Nan Kempner, the Kissingers, Ahmet and Mica Ertegun, Gloria Vanderbilt, Swifty Lazar, Kay Graham, along with style icons like Tina Chow, Anna Piaggi, Maxime and Loulou de la Falaise, all of whom were either clients, friends, or muses of my tween-age hero, Yves Saint Laurent.
As part of any interview or a profile on him, there were always lots of pretentious references made to Proust, who was one of YSL’s major inspirations—the designer himself posing as emotionally skittish, his deep appreciation of In Search of Lost Time evidence of his fragile soul. These sickly, sensitive geniuses worked their way deep into my psyche. The word “sensitive” was used to describe me from a very early age, and my childhood was the very definition of the word sickly: among other ailments, I survived a near-fatal case of spinal meningitis at four, was fitted for leg braces at five, and was in psychotherapy by eight. So imagine my concern as I passed through that childhood into robust teen age, my own status as a sickly genius thus called into question.
I coveted the world pictured in W, but it seemed way out of reach to an acne-besieged, overweight adolescent like me. Fashion, society, Proust—all became subjects of aspiration and intimidation.
I inherited a love of reading from my mother, who was a big fan of Colette, which she foisted on me at what I still think is an inappropriate age, encouraging me to read Chéri and The Last of Chéri at thirteen. Another of my mother’s influences was the game of bridge: she always said I’d have no friends if I didn’t learn to play bridge by the time I was forty, so I dutifully enrolled in a class when I turned thirty. I don’t know where I got the notion that an appreciation for Proust also came with an expiration date, but I pressured myself to read In Search of Lost Time so to be able to converse brilliantly about it at dinner parties—or else, I thought, I’d find myself again traveling in the wrong social circles.
The first time I tried reading it, in my mid-thirties, I felt overwhelmed and intimidated, and I failed, surely because of the conditioning, the pressure, set up by YSL and W. At fifty-two I took it up again, following some friends from afar who had joined a Proust reading group (in general I abstain from reading groups). To tell the truth, getting through “Combray” was no lark, but from the first words of Swann in Love, the dinner party scene at the Verdurins—I do love a good dinner party—the whole thing clicked, and I never looked back.
About a year ago, reading the wonderful Edmund White book about Proust, I came upon one explanation as to why Proust was constantly invited to weekends at aristocratic homes: “not because of his art, but because he and Anna de Noaille were the two funniest people in Paris.” With that in mind, I began a full second read of the novel, which I am now in the midst of. This time around, I thought I’d elide what I remembered as the fearsomely boring parts in “Combray,” but as I get further away from the 1970s, W, and whatever other pretentious references to Proust set me back, it turns out that this first part of Swann’s Way is the best part of the book.
With this second reading, it has dawned on me that Proust is not just wry satire; it’s scream-out-loud funny. And this applies not just to Dr. and Mme Cottard, Baron de Charlus, Mme de Villeparisis—the obviously funny characters—but also those from the very start of the novel, the characters in “Combray” I originally thought of as quaint portraiture: Aunt Leone, Fran-coise, Eulalie (who made me titter, then laugh, then scream, then feel awkward, as though maybe I was getting something wrong)—these characters seem to have been written for comic purposes only.
It turns out that the most intimidating things, the things I have held on to in the face of difficulty, in the face of failure, are the most worthwhile. I play bridge, as my mother instructed me to, though the skill came to me only with great difficuty. And I reread Proust. These are the things that make me happiest: they make me laugh, and I cling to them as I face my own old age, my own obsolescence. Perhaps Odette, Swann, the Duchess of Guermantes aren’t exactly the funniest of characters, not to mention the very dark events that take place in the novel, especially toward its end: the close of the Belle Epoque, the lives of these characters we’ve followed for four thousand pages, made obsolete and tragically at odds with the twentieth century. But I realize now that what drives the book, even at its darkest, is the relentless, endearing humor.
Isaac Mizrahi is a designer and performer who likes reading Proust—and dinner parties.